Asylum Seekers: Right to Work

Caroline Spelman Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dame Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered asylum seekers’ right to work.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I am grateful that this debate has been granted. I am also grateful to those right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken to me about this important issue and those who have been able to join us today.

Throughout my time as a Member of Parliament, my constituency has been a dispersal area for asylum seekers, so I have seen both models—allowing asylum seekers to work and not allowing them to do so—under Governments of different political persuasions. However, since 2002, regulations have slowly changed, and now most people seeking asylum are completely unable to work. Until 2002, people seeking asylum in the United Kingdom could apply for permission to work if they had been waiting six months or more for an initial decision on their asylum claim. In July 2002, that provision was withdrawn, except in exceptional cases.

In February 2005, there was a further change: a new immigration rule was introduced to allow people seeking asylum to apply for permission to work in the UK if they had been waiting over 12 months for an initial decision on their asylum claim. Most recently, in 2010, the right to work after 12 months was extended to those who had made further submissions on their claim. At the same time, however, the right to work was restricted to jobs on the shortage occupation list, which is a restricted list that includes nuclear medical practitioners —or, in parlance that the rest of us might understand, radiographers—and classical ballet dancers.

The Home Office’s target for decisions on asylum cases is six months. In the most recent immigration statistics, released in the second quarter of this year, the number of main applicants waiting over six months for a decision on their asylum claim increased. For main applicants and dependents, 48% of people waiting for an initial decision had been waiting for over six months.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

The right hon. Lady’s constituency is next to mine, so I fully understand some of the problems that she is raising, and I agree that we need to have a good look at them. A large number of asylum seekers have some very good qualifications, but cannot get the right to work, and some of them have young families to take care of. That drives them into destitution, to say the least. The Home Office now has to look at the asylum process and speed it up but, more importantly, try to give those people work where they can.

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

The hon. Gentleman is indeed my next-door neighbour in the west midlands, where we have enjoyed an incredible economic boom since the downturn in 2008. A number of businesses are short of skilled labour, which is one of the things that has held our region back, yet asylum seekers waiting for an initial decision have the kind of skills that our industries so desperately need. As a west midlands MP, I find it difficult to ignore that fact.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the right hon. Lady for raising this important issue. The Government have been able to allocate some Syrian families to Newtownards, the major town of in my constituency. In conjunction with local community groups and local churches, we have come together to find those people accommodation and get their children into school, but also enable some access to English language classes, which will enable them to apply for jobs. With all the good will that clearly exists, with Government allocating asylum seekers locations to be housed in and the local community coming together to help, does the right hon. Lady feel that there is a need to do something with English language classes—not a voluntary group, which is the way it is being done in Newtownards, but something separate from Government? Those classes enable asylum seekers to get jobs.

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

As a linguist, the issue of English language learning for refugees and asylum seekers is close to my heart. If people cannot speak the language of the country that they are in, it is difficult for them to work there, so that learning is indispensable. Like the hon. Gentleman, I have had Syrian families dispersed to my constituency, and I was delighted to discover at a fringe meeting at Conservative party conference that one young Syrian lady had managed to get employment with Starbucks. A number of employers in this country go out of their way to provide job opportunities for asylum seekers, but he is absolutely right that being able to speak the language is a prerequisite.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful that the right hon. Lady has secured this important debate. In my surgeries, I have had a City banker who is now completely destitute, with no recourse to public funds, and somebody who works in the hospitality sector, at a time when we desperately need hospitality workers and care workers. Is it not right that these people should, first of all, be able to work, but that they should at least receive some resources to be able to feed their families?

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

As I will illustrate shortly with some case studies, being able to work transforms the situation of asylum seekers. It hugely helps their mental health, because they can integrate better, and they contribute to our economy, which is a positive for the host nation.

Waiting indefinitely for the determination of a claim can have serious effects on mental wellbeing. I have seen that all too often in my constituency, because it is a dispersal area. I have seen young men in particular who are very depressed and isolated, and even suicidal at times. I put myself in their shoes: if I had to live on £5.39 a day, struggling to support a family while feeling that my talents, my education, and everything I had learned was wasted, I would feel really down. Sadly, in those moments of isolation, I would be focused on the reasons I had left my country of origin, and some of the terrors that had caused me to flee my home. I have seen far too many asylum seekers in my surgery who have been depressed by their experience, and enabling them to work would, I think, be transformational.

On the positive side, I will share the experience of some of my constituents who managed to get work. I remember well a group of Iraqi Kurdish asylum seekers who managed to get work in a food factory. While it was not a particularly pleasant job, the men were happy. They were only earning the minimum wage, but even that filled them with pride. It meant that they were no longer completely reliant on the state, and while they were out working in that food factory they had a sense of community, both within their Kurdish community and the wider community working in that factory.

Another example from my constituency—one I am never going to forget—is the very long drawn-out battle that I had to solve the asylum claim of a lady from the Congo, who fled after her husband was executed in front of her. It took me eight years to solve that case, and not surprisingly, she was deeply depressed. Many was the weekend after my surgery when I lay awake at night, worrying about this woman and her very young child. You can imagine how I felt when I arrived at my surgery, opened the door, and saw this young woman with a smile from ear to ear and a little thank-you card for me, as her right to remain had been granted. Already, she was working as a care assistant in a local care home, contributing to our economy. I am never going to forget that as long as I live.

Even the opportunity to volunteer can break the cycle of depression and hopelessness. A gentleman called Godfrey arrived in the UK from Uganda and spent a considerable amount of time in the asylum system, and was not allowed to work. During that time he volunteered for several organisations, including the British Red Cross, and attended employability training with the support organisation Restore. In recent years, he has been employed, first in the care sector and then in housing support. His experiences in the asylum system have made him passionate about helping others who, in his view, are worse off than him. Inability to work, Godfrey argues, can lead to problems of isolation among people seeking asylum, including mental health issues, diabetes, blood pressure problems, stress, and the depression I have referred to. Worse, he has known friends forced into poverty and made vulnerable to abuse and manipulation, such as through gangs, prostitution and drug trafficking. There are countless human examples demonstrating the capacity of work to aid integration and promote good mental health among those seeking asylum. It is a good thing.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

On the right hon. Lady’s point about positive integration, is she encouraged by the poll that British Future did, which indicated that 71% of the British public support the right to work as a means towards integration?

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

I was just coming on to the more recent research showing changing social attitudes. I very much support the research by the Lift the Ban coalition, which suggests that the current system is wasteful as it fails to harness the skills and talents of often well-educated individuals. Some 94% of people seeking asylum want to work. Some 74% have secondary-level education or higher and 37% have a degree, which is comparable with the UK population, where 42% of people have a degree. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has also recognised the gap, saying that allowing asylum seekers in the UK greater access to the labour markets would not only increase individuals’ self-reliance but avoid the loss of skills. Abilities and skills need to be used if they are not to become rusty or obsolete.

Allowing asylum seekers to work could save public money as well as provide an economic boost. Lift the Ban estimates that if 50% of the people waiting six months for a decision on their initial asylum application were able to work full time on the national average wage, the Government would receive an extra £31.6 million a year from their tax and national insurance contributions. Moving them off subsistence support but retaining support for accommodation would save the public purse £10.8 million a year. The total net gain would be much as £42.4 million.

Among European countries, the UK prescribes the lengthiest restrictions before people seeking asylum are given the right to work. In that regard, we are something of an international outlier. In comparable countries, people are largely given the opportunity to support themselves sooner. For example, the USA, Spain and the Netherlands all allow work after six months, Germany and Switzerland allow work after three months, and Canada allows asylum seekers to work on day one. In the UK, however, asylum seekers must wait a minimum of 12 months before they are given the right to work. I ask the Government to review that.

There is an indication of a wider shift in public opinion, as the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) pointed out. There is a letter in today’s Daily Telegraph from 16 religious community leaders who have signed an open letter commending the efforts of Lift the Ban and calling for the right to work to be restored after asylum seekers have waited six months for a decision. As the hon. Gentleman said, polling undertaken this year shows that when asked, 71% of people agree with the following statement: “When people come to the UK seeking asylum it is important they integrate, learn English and get to know people. It would help integration if asylum seekers were allowed to work if their claim takes more than six months.”

Given public support for such a change and that in these times of near full employment we are short of workers in key areas, surely we can now look at asylum seekers’ right to work more holistically and in a way that better respects their human dignity. I thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for attending the debate today, and I look forward to hearing whether the Government will consider allowing people seeking asylum and their adult dependents the right to work, unconstrained by the shortage occupation list.