Asylum Decisions (Support for Refugees)

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) for setting the scene. I always enjoy the debates she secures, because she is so passionate and her voice is always so strong as well. She says the right things and it is a pleasure to be involved in any of her debates. She speaks with knowledge, passion and interest, as have other speakers.

I am concerned about asylum decisions. This is something we need to alter. We want the Minister to give us the response we wish to hear. We look forward to that with trepidation. We all know that whenever we move house, it takes time to get our affairs in order. Most people take out a standardised three-month mail re-route with the post office, on the understanding that things do not always go as smoothly as we would like. The situation for refugees is more difficult.

I have been very vocal in my opposition to the five-week delay in universal credit, which in reality is a two-month gap for many people to get all the information they need for the official documentation. To expect someone to apply for their social security number, which is a necessity for universal credit, and to then complete the process within the 28 days that the asylum payment continues is absurd. It is simply not feasible or fundamentally achievable. Indeed, I would be very interested to hear how many people have successfully managed to navigate the process within 28 days. I frequently deal with the benefits and universal credit system, and in my opinion the number is very few. I do not want to put the Minister on the spot, but it would be good to hear what the numbers are: I suspect they are small, if there are any such people at all. My constituents find it difficult to get their tenancies, sick lines, past earnings, bank statements, identification documents and child support payments in order, and their first language is English—never mind starting all that from scratch in a second language. The difficulties are real. They are enormous for people who must negotiate those things in an unfamiliar language. If we believe that people are in need of asylum, I believe that we accept that it is our responsibility to provide it. That does not mean abandoning them to a system that it is difficult for us, never mind them, to understand. It would seem logical to offer every bit of support we can.

An example of a slightly different situation, but which none the less shows how the system works, involves a lady who was born here and moved to Canada and raised her children there. She came home in her 70s after her husband died, to be with family and friends who would give her support. We had to fight to get any bank to give her a bank account, despite the fact that she was the recipient of a British pension and had a national insurance number. It took us weeks, if not months, to get her a bank account, and I personally vouched for her on the strength of her family connections, as they lived in Newtownards and I knew them. It was a necessity to get the bank account for universal credit payments to be made. That example involved a British citizen who ticked all the boxes. Yet she had real difficulty in getting to the end of her trials and tribulations.

I am thankful to the many charities that do all they can to help families who need help. My office, like, I suspect, other MPs’ offices, is a referral point for the food bank, which has been the difference between a full and empty belly for refugees in my constituency. That is how drastic it is. It is as serious as that when people have to find their way through the system. Crisis has said that in 2016-17, 478 people, or 7% of new clients approaching it for help that year, were having difficulty with transition from the asylum payment. We should remember that those were only the people who contacted that charity. The figure should probably be multiplied by a large number, if people who went to other charities were included. Those were people who were forced to flee their homes and support systems and who landed in the country knowing no one and often not having a good grasp of the language. We simply need to do better for them and we look to the Minister to give us the answers that our constituents, and the refugees, need to hear.

We have been fortunate in my constituency to have five Syrian refugee families who came to our area. I met them as their MP, as is my duty, although I would do so irrespective of whether I was the MP and help in any way I could. I will tell you the truth, Sir David, and give you a real example. I do not mean any disrespect to anyone and am not trying to point the finger at anyone, but it was the local church groups, which got together—and particularly the Link group that brought them together—that helped the Housing Executive to get them some rental accommodation. The church groups, and that one in particular, got clothes for them and their children, and food as well as accommodation. We use the Thriving Life church for the food bank. Local church groups also got the furniture to furnish their homes for them. They had nothing. Those people come with nothing and start from a base that none of us ever starts from. We are fortunate to have had years of work, and family connections, but they had none.

The menfolk—they were the earners when they were in Syria—were accomplished tradesmen. They could have done carpentry or electrical work. Those were their trades. They just needed to start to do that. Another massive problem was language and having someone to interact with them. The church groups, again, did something about that. Another problem was education for the children. Fortunately the children were of an age at which they had some grasp of English, and some were fairly fluent. We got them into local schools. I am sorry if I am rambling on a wee bit, but those things happened not because of Government and the universal credit system, but because local people took the initiative. It was really important.

We need to extend support to allow refugees peace of mind while they go through the quagmire of universal credit or getting a job. Many jobs pay monthly in arrears, which puts them in the same position. They are behind the eight ball—even worse than anyone else, it seems. Charities and church groups are wonderful but we need to send the right message and either resolve the universal credit timing, which I have been pushing for since its inception, or acknowledge the failure in our system and not allow vulnerable people to be the ones who suffer. I support the extension of payment for refugees to 56 days and ask the Minister to consider that. I say to him gently and sincerely that we are here because we all feel the same on behalf of refugees.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the second time in two days, Sir David. No doubt there will be many future occasions as well.

I join other hon. Members in congratulating the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) on securing today’s debate and opening it with such a thoughtful but also passionate speech. She has for a long time been a powerful and persuasive campaigner and advocate on these issues. The Government might not always agree completely with everything that she says, but on many occasions we do, and I am grateful to her for raising these issues in Parliament and for doing that in such a well considered and thoughtful manner. Cases are always much more persuasive when presented in the way that she has demonstrated today, and I am grateful to her for raising this important subject in the way she has.

As the spokesman for the Scottish National party, the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald), said, I am extremely new in this role. I was appointed to the Home Office, in addition to the Ministry of Justice, only two or three weeks ago, so I am getting rapidly up to speed with these issues, and it has been very useful to hear everything that hon. Members have said today. However, I am a Member of Parliament who represents Croydon, and many hon. Members will know that one of the Home Office’s major centres for handling asylum applications is Lunar House in the London Borough of Croydon. In fact, Croydon has, along with Kent, I think, the highest number of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. From my own constituency casework, therefore, I am very familiar with many of the issues that have been raised about asylum in general and UASCs in particular. Croydon was also the first borough to roll out universal credit fully, so I have had a lot of experience as a constituency Member of Parliament of that as well.

Let me talk a bit about asylum in general, before turning to some of the specific points raised today. Several hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Bristol West, said that this country has a proud and long history of welcoming refugees to these shores. In particular, when the Syrian crisis occurred four or five years ago, we set up the vulnerable persons resettlement scheme, which I think has worked extremely well. We set an ambition, an aim, a target of resettling 20,000 people, mostly from Syria or from camps on the borders of Syria, directly in the UK, and we are, I think, extremely close to reaching the 20,000 level; I expect we will reach it in a matter of a few weeks. That scheme designed to help the most vulnerable people imaginable—people who have suffered terrible atrocities in Syria—has worked very effectively.

In relation to asylum more generally, there were 34,000 claims for asylum last year. The number has been going up for the last few years. Last year we made just under 20,000—19,480—grants of asylum, humanitarian protection or other forms of long-term leave. More than half were for asylum. I think that 20,000 per year is a number that we can point to with pride as a country that wants to look after people who are fleeing persecution. The figure of 34,000—the number of people who claimed asylum last year—is not the highest in Europe, but is one of the highest in Europe; it is certainly in the top four numbers in Europe. The fact that people are coming here in such large numbers, often travelling first through other safe European countries such as France, Germany and Italy, shows quite a high level of confidence among those who choose to come here. That is not to be complacent or to dismiss any of the points raised, which I will come to, but in itself it does show that people seeking refugee status recognise that the UK is somewhere that takes its obligations very seriously indeed. That is why, as I said, they often travel through safe European countries to come here. Clearly, under the Dublin convention, people are supposed to claim asylum in the first safe country that they reach.

In relation to financial support for the asylum-seeking community, the cost of supporting asylum seekers is just under £1 billion—it is about £800 million—a year, and approximately 50,000 people are being supported, so I feel that from a financial perspective, quite a lot is being done to support this vulnerable community. They are vulnerable in the ways that hon. Members very eloquently described.

I hope that those remarks have set the scene for the United Kingdom’s very significant and profound commitment to supporting refugees. I shall turn now to the specific question about the 28 days. I would like to talk a bit about some of the things that we are doing to mitigate the impacts that have been described today and then discuss the 28 days versus 56 days.

I think that when my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) was Immigration Minister, there was a debate on this topic in which some of these issues were aired. Since then, quite a few practical steps have been taken to try to make things as easy as possible for refugees in the 28-day period following the grant of their status. Let me mention just a couple. First, the 28-day period is not necessarily triggered by the grant of status; it is started only when the biometric residence permit is issued. That is the document needed to establish the status and enable people to apply for benefits and so on without getting unduly delayed by bureaucratic error. I am told that if administrative errors occur, that resets the 28-day period. If hon. Members have encountered any individual cases in which administrative errors that are not the fault of the refugee have occurred and a reset has not happened, I encourage them to write to me with the particulars so that I can look into them. I would be very happy indeed to do that.

We also ensure that the individual’s national insurance number is on the permit, because experience suggests that one of the things that just generally speeds things up is the NI number being clearly displayed in a place where it is easy for people to see.

The question of access to bank accounts was raised by the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) and others, and it is clearly essential that refugees have bank accounts, because pretty much everything these days—getting work and everything else—requires a bank account. A lot of work has been done, and is under way as we speak, with banks to speed that up, make things easier and remove some of the barriers that exist, but I undertake to write to my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, who is the City Minister and responsible for financial service regulation, to get an update on where we are with ensuring that bank accounts are available to refugees, who are obviously completely entitled to live here and to work, as we all do, and make sure that that is functioning as it should. I will follow up that specific point.

[Jim Shannon]

I was also one of those who mentioned bank accounts. I am very keen to know that what the Minister is asking for means that there will be feedback for all of us who are here and all the regions of the United Kingdom, because we need to have that provision in Northern Ireland as well.

[Chris Philp]

I will write to the hon. Member for Bristol West about that point on bank accounts. She can disseminate that as she sees fit to other hon. Members who take an interest and I will copy it to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), since he specifically raised that point.

The hon. Member for Strangford and others raised the important issue of English language lessons. As the Scottish National party spokesman said, properly integrating people, particularly into the workforce, is critical. We spoke about universal credit, which I will come on to address. That is clearly an important way of supporting people. Ultimately, for those granted refugee status, as for anyone else, the way out of poverty is through work rather than benefits. Being unable to speak English makes it very difficult to get into the workforce.

English language support is important. Investment in it is about £100 million per year through the adult education budget, which gives the money to various colleges and learning providers. They then decide how to meet the specific needs of their local communities. We have augmented that with an extra £10 million to support refugees who have come through the vulnerable persons resettlement scheme, to ensure that they can access additional language training. On top of that, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is investing a further £4.5 million per year to support community-based language provision.

I completely accept the need for English language training. I would rather that we taught people to speak English than endlessly have to translate. Helping people to speak English is the best solution. I will keep that under review. If there is evidence that the level of provision is not adequate, I will happily follow up further.