UK Asylum and Refugee Policy

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Friday 9th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, as we have heard this morning, from Ugandan Asians fleeing Idi Amin to French Huguenots fleeing persecution, Britain has a proud heritage of welcoming those in need to these shores. Tragically, refugee and asylum policy has now become one of our most divided and polarised debates. We urgently need a better and unifying story, a clear narrative about refugee and asylum policy as distinct from illegal migration, and a better and more effective national refugee strategy. I am delighted that it is the most reverend Primate who has called this debate today. It is the Judeo-Christian foundation of this nation that makes it the country that people fleeing war, intolerance and conflict want to come to, with its principles of fairness, safety and dignity.

Of course, there is no question that control and integration are also paramount. The Government have a duty to their own people, and our failure over decades to properly control our borders has fuelled the anxiety which underpins much asylum and refugee discourse. But it is not those in need who are driving this. According to the ONS, small boat crossings accounted for only 3.5% of the total immigration figures in 2022. Let me give a broader example of what is happening: 277,000 non-EU citizens arrived on long-term study visas, 151,000 people arrived for work, 89,000 Ukrainian visa scheme holders arrived, and over 100,000 BNO Hong Kongers arrived. Meanwhile, an estimated 35,000 people arrived by small boats, the majority of whom applied for asylum. If we want to reduce net-migration numbers, asylum claims are the smallest of categories.

Today’s theme is how we balance compassion with control, as my noble friend Lord Horam has just mentioned. My argument is that there will be no constructive way forward until the Government address three public priorities: the control of our borders; control of our asylum system; and controlled safe and legal routes.

I begin with the control of our borders. This matters because narratives about the Calais border are often equated with headline migration numbers and wrongly tied into refugee policy. It also matters because, by putting the numbers in context, it becomes clear that the catastrophising rhetoric about the so-called crisis is overblown. We need clarity in our language. One of the reasons why 56% of those polled say that immigration is too high is that politicians and the media relentlessly use terms such as “illegal migration” and do not distinguish between illegal migration, economic migration and those who have been trafficked or are seeking refuge or asylum. This is disingenuous. When I explain the numbers that I have just shared with the House, people are genuinely stunned and say that they had no idea that the number of people claiming asylum here was so small in comparison with those that we are actually inviting to come here.

If we want to regain control of our borders, diplomacy with our European allies should be our first port of call. I am pleased that the Prime Minister has been seeking to deepen his collaboration with his French counterpart on this matter. It is the most likely way of genuine control being restored.

Although control of our borders needs diplomacy, retaining control of our asylum system is a matter of administrative competence. If application and decision rates stay the same as the last year, by June 2024 the backlog will be over 200,000 cases. The status quo is quite simply not sustainable. We must take immediate action to clear the backlog. I was pleased to see in the Times that the Government are looking to fast-track claims from countries with a high grant rate, as well as those from safe countries where claims are very unlikely to be credible. If this policy were enacted, at a stroke a considerable amount of the burden on the taxpayer would be lifted. We must also improve the processing of cases. While Britain made only 16,400 asylum decisions in the year to September 2022, France made nearly double that number of decisions between July and September alone. We can quite obviously do better with our decision-making.

Much of this, though, will take time. But given that we are in a time of labour shortages, it is a matter of pure common sense that people who are in the backlog should be granted the right to work. In fact, I profoundly agree with the most reverend Primate that they should be not just granted the right to work but expected to work. The arguments for this are fundamentally Conservative, and I made them at some length during the passage of the Nationality and Borders Act, so I will not go into them in depth here. In short, we need their skills, and we do not need to pay for their accommodation or support their incomes—they can do this themselves. Surely this, at the very least, should be addressed.

As I come to conclude, I turn to the final area where we need to develop control in our asylum system: controlled safe and legal routes for genuine asylum seekers. It seems extraordinary that, whether you are a victim of the Yazidi genocide or of state oppression in Eritrea, there is no safe route to come here. I suggest that, if the Minister laid out controlled routes for people from Iran to Eritrea who genuinely need our support, he would find broad support in the House for getting a grip on the border and would significantly depolarise this divisive issue.

We need a British national refugee policy which is grounded in the best of British values, ranging from compassion to control. This is the only viable way forward.