No Recourse to Public Funds

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Thursday 11th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman). I agreed with much of what he and the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), who has been a tireless campaigner on this issue, said. When I was on the Work and Pensions Committee, we raised the issue repeatedly, particularly during the pandemic.

I want to raise the clear link between no recourse to public funds and food insecurity. That was made very clear to us last year. I chaired a webinar discussion run by the Independent Food Aid Network. There were more than 150 participants, including experts by experience, food bank managers and third sector workers. It is clear that, even before the pandemic, asylum seekers and refugees disproportionately represented food bank users—3% of food bank usage, against 0.1% of the population. No recourse to public funds has proven to lead to that food insecurity and destitution, with almost half of all children with foreign-born parents living in the UK in poverty. Children with foreign-born parents constitute 25% of all children in the UK living in poverty. The pandemic exacerbated that particular hardship, as the right hon. Member for East Ham outlined, because people were out of work. They had no other support because they had a no recourse to public funds condition. If someone with that condition is subject to immigration control and has no access to public funds, it prohibits access to the most mainstream social security benefits and support, and services that are conditional on certain benefits, including things such as housing support, free school meals, where that is not a universal provision, and healthy start vouchers.

Tandy Nicole, a volunteer peer food researcher and expert by experience from the Govan Community Project, gave evidence to the webinar discussion and gave testimony on the lived experience of asylum seekers facing food insecurity. She explained how the experience of someone with no recourse to public funds in accessing support is very different from that of a citizen who is eligible for public funds.

We expect asylum seekers to live on an amount per week that is equivalent to what a youth trainee, or YT, was getting paid in 1990. How do I know that? Because I was a youth trainee in 1990, earning what asylum seekers are expected to live on now, when I started my employment with Strathclyde Regional Council. When someone is asked to live on that amount of money, they have competing needs: toiletries, cleaning products, over-the-counter medication, clothing and internet access and phone data, both of which were particularly crucial during the pandemic. Those are all essential items that I would argue are needed for an individual to get by.

In her evidence, Tandy also emphasised the importance of looking at a person’s overall needs. It is important to pay attention to health-related dietary needs and intolerances, religious dietary restrictions and other cultural preferences. That is what we have had to do with the many food projects I am involved with in Glasgow South West. We are opening pantries and larders to try to alleviate food bank use and give people dignity and choice, and we have had to take into consideration people’s dietary restrictions and cultural preferences.

I will suggest some policy changes. I think there should be the right to work across the board for asylum seekers. The Government are making some advance in allowing asylum seekers to work in jobs on a restricted list, but I would like to see the right to work across the board. People should have access to public funds, such as universal credit and unemployment support, and certainly child benefit, as others have argued, to reduce hardship and poverty. When people at risk of poverty because of the no recourse to public funds condition get work, they find themselves in insecure work, zero-hours contracts and low-income jobs, and when they lose that work, it can be very detrimental, as the pandemic showed. It is really time for a policy change there.

We also need to reduce the time it takes asylum seekers to receive a decision. The Govan Community Project gave an example in that webinar discussion of someone who waited nine years to get a decision. That is far too long for someone to be put in that position. I hope the Minister will tell us how the Home Office is looking at this issue and ensuring that people get decisions in a timely manner. We also need to close the disconnect between the amount of support that asylum seekers are being expected to live on, and the amount provided to those on social security benefits. There should be crisis grants for all.

In closing, the right to food should exist for everyone. That requires a comprehensive, rights-based approach to tackling food insecurity, with a human rights Bill that incorporates social and economic rights, including that right to food.