Asylum Decisions (Support for Refugees)

Bell Ribeiro-Addy Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab)]

I apologise for running in like a bat out of hell. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir David. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) on securing the debate and hon. Members who have spoken.

The toxic debate surrounding immigration has meant that there are increasingly fewer people in positions of power to speak up for the most vulnerable in our society, asylum seekers among them. In the clamour to appear tough on immigration, we have lost that once proud British tradition of accepting into this country those in most need—one example we hear often is that of the Kindertransport and our noble Friend Lord Alf Dubs.

Refugees should absolutely be welcome here, but at the moment it seems that we refuse to treat them with dignity and humanity. We must remember that they do not choose where they were born, the political issues that occur in their country or the situations that arise that mean they have to flee. They should not be held to account for that; rather, we should receive them with open arms.

The Government seem to want to stop at nothing to maintain their hostile environment; they have even suggested that, in some cases, they would deny legitimate asylum claims which, of course, would be against the 1951 refugee convention. The Government’s focus on deterrence, rather than on establishing safe and legal routes, is an expression of that, and they should be deeply ashamed of it. As we have heard, it has been left mostly to faith and community organisations to fill the gap that the Government should be filling. They do an absolutely fantastic job, but it is simply not their job, and they do not have the resources to continue doing it.

We have heard many people touch on the right to work, and I am proud that it is the Labour party’s policy, as well as to establish safe and legal routes, to allow asylum seekers the right to work after six months. Commentators wax lyrical about asylum seekers being a drain on resources, but we refuse to let them work. As I said, people do not come here because they want handouts. A lot of them have skills to work and should be given the opportunity to do so. In working, they would reduce that so-called bill that people talk about and give back to the community. They want to work and to integrate into society, but denying them the right to work does not allow that. The Government also said that they want to curb modern slavery, but these restrictions on the right to work really undermine that so-called policy.

On ESOL, we argue that people should speak English, but we maintain that the Government’s policy is shameful and treats those claiming asylum as though they were on immigration bail. These measures prevent young people from accessing education, including ESOL classes. Two years ago, three young men who came here as unaccompanied minors from Eritrea committed suicide. Imagine travelling all that way here, to safety—in terrible conditions and at the mercy of people traffickers—only to feel so unsafe that, once they had arrived in what was meant to be a place of safety, they wanted to commit suicide. That stands to reason, given the way in which they were treated. They felt so insecure about the length of time it was taking the Home Office to come to a decision that they felt that they had no option but to kill themselves. Instead of the Government supporting people better, we seem to be handing over our services to private companies, including Serco and G4S. We give millions and millions of pounds to those private companies, which continue to fail. Even companies that have defrauded the Government are left to provide housing and other resources. Instead of giving that money to local authorities, which I think would do better at providing housing, we see that a lot of complaints have been received about the housing—it is really poor housing. At the end of the day, local authorities are responsible for the integration of asylum seekers, and the money would be better spent by them for the whole community, particularly in a climate in which things are being whipped up and a lot of the time not a lot is going back into quite under-privileged communities.

The mistakes made by the Government in relation to applications continue to be a disgrace and ruin lives. We talk about all the money that is wasted on immigration and asylum, but I argue that we continue to do things such as detain and deport asylum seekers and victims of trafficking and sexual violence—something that the Government said that we would not do—and every single time we detain someone and keep them in a detention centre, that is wasting money. It is giving money again to the same private companies.

As has been demonstrated, the main point of this debate is to ask the Minister to explain why we have the 28-day rule. Why will we not extend the period to 56 days? Twenty-eight seems to be quite an arbitrary number. The Minister has heard again and again about how it eventually leaves people homeless and destitute and ends up creating a greater cost for the Government. What would it actually cost if we were to extend the period of support to 56 days? I wonder whether the Minister could calculate whether that would cost as much as the Home Office tends to pay out for its mistakes in relation to immigration claims.

We have a legal and moral obligation to those who claim asylum, but daily we seem not to meet that, so what I would like to ask the Minister overall is when the Government will stop treating asylum seekers as second-class beings and if and when they will stop treating them as if claiming asylum is a crime.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Philp]

The hon. Lady makes a good point. As a father of young children, I understand that childcare is important, whether for parents in work or further education, so her point is well made.

The hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) made a related point about language. Notwithstanding my remarks a moment ago that teaching people to speak English is preferable to perpetually translating—for society and the individual concerned—I would like to make it clear that the welcome guide for refugees to England is available in multiple languages: Albanian, Arabic, Chinese, Vietnamese, Kurdish, Farsi, Pashtu, Punjabi, Tigrinya and Urdu. Hopefully, that will be of use to speakers of those languages.

Regarding the 28-day period, we are working with the voluntary sector. Several hon. Members have referred to its excellent work. We are also working with other Departments, as was raised by several hon. Members. We are working with local authority asylum liaison officers in some of the main areas where asylum seekers are being accommodated. That is funded by MHCLG. The role of these liaison officers is to assist newly recognised refugees with move-on arrangements, particularly housing, to ensure that the transition from supported accommodation to wider society happens as smoothly as it can.

Our asylum accommodation providers, the people who provide the supported housing while the claim is being processed, are under a contractual duty, under their contracts with the Home Office, to notify the local authority and their liaison officers of the potential need to provide housing where a person in their accommodation is granted status. We are doing everything we can to try to make that work, between the Home Office-supported accommodation and the local authority’s housing services, supported by the liaison officer, as joined up as possible.

The central question is 28 days versus 56 days. I have read the Red Cross report, to which the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) referred. I have it here. There is clearly a financial cost to keeping people in supported accommodation for longer than they are currently kept there. The Red Cross report makes the case that the extra cost in the Home Office estate would be outweighed by savings in local authorities, due to less homelessness support. I will study the report. It has some costings of that equation. I will look at the numbers carefully and make my own assessment as to where that balance lies.

In addition to the purely financial consideration, there are practical capacity considerations. As we know, housing is quite difficult to come by. If we extended from 28 days to 56 days, we would increase the number of people in supported housing by a few thousand. We would then have to find those extra spaces. Even if one could make a compelling financial case—the Red Cross says that case can be made—one must think practically about where those places would come from. That must be borne in mind.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy]

Will the Minister commit to looking at how much would be contributed financially by tax payments, if asylum seekers were allowed to work after six months, as well as how much the Home Office would save, if it made fewer mistakes and had to pay claims as requested?

[Chris Philp]

Work is not the topic of this debate, and it is more than a financial consideration. We can all agree that we must be quicker at handling asylum claims. Whether they are successful, and we must integrate people into the community, or whether they are unsuccessful, and the person must be removed, doing it quicker is in everybody’s interest. As a matter of priority, as the new Minister, I will find ways of making this process quicker, which would mitigate a lot of the problems we have been discussing.

I have listened carefully to everything that has been said. The points have been made with sincerity and compassion. I will reflect carefully on what I have heard this afternoon. I will look at the case made in the Red Cross report and study those numbers. I thank the hon. Member for Bristol West for securing the debate and for making her case in such a balanced and considered way.