Asylum Decisions (Support for Refugees)

Kate Green Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered support for refugees after receiving an asylum decision.

The asylum process is anxiety-inducing and arduous, but for many the intense relief of being granted refugee status by the UK Government is only momentary. For new refugees—people who, let us remember, have escaped conflict and persecution—that is often just the beginning of another nightmare. That is caused by the so-called move-on period—the period after which the support they have been receiving from the Home Office will be terminated—which causes unnecessary problems and barriers to integration. I aim to lay out how those could be solved.

I thank Seb Klier at the Refugee Council and Jon Featonby at the British Red Cross for their regular detailed briefings and for nudging me regularly to table questions and seek debates such as this one. I pay tribute to them individually, and to the many individuals and community organisations in my constituency who do so much to welcome refugees and asylum seekers, to solve some of the problems I will explore, and to remove barriers.

Every week, the Red Cross in Bristol works with at least one new destitute refugee. Let us remember that “refugee” means a person who has received their status. I thank the Red Cross for that, but why is that happening? First, the move-on period is 28 days. In that time, a refugee must leave Home Office accommodation, move from asylum support to benefits or a job, obtain a national insurance number in order to do so, open a bank account, receive a biometric residence permit and find somewhere to live. I am in a good job, but I have to say that I would struggle with that. I think most of us would struggle.

To compound all that, refugees are often already traumatised and sometimes—although not always—struggle with English. Some are very isolated, and some are mentally unwell, either as the result of the initial trauma or, often, because of the complex and prolonged asylum process, during which they have not been able to work and have had little access to English classes. Often, they will have been confined by extreme poverty, living off just £37.75 per week. Then, suddenly, in the words of a refugee supported by Bristol Refugee Rights in my constituency,

“it is compulsory today to do everything that was forbidden yesterday”.

Back in 2014, the Red Cross became increasingly concerned about the number of destitute and new refugees requiring emergency care, partly as a result of that problem. It recommended extending the 28-day move-on period; we have been warned about this for many years. In 2017, I and colleagues in the Chamber launched the “Refugees welcome?” report, which was produced by the all-party parliamentary group on refugees following our inquiry the previous year. Among our many findings was a recommendation that the move-on period should be extended to 56 days. Thankfully, the Government took up some of our recommendations—I am grateful to them for that—but, unfortunately, not that one.

The same year, the Refugee Council published its report “Refugees without refuge”. None of the 54 respondents to its survey had secured accommodation within the 28-day move-on period. In 2018, the British Red Cross published its report “Still an ordeal”. The 26 refugees it surveyed had been left without food and shelter after receiving their status. There is not just an unacceptable high risk of extreme poverty; the move-on period creates inevitable destitution.

Just last month, Women for Refugee Women found that women left destitute are vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. That is a further consequence of the move-on period. A third of the women interviewed were forced to stay in unwanted and abusive relationships. I thank Women for Refugee Women for its extraordinary hard work, but I am saddened by its findings.

Refugees, refugee organisations, local authorities, health organisations and us MPs—including Government Members—all know that the move-on period is failing to support refugees. My primary request is for the Minister to ask his colleagues to extend it from 28 to 56 days.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate and on the exceptional work she does in Parliament for refugees and asylum seekers. She is right to highlight the need for an extended move-on period, but does she not agree that the circumstances she describes show that we need a cross-Government approach, involving not just the Home Office but the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Education and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government? They must all come together to meet the needs of this vulnerable group.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. She, too, does an enormous amount on refugee policy, as do many colleagues in the Chamber. She is absolutely right that we need a cross-departmental approach. Funnily enough, that was recommended in our report three years ago. Actually, a former Tory MP—I cannot remember his name, but it will come to me—recommended to his Government not only that there should be a cross-departmental approach but that there should be a Minister for refugees to help co-ordinate it.

The Home Office recently took some steps to provide more support for refugees. I welcome that, but their benefit is limited without a longer move-on period. The London School of Economics and the British Red Cross found that extending it to 56 days could save up to £7 million of taxpayers’ money each year. Of course, the consequences of destitution are extra costs to the public purse due to homelessness and impacts on health and employability.

What is the justification for 56 days? First, since refugees mostly are not allowed to work while waiting for an asylum decision, most of them will need, at least initially, to apply for universal credit. There is the first problem: clearly, the inbuilt 35-day minimum wait before the first day of universal credit is incompatible, by seven crucial days, with the current move-on period after someone’s asylum is over and they are granted refugee status. As I said, I have a reasonably good job and I may be able to manage for seven days, but it would be a struggle. People are suddenly put in that position, with no money, perhaps no relatives to turn to—whereas I would have that—and probably no one else to call on. Those seven crucial days can be seven days without food.

In some instances, the delay in receiving benefits may be much longer. Mariam from Women for Refugee Women gave me permission to quote her. She said:

“The asylum support stopped in January, but my benefits didn’t start for nine months. I had no money, I was lucky to have a solicitor who gave me some cash. I also relied on charities for food. Being destitute after getting asylum isn’t something I had expected.”

I know that my colleagues in the Chamber have come across that too. A cash grant—just once, upon receipt of status—would help so much. That is something else I would like the Minister to consider. Charities such as Aid Box Convoy in my constituency do wonderful work finding things such as cookers, clothes, bedding and nappies—we probably all have charities like that in our constituencies—but one small cash grant could make such a difference.

A 56-day move-on period would also align with the time local authorities are given to work with house- holds at risk of homelessness under the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017. That is another example of the cross-departmental work that my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) called for. The Government could also encourage the establishment of a private rented sector scheme for refugees, to recognise not just the general problems that most people might face when suddenly plunged into the private rented sector, but the specific barriers faced by refugees.

Those changes might give new refugees the ability to move on rather than, as one refugee in Bristol described it to me, running from “pillar to post”. The complications of the system are compounded by a lack of Government funding and organisational capacity. Support agencies are often open only part time, and advice agencies are often full. During such a critical time, losing a week waiting to speak to the right person could make all the difference between someone being destitute and not.

That is the situation if there are minimal complications. If there is an error in someone’s biometric residence permit, which is their formal identification—even if there is an incorrect spelling, which happens—their 28 days are not automatically restarted. That is another really simple and, I would argue, cost-free change that the Minister could agree to: if a mistake is made by a Government agency, the refugee should not have to pay the price, and the 28 days should be automatically restarted.

As an example, K is a new refugee in Bristol. She fled both sectarian violence and domestic violence with her 15-year-old child. She was granted status—she is here legally—on 6 September 2019, but she contacted the Red Cross in Bristol shortly afterwards as there was a spelling mistake on her biometric residence permit. She failed to receive her updated permit by 7 October and she was at risk of homelessness. At that point, she met the homelessness prevention team at Bristol City Council, but without identification she was unable to open a bank account. The earliest she could receive an advance universal credit payment, intended to cope with such gaps, was 30 October, 54 days after receiving her refugee status. Hon. Members can see where I am going with this: 56 days would have meant she was not in destitution or at risk of destitution. Between 16 and 30 October, K and her child were destitute and, although they received support from the Red Cross, it could have been so easily avoided.

We must also change the administrative barriers that delay new refugees from moving on. Recently, another constituent and his family were granted further leave to remain. Their 28 days began and they tried to apply for local authority housing. Unfortunately, they were not sent an eviction notice from their asylum accommodation, which must be done in the form of a letter, and without that letter they could not apply for housing. My caseworkers Michelle and Sheila, whom I thank from the bottom of my heart—what they do is extraordinary, and I am sure all hon. Members present speak highly of the work that caseworkers do in our name—did all they could to speed up the process, but even so the family received the letter with just eight days to go. Their ability to live had rested on those bureaucratic nightmares. That does not do us proud. As a country we should be proud, and we have a right to be proud, of our tradition in welcoming refugees. I know Government Ministers agree. We have that right to be proud, so why let those bureaucratic nightmares creep in when they are fixable?

By comparison, resettlement schemes are a measure that the Government and everyone else should be proud of. The vulnerable persons resettlement scheme offers a fantastic model and is on target to successfully resettle 20,000 Syrian refugees. I recently met Anne James, the commissioning manager on the Syrian resettlement programme at Bristol City Council, who spoke highly of the scheme and her interaction with Government. I was really impressed by the operation and support of the initiative. For resettled refugees under such schemes, the dedicated caseworker, who supports their needs, is a lifeline. We should look to that process as a best-practice approach.

As the APPG pointed out in its report three years ago—and, to be fair, as the sector pointed out years before—the gulf between our asylum process and the resettlement process makes for a two-tier system. There are asylum seekers who are granted refugee status and are here legally, and there are those who come via the resettlement route whose status is already granted, but the route a refugee takes does not make them more or less deserving of support. Rather than making them feel welcome, the asylum process leaves new refugees fighting to overcome what feel like impossible barriers. Those barriers could be removed, and the resettlement scheme shows us how we could do that.

There are other fantastic models open for adoption by the Home Office and the Government more widely. Colleagues could talk at length about the community sponsorship scheme, the city of sanctuary approach and other community and local initiatives that provide wonderful and welcome examples of how we can do this really well. My constituents want to welcome refugees who have a right to be here, and I am sure the Minister’s do, too. I am sure most of us also want to prevent, as far as possible, situations in which desperate people feel that they have to take dangerous journeys because they have no alternative, having been cramped in a refugee camp among millions of people in countries such as Lebanon, Greece or Turkey. They feel absolutely desperate, so it is no wonder that some make dangerous journeys to countries that they feel might welcome them. We should be proud that we are seen as a welcoming country, but we should make every effort to allow more of those safe and legal routes offered by resettlement.

As I draw my remarks to a close, I have a couple more requests of the Minister. The Government could change by regulation, and very quickly, the right for asylum seekers to work. At the moment, it is limited. After six months of applying for refugee status, some can apply for employment in certain categories, which unless I am very much mistaken still includes that of ballet dancer. To my not very certain knowledge, there are not many people setting out from Syria saying, “I want to be a ballet dancer.” These people have got skills and want to work from the moment they get status, but if they face prolonged delays in the asylum process, that weakens their skills.

Ministers have also talked to me about wanting people to be able to return home when conditions are safe. We could talk about refoulement, preventing further traumatisation and the damage of sending people home when it is not safe, but, if it is safe for people to return to their country of origin, we want them to have kept up their skills, not lost them through prolonged periods of unemployment. Alternatively, the Home Office could meet its own service standard of six months, and do so properly, efficiently, fairly and transparently. That would help. The Government could also establish the scheme I mentioned on private renting. They could provide cash grants and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston, there could be co-ordination between Departments.

The moment someone receives their refugee status should be one of celebration. It should be a time when refugees feel able to move on, if possible, from the horrors they have left and the difficulties they have had to face. Instead, all too often, the contradictions of Government policy and the cuts to various services—I have not even mentioned cuts to English language services—leave refugees facing new problems such as homelessness and destitution, and, as Women for Refugee Women has said, vulnerable to harms such as exploitation and abuse. We are and should always remain proud of being a welcoming country to people fleeing conflict, but we have a choice about how we treat people. We can choose to treat them with dignity or to put them at risk of destitution. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

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[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is a great honour to serve under your guidance, Sir David. I pay tribute to all those who have spoken so far in the debate, and in particular to the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire), who has led the debate so very well, and not only today.

It is important that we focus on that move-on period for migrants, because it is more than just an administrative wrinkle; it is a deep injustice. I am sure the Minister is now fully aware of that. It has a colossal impact on the lives of incredibly vulnerable people, such as those we have already heard about this afternoon. As asylum seekers arrive in Britain, often after long and harrowing journeys just to get here in the first place, they face a battle to gain refugee status, overcoming language barriers and confusing paperwork, and persevering through any delays and mishaps along the way.

Throughout all that, of course, they are denied the opportunity to work. That is not the principal purpose of this debate, but I would love the Minister to take seriously the point that it is not just morally wrong to deny those seeking asylum the right to work, but really foolish. To give people the right to work while they are seeking asylum is to give them the ability to integrate into the community, to improve their language skills, to provide for themselves and their families, and to be in a far better place to contribute fully once their claim is accepted.

At the moment, as the Minister knows, a tiny minority of those with very specialist skills—they pretty much have to be a brain surgeon—have the right to exercise their skills in this country. Why should not people who are seeking asylum have the right to earn, to work and to support themselves?

[Kate Green]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is no evidence that those countries that offer the right to work to asylum seekers suffer from some perceived pull factor? People flee their home country because of danger and persecution; they do not flee their home country because they think they will get a better job when they are coming into a hostile asylum system. There is no evidence at all that those countries that allow a right to work receive flows of asylum seekers on a scale that other countries do not.

[Tim Farron]

Absolutely spot on; I am grateful for that intervention, and I hope that the Minister will take the time just to check with his civil servants that that is absolutely true. There is no pull factor associated with those countries. The majority of civilised countries do exactly what we are asking for and allow people to work while they are seeking asylum. The issue we are talking about is the push factor, not the pull factor. Why do people leave in the first place?

Focusing on the purpose of this debate, we see that a successful verdict is given to many of those who seek asylum. As has already been said, they may have received formal refugee status, but the relief and celebration are cut short as they realise that their newly achieved status is actually a kind of 28-day ultimatum: 28 days until their asylum support is stopped, just 28 days of accommodation and 28 days of a weekly allowance. In a vast number of cases, this is 28 days’ countdown to destitution. Many of those whom we see sleeping on the streets of this city are people for whom that 28-day period has expired.

Imagine, Sir David, being given 28 days to find accommodation in a foreign country to which you have fled to escape war or persecution, not forgetting that you have not been allowed to work until this point, so therefore you also need to find a job during that time—either that, or apply for universal credit. Universal credit’s rules have made it almost inevitable that refugees will be left without support; an automatic 35-day wait to receive their first payment is completely incompatible with the 28 days that refugees have to access it. Then, of course, there will be the complexities of the paperwork and documentation required to gain access to universal credit in the first place.

The safeguards in the universal credit system to ensure that claimants are not left without support are often not accessed by refugees. Either they are unaware that they are eligible, or they do not even have a bank account to receive the support. Under the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, local authorities are given a 56-day period to work with households at risk of homelessness. For refugees to receive support for only a pitiful 28 days is utterly ludicrous; it is almost designed to take desperate people, who ran to us for sanctuary and safety, and plunge them into bewildered misery as they are forced on charity or, increasingly, on to the streets.

I am pretty sure we all agree that human beings deserve to be treated with dignity. We as a society, as a Government, as a country, have already accepted that people in such situations deserve protection under the refugee convention, yet the current system is a far cry from recognising that in practice.

Refugees are forced to sleep rough, work illegally or face appalling exploitation in order to meet their basic needs while jumping through bureaucratic hoops to access money, accommodation, employment, education and so on. Will the Minister commit to providing refugees in the UK with the respect and dignity they deserve from day one of being recognised as a refugee, and to giving them what they need to build their lives in a new place and flourish in and contribute to our society?

In many ways the solution is simple: extend the move-on period to at least 56 days, which would cover the break in support and give refugees the best chance of establishing a stable and productive life here. Extending the move-on period to 56 days would have a financial benefit of between £4 million and £7 million each year for the taxpayer. Local authorities would save £2.1 million through the decreased use of temporary accommodation and up to £3.2 million through reduced rough sleeping. Alongside that, we must remove the administrative barriers that newly recognised refugees face. They need to be able to open bank accounts and receive the right documentation, and they need support to help them navigate the move-on period, apply for universal credit and obtain secure accommodation.

I recognise that there are complexities around which Department the matter falls under, but that is no excuse. While more and more families find themselves destitute and desperate, unable to meet even their basic needs, we need decisive action to end the tragedy of refugee destitution. Will the Treasury and the Government take steps today to end the departmental deadlock and extend the 28-day waiting period to 56 days? That would reduce benefit claims and increase the productivity of refugees in this country. More importantly, it would enable them to live in safety and dignity. It will save them from further pain and trauma on top of all that they have experienced already. With a simple change in policy, we can prevent destitution and save money. It is blindingly, obviously, the right thing to do. Will the Government do it?

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[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.

[Kate Green]

I understand that the MHCLG funding for community-based language provision is due to come to an end and there is currently no news on that funding being renewed, despite our understanding a couple of years ago that the Government intended to renew it. If the Minister can do anything about that with his colleagues in that Department to raise the issue, we would all appreciate it.

[Chris Philp]

I will raise the issue with MHCLG colleagues and seek assurances that this funding line, which has happened in the past, will continue.