Claudia Webbe
Main Page: Claudia Webbe (Independent - Leicester East)Department Debates - View all Claudia Webbe's debates with the Home Office
(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind) [V]
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) on securing this hugely important debate. The asylum system overhaul recently announced by the Home Secretary lacks basic humanity and represents the latest step in this Government’s pernicious demonisation of asylum seekers. It has rightly been criticised by human rights organisations, including the UN Refugee Agency and the British Red Cross.
The UK Government have persistently been warned by experts, migrant charities and parliamentary Committees that if they do not open safe and legal routes for people to practise their legal right to claim asylum, deaths at sea are unavoidable. Yet they have proceeded to close the few legal avenues that exist, such as the right to family reunion.
Contrary to popular mistruths, asylum seekers do not arrive in the UK to leech off the state. Asylum support allowance is a mere £37.75 per week. Contrary to the myths propagated by the Home Secretary in Parliament, it is also far from the case that the UK is overwhelmed with asylum seekers, with Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece and France registering far more asylum applications. Indeed, in 2020, the UK received just under a third of the number of asylum applications received by Germany and about two fifths the number in France. In the sixth richest country in the world, there is no reason we cannot provide a humane pathway towards stability and dignity for everyone. Instead, asylum seekers are forced to reside in appalling conditions.
In a report published today, the British Red Cross found that too many asylum-seeking women, men and children in the UK are living in unfit, unsanitary and isolated accommodation, which falls far short of expected standards, for months and even years at a time. The report is harrowing: people living in the same clothes for weeks, survivors of trafficking forced into widely inappropriate housing and scared to leave their rooms, and requests for medical support ignored. Indeed, in a recent 13-month period, the British Red Cross supported more than 400 individuals struggling with suicidal thoughts.
Far from addressing those issues, the Government’s new plan for immigration includes plans to house people seeking asylum in reception centres. Yet, this institutional-style accommodation, including the appalling conditions currently being endured by asylum seekers at Napier military barracks, can have significant negative impact on people’s mental and physical health, as well as isolating people seeking asylum from wider communities. The Government must also end the hugely damaging practice of outsourcing accommodation to private companies, which have overseen this disastrous, prison-like infrastructure. In 2019, Serco was awarded a new Government contract despite being fined nearly £7 million for sustained failings over a seven-year period.