Support for Asylum Seekers

Claudia Webbe Excerpts

Tuesday 27th April 2021 Westminster Hall

[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.

Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Claudia Webbe Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 30th June 2020 Commons Chamber

As the Member of Parliament for North East Bedfordshire, with Yarl’s Wood in my constituency, I can attest to the human tragedies that have occurred in detention over the past decades. When I became a Member of Parliament in 2010, the last Labour Government were imprisoning children, and I am quite clear that the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) on the Opposition Front Bench would find that unconscionable today. We have been making progress over the years, and a time limit on detention now is the next change that we should make. I say to the Minister that if he cannot reform the process—if he cannot today say he is going to reform that process—the time is up on what this Conservative Government are doing on detention.

[Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I am afraid that this Bill fails on every conceivable measure of a humane and just immigration policy, and I am concerned that my constituents are particularly vulnerable to the predatory aspects of this legislation. Some 43% of Leicester East residents were born outside the UK, as opposed to 10% nationally, and our citizens hail from over 50 countries around the globe. This diversity is what makes our city special, yet with a two-week lockdown extension announced in my home city, this Bill fails to protect its most vulnerable citizens. To ensure that every Leicester resident can seek the medical help they need during this increase in coronavirus, it is vital for full citizenship rights to be extended to undocumented workers, those with no recourse to public funds and people with no indefinite leave to remain, yet the Bill fails to provide the necessary protections.

Under most visa categories, migrants who are legally in the UK working and paying tax cannot access publicly funded support. The Migration Observatory estimates that nearly 1.5 million people currently have no recourse to public funds, including those with children who were born in the UK. For people who already face uncommonly difficult challenges in their daily lives, this pandemic has only deepened fears over how to maintain an income, remain healthy or even stay alive. Citizens Advice has recorded a 110% increase in people seeking advice about having no recourse to public funds during the pandemic, and a recent report from the Children’s Society found that almost half of children whose parents were born abroad live in poverty. The Government must introduce an amnesty for all migrants, including residency rights, for the duration of this pandemic and end the callous policy of no recourse to public funds.

An estimated 1 million undocumented workers lack any entitlement to support from the state. Many of these people are destitute and living in the shadows, unable to access healthcare and fearful of what will happen to them if they identify themselves. In nearly all cases, undocumented people are not criminals but simply those who have fallen through the cracks of the Government’s callous hostile environment policies. For people forced to endure this level of insecurity, it is impossible to comply with Government guidance on self-isolation and social distancing. With the overwhelming rise in coronavirus cases in my constituency and with a rate of infection that is beyond acceptable, it is imperative and in the best interests of everyone in our country that the basic needs of all our residents are met, especially given the disproportionate impact of covid-19.

The tragic irony is that many undocumented people, or those with no recourse to public funds who are living in constant fear of the state, work in the frontline services that the Government have been at pains the praise during this crisis. We must ensure that all frontline workers, regardless of their immigration status, are valued and protected as we rebuild our economy and society. It is vital that we repay the extraordinary contribution of frontline workers during the pandemic with a permanent extension of migrant rights. That means an end to the hostile environment, shutting detention centres and granting indefinite leave to remain for anyone living in the UK. In Leicester, the coronavirus pandemic has caused widespread suffering for too many individuals and communities, with widespread job losses—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I am sorry but we have to move on.

Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Claudia Webbe Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 18th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Lab) [V]]

I am afraid that the Bill is simply not fit for purpose, and I am proud to have co-signed the amendment calling for it not to be considered. The coronavirus crisis has shown that the people who really keep our society ticking are not billionaires or the super-rich but nurses, carers, cleaners, checkout attendants and many more essential frontline workers, yet these are the very people that the Bill brands as low-skilled. This reveals the fundamental hypocrisy of the Government.

It does not matter how many Cabinet Ministers applaud NHS staff in front of television cameras on a Thursday night if they then legislate to strip them of their dignity. Under this Government, citizenship rights have been deliberately obscured, and deportation and removal targets have taken precedence, yet the Bill makes no effort to end these hostile environment policies, which were found to be institutionally racist by the official inquiry into the Windrush scandal. It also will not end the abhorrent practice of indefinite detention, which has led to the inhumane treatment that has become routine in centres such as Yarl’s Wood. I cannot believe that, even during this pandemic, we are picking people up from their homes in Leicester East and putting them in barbaric detention centres, leaving MPs like me spending time trying to get them released. It is not as if there are any planes going anywhere, so why is that happening?

As MP for one of the most diverse constituencies in the country, I know only too well the hurt that my constituents feel when the Government legitimise the dehumanisation and marginalisation of African, Asian and minority ethnic communities with their deport first, ask questions later approach. Some 43% of Leicester East residents were born outside the UK, as opposed to 10% nationally. Our residents hail from more than 50 countries around the globe. That is what makes our city special, yet it also means that my constituents are more vulnerable to the predatory aspects of this legislation. For instance, a recent study in the Health Service Journal found that 66% of NHS workers who have tragically died from the virus were not born in the UK. Our health service simply would not function without the sacrifice of people from across the world, yet if a migrant NHS worker tragically dies because of work-related illnesses, it is their belief that the future of their dependent family members living in the UK is not guaranteed. That means that vulnerable individuals could face deportation while grieving for their loved one. Why wait until they die? Guarantee now the indefinite leave to remain for family dependants of all migrant NHS workers who are keeping our society going. I have written to the Home Secretary urging her to close this loophole in order to honour the dedication and sacrifice of all NHS workers, no matter their country of birth.

On that note, let me say how deeply disappointed I was that the Government have refused to reconsider the pernicious immigration health surcharge. Any charge that deters people from seeking medical treatment is not only inhumane but could exacerbate the spread of the virus. The Government have a moral and practical obligation to abolish the surcharge. I have also called on the Government to introduce an amnesty for all migrants, including residency rights, for the duration of the pandemic and to end the callous no recourse to public funds policy. At a time when hate crime has more than doubled since 2013, with more than 100,000 offences in 2018, it has never been more important for the demonisation of migrants to end. That means repealing the Immigration Act 2014, reversing the hostile environment, and shutting detention centres for good.

I will conclude with the worrying provision in the Bill that grants sweeping new powers to the Government to change immigration laws without proper scrutiny. This Government’s systematic mistreatment of migrants over the past decade, from the hostile environment to the Windrush scandal, is the ultimate proof that they are undeserving of this unchecked power. It would be a monumental mistake, to the detriment of too many vulnerable people in Leicester East and across the country, for this House to grant that power to them. I will be voting against this Bill.

Deportation Flight to Jamaica

Claudia Webbe Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Can the Minister tell us whether any of the people scheduled for deportation tomorrow have had access to legal advice and representation?

[Kevin Foster]

As I have touched on, they have all been through the criminal justice system. Many have had quite extensive legal provision afterwards, and they have been assessed on everything else. I say yet again that we are complying with the law set in 2007. The hon. Lady can shake her head, but it is the law that her Labour predecessors voted for.