Florence Eshalomi
Main Page: Florence Eshalomi (Labour (Co-op) - Vauxhall and Camberwell Green)Department Debates - View all Florence Eshalomi's debates with the Home Office
(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I pay tribute to my 2019 colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra), for calling for this important debate and bringing the matter to the Government’s attention.
Our asylum system is in disarray. A recent report by the Refugee Council found that more 50,000 people had waited for more than six months for an initial decision on their applications, the highest number for a decade. In the past 10 years, the number of people waiting for more than a year for an initial decision has increased almost tenfold.
Hon Members have noted the fact that most asylum seekers are not allowed to work and that many are denied the assistance and support to which they are entitled. In its findings, Refugee Action discovered that fewer than half of the initial applications for emergency assistance were granted, although 92% of applications were upheld when challenging the initial decision, that initial refusal. The barriers to people accessing support and their being wrongly denied assistance mean that people are further pushed into poverty and destitution. The delays have an immense impact on the mental health and wellbeing of asylum applicants.
My hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker), for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) and for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) have highlighted cases in their constituencies. I, too, will talk about two of my constituents, because these are real people we are talking about—they are not just stats from the Home Office figures.
The first is a Yemeni national, who contacted me while he was in the immigration centre waiting to be deported. He told me that he had been the victim of trafficking to the UK. I contacted the Home Office to ask for his deportation to be halted. Since then, the Home Office has confirmed that my constituent is a victim of trafficking and it has halted the deportation. That is good news for my constituent, but that was more than a year ago. Since entering the UK in June 2020, he has still not been invited for that initial interview.
My second case is that of an Eritrean national, who entered the UK in January 2020. Since then, he has been moved by the Home Office to four different hotels while waiting for an initial interview. When he was staying in one of the hotels, he and his friend were the victims of a suspected hate crime, an acid attack that led to his friend losing his vision at just 18 years old. Only yesterday, I received a response from the Home Office confirming that he is still waiting for that initial interview—18 months after he claimed asylum, and despite that horrific attack.
My constituents’ experiences speak for themselves, without me needing to state the obvious or to impress on the Minister just how shameful this is: that is how we treat asylum seekers when they come here for safety and shelter. The Minister must not only offer warm words of reassurance today; he must give us concrete guarantees that that disgraceful situation will be corrected immediately.