Covid-19: Asylum Seeker Services in Glasgow

David Linden Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Stephens]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for mentioning the asylum support work of Refugee Action and other charities, and I certainly support what he said today.

My constituent Simon wrote to me in advance of this debate:

“Access to a mobile phone and the internet has never been more important. As well as Refugee Week, this is also Loneliness Awareness Week and action is needed to address loneliness and social isolation in the asylum system, including by ensuring that people seeking asylum have the digital resources that they need to stay connected, access support and continue education.”

Simon goes on to say:

“The UK continues to face a global health emergency that has disproportionately affected people from black, Asian and minority ethnic groups, including here in the UK, with many minorities living in deprivation simply left dead by covid-19, not protected adequately by the UK Government. It remains vital that everyone, irrespective of their immigration status, can live in dignity, afford the most basic things and to be safe.”

My constituent Saffie also wrote to me:

“Even before coronavirus I was barely surviving on around £5 per day. We have to travel to the bigger shops that have lower prices, but now with lockdown we can’t travel and the small shops have hiked their prices. Things like soap and hand sanitiser are very expensive and leave only a few pence for food and other essentials. Since lockdown, essential support services…have closed their doors, so you have to have phone credit or data to even contact them for help. This means deciding to eat or to get phone credit. The recent increase of 26p per day to asylum support is heart breaking. I just want to live in dignity, afford the most basic things and to be safe.”

My first question to the Minister is: as we come to Refugee Day this Saturday, will he please reconsider the asylum support rates, and will he promise not to penalise asylum-seeking families who receive digital packages and laptops so that their kids can keep up at school with blended learning? The coronavirus is a public health crisis, but it is also a humanitarian crisis for people in the asylum process.

I turn now to a welcome and, in public health terms, essential safeguard to asylum accommodation when lockdown was announced. It was stated that asylum seekers would not have their financial support and accommodation cut off—that they would not be evicted—and that that would last until, at the very least, the end of June. As the Minister will be aware, we in Glasgow have called for an end to asylum homelessness and eviction for years. Most recently, we resisted Serco when it tried and failed to make hundreds of people street homeless through cruel forced lock changes. We showed the way, and we urge all dispersal areas to resist asylum accommodation evictions and homelessness.

I welcomed the pause in evictions, as did Glasgow city council and many other asylum local authorities, who for years have demanded that the Home Office take responsibility for the care of vulnerable asylum seekers, rather than shunt them heartlessly onto the streets.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for securing this debate. Through him, I say to the Minister that we need to look again at this idea of how we disperse asylum seekers throughout the city of Glasgow, moving them on so often. Asylum seekers, who will often get involved in community group, a church or with charities, are frequently moved on to another area, where they will have no community support. I commend what is being done, but if we are to have a wider conversation about accommodation, we need to impress upon the Minister the need for people to be able to stay in one part of Glasgow, rather being shunted around all the time, which is no good to them.

[Chris Stephens]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and I hope the Minister responds to that. I will have some questions for the Minister about his contact with Glasgow City Council, but I am sure that all us Glasgow MPs would welcome any opportunity to meet him to address the many issues that asylum seekers face in the city of Glasgow, including how to give them better protection.

Let me tell the Minister that the asylum evictions policy has, way before covid-19, blighted the lives of women and men thrown into homelessness on to the streets of councils that have been, and remain, decimated by the Government’s austerity programme. What a short-sighted and irresponsible policy austerity was. It has been ruthlessly exposed by the dreadful covid-19 pandemic. As the Health Secretary knows well, the facts are that we are no longer in a fragile recovery phase out of lockdown. The virus is still out there and the R rate varies by locality. It attacks the most vulnerable. They were the most vulnerable before the pandemic, have been during it, and, unless the Government act, will be after it.

I and many others are furious to now learn that last Thursday, when I was being told that I had been selected for this debate and presumably in a ministerial office far from the streets of Glasgow, Liverpool, Swansea and Middlesbrough, the Government decided to restart support cessations and, by implication, the imminent eviction in July of asylum seekers, both those who have been granted refugee status and those who are being refused asylum. That could mean hundreds and thousands of vulnerable asylum seekers rendered street homeless into an ongoing life-threatening pandemic. To increase the risk, it will be happening in some of the most deprived communities in the United Kingdom. I know that the Minister and his staff were telling local authorities in these areas last Friday that that is what they plan to do.

Let us just think about what that means. The Government are getting back to the Home Office’s “business as usual” while everyone else in society is grappling with the new normal. Why is the Home Office different? This “business as usual” will make people street homeless at a time of an ongoing pandemic. This is all to happen while all other evictions are rightly postponed. The Housing Secretary in this place has paused evictions until the 23 August, so why have the Home Office not done the same?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Chris Philp)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) on securing this evening’s Adjournment debate. Let me start by putting on record my agreement with the remarks he made at the very beginning of his speech in relation to the disturbances and the violence—the counter-demonstrations—in the city of Glasgow. Violent protest of any kind is abhorrent. People have the right to peaceful protest, and I join him—and, I am sure, everybody in the House—in condemning the acts of violence to which he referred.

Let me start by laying out the United Kingdom’s generosity in welcoming people who are granted asylum and, indeed, people who claim asylum. Last year, the calendar year 2019, there were about 35,000 claims of asylum, which was one of the highest figures in Europe—not the highest, but one of the highest—and last year we granted about 20,000 asylum grants and other forms of protection, so more than half those claims were granted. At the same time, we welcomed 3,000 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children—the highest number of any country in Europe. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is aware, although he did not mention it in his speech, that just last week or the week before, we announced a significant funding increase to local authorities to support looking after unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. We increased the support by £17 million from about £218 million to £235 million a year. At the same time, we increased the care leaver grant for those people who were UASC but are now part of the post-UASC care leaver cohort, to £240 per care leaver per week, which was an increase of between 20% and 60%, depending on which local authority we are talking about.

Of course, at the same time as we offer that support to asylum seekers, we have the largest—or certainly the second largest—overseas aid budget in Europe. We are the only G7 economy to spend 0.7% of gross national income on overseas aid, around £13 billion or £14 billion per year. We are doing a great deal to help people not just to come to the UK, but who are at risk overseas.

[David Linden]

I am sorry but the Minister is talking absolute crap—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Please withdraw that.

[David Linden]

I withdraw the word “crap”, but the Minister is talking absolute nonsense. He talks about how welcoming the UK is. They are the same UK Government that had “Go Home” vans going round communities, and the hostile environment. I suggest that he cuts the talk about DFID, which has been abolished this week, and focuses on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens).

[Chris Philp]

I will certainly come on to that point, but no amount of huffing and puffing can disguise the fact that we are the only G7 country meeting the 0.7% of GNI commitment. No huffing and puffing will disguise the fact that we gave 20,000 grants of asylum and protection last year.

[David Linden]

indicated dissent.

[Chris Philp]

The hon. Gentleman can shake his head all he likes, but those are the facts. They are facts that evidence the compassion with which the United Kingdom deals with those very vulnerable people. He can shake his head, and he can fold his arms, but those are the facts.

Let me come on to some of the questions that have been raised. The hon. Member for Glasgow South West spoke at some length about the asylum support rate, but he did not talk about everything that is provided in addition to the cash sum of money, which was increased by 5%, well above the rate of inflation. The cohort concerned get free accommodation. All utility bills are paid for, council tax is paid for, free health care is provided under the NHS, and any children get free education. The method for calculating the cash support rate was tested in court some years ago and found to be lawful. The amount of money is essentially calculated by a formula which has been endorsed by the Court of Appeal. When Members talk about asylum support, I urge them to keep in mind all those other things—the free accommodation, the utility bills being paid, the council tax being paid, NHS healthcare and free education.

The covid situation that the country has been facing is thankfully now easing, but it has of course been a very serious public health crisis. We took the decision on 27 March to suspend the policy of the cessation of support. That is where an asylum seeker’s claim is decided, either positively or negatively, and we ask them to—with notice, of course—leave the supported accommodation estate. Clearly, if they have had a positive decision, they are entitled to find work or to universal credit. If they have a housing problem, obviously they are entitled to all the support that any of our constituents would be entitled to in the ordinary course of events. Clearly, they cannot continue to be supported in asylum accommodation indefinitely as they are essentially members of society like the rest of us who live their lives, just like all of us and our constituents do.

In the event they get a negative decision, the expectation is that they return—