Asylum Accommodation: Barry House, East Dulwich

Kevin Foster Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) on securing the debate. The United Kingdom has a long and proud history of helping the world’s most vulnerable and desperate people to seek safety and sanctuary here, as we have seen most recently through the schemes we launched in response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, with over 155,000 visas now having been issued to those arriving under those schemes.

We recognise we have a duty to asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute. As part of that, we provide support and accommodation until an individual’s claim is fully determined. Local authorities play a very important role in providing that support, including the London Borough of Southwark. My officials, and those at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, therefore work closely with local authority partners on this and a range of topics, and we are genuinely grateful for their support—in the case of Southwark over many years, including as a dispersal area.

I have previously said to the House that our asylum system is broken. That is felt most keenly in the accommodation space. The aftermath of the pandemic, combined with the unprecedented and unacceptable rise in dangerous small boat crossings, has increased demand for support. That has had a cumulative impact on the overall asylum estate. One critical impact is on the increased requirement for dispersal accommodation. We are procuring dispersal accommodation as quickly as possible, but we accept that some people are remaining in initial accommodation, such as Barry House, for a longer period than we would wish or would have expected. We have also, as was touched on, had to procure hotels. Published data as of March 2022 shows an increase in demand for asylum support of about 50% since the start of the pandemic, with accommodation now required for more than 80,000 asylum seekers while their claims are considered. That is unacceptable. For the individuals concerned it is not the best outcome, for taxpayers it is not the best outcome, and it is not the best outcome for local communities either. That is why we are committed to fixing it.

First, I will highlight the move to full dispersal. I announced in April that the Home Office would immediately move to a nationwide full dispersal model, so that asylum pressures are more equally spread across all local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales, as the hon. Lady might be aware. A large number of local authorities, unlike hers, were not participating in providing dispersal accommodation, limiting our options. I used to mention the oft-quoted figure that 31 out of 32 local authority areas in Scotland were not participating, so we are moving to all local authorities—all areas—being part of the system.

We have begun procuring asylum accommodation in co-operation with local authorities in areas that have not participated before. That will help us to move from contingency accommodation, such as hotels, to less expensive but, crucially, more suitable accommodation, particularly for families. This will also see our initial accommodation estate return to being the short-stay solution that it was always designed to be, rather than being used for longer-term accommodation, to which the hon. Lady referred. We do not want that, which is why we are moving to implement full dispersal.

To deliver the new change, we are working in partnership with local authorities to develop regional plans. Between 9 May and 1 July, we held an informal consultation with local authorities and other interested parties to help to shape the design of a reformed asylum dispersal system that is fair, sustainable, innovative and responsive to changing demands and needs, and which, crucially, covers all immigration demands in a local authority area. The focus today is on asylum accommodation but we are conscious—local authorities make this point—that such things as accommodation for Afghans arriving under the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme, or who had arrived under Op Pitting, resettlement routes and asylum have traditionally been dealt with separately, and it makes sense to bring them together, particularly in areas such as Southwark, which has regularly played its part following requests that we have made.

Full dispersal will provide local authorities with more control and autonomy at a regional level by asking them to collectively agree an approach to dispersal in their region. We are in the process of analysing the evidence gathered through the informal consultation and I look forward to working with local authorities in the coming months following their contribution to this process. We are keen to work with them to agree how this will work and how we fairly allocate the level of accommodation that there should be in local communities, while being clear that full dispersal means that there is not an option for a local authority to walk out of the door and decide not to take part. To be fair, London authorities have worked together in this area for many years and we want to try to move that model to the rest of the United Kingdom.

Part of this is about funding, which the hon. Lady touched on. The full dispersal system will be funded by a model designed to recognise the contribution of areas that have had a long-standing track record of supporting this work, while encouraging the provision of new dispersal accommodation in both new and existing areas where dispersal is applied. Each local authority in England, Scotland and Wales that was accommodating asylum seekers under dispersal on 27 March this year will receive a £250 one-off payment per asylum seeker accommodated in their local area. To date, we have paid 101 local authorities about £14 million to implement and/or bolster services in new and existing areas.

Encouraging the use of new accommodation is part of that. Funding will be available up to 31 March next year to provide £3,500 to the local council for each new dispersal bed space occupied in new and existing dispersal areas, further alleviating pressures on the system. That funding is not ringfenced, which will allow flexibility in its use, recognising the different priorities that local communities may have about how to spend it.

To implement the full dispersal model, we are undertaking a new burdens assessment as part of the informal consultation process. That will provide an opportunity to better understand the costs associated with asylum dispersal and engage with the local government sector. I hope that gives the hon. Lady reassurance that we are looking to move away from a dependency on contingency accommodation.

Despite the challenges, we have consistently met our statutory obligations towards destitute asylum seekers. We expect clear standards from our service providers and monitor them closely to ensure that they meet those standards. When essential living needs are not provided for in hotels, a cash allowance is provided. Extra assistance is provided for those who can show that they have exceptional needs. Additional support is also available for special cases; for example, further top-ups are available for families with pregnant mothers or very young children.

All asylum seekers have access, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to the advice, issue reporting and eligibility service provided by Migrant Help, where they can raise any concerns regarding accommodation or support services and get information about how to obtain further support.

Turning to the specific subject of the debate, I thank the hon. Lady for highlighting the issues with the Barry House site, as she did in late 2018 during a Westminster Hall debate. There have been important developments since that debate. In September 2019, the Home Office started working with our contractor, Clearsprings Ready Homes, in London and the south. That has enabled significant improvements to service delivery, accommodation provision and collaboration with local partners.

We believe that Barry House has been improved and offers a good standard of accommodation and support. It has kitchen facilities on each floor, a spacious dining room, communal spaces, and dedicated areas of privacy for breastfeeding mothers and multi-faith worship. Bedrooms also offer wet rooms and wheelchair access throughout. I heard the concerns that the hon. Lady raised, and we will of course look into them. I am happy to meet her separately, with the Home Office team, to go through them in a little more detail, particularly if there are points about individual cases that she did not want to share in a public forum. We take our responsibilities in this area seriously.

I hope the hon. Lady will have noted that some of the times of stay are not times that we are looking to be the standard but reflect the pressures in the system. Those pressures are motivating our move to things such as full dispersal. We will continue to have a close and collaborative relationship between Home Office officials and senior officials in Southwark. Again, we are grateful for the local council’s support.

On some of the wider points that were raised, we are recruiting more asylum decision makers. Traditionally, there have been about 400 to 500. We are rapidly approaching having 1,000 in post—obviously, there is a process of training and mentoring to go through—and we will look to go beyond that, because we are conscious that we need to get the number of people waiting down. As I have said at the Home Affairs Committee, too many people are waiting too long for a decision. That is not in their interests, it is not in the interests of the immigration system and, ultimately, it is not in the taxpayer’s interests. That is why we are bringing in more people and more resources, and looking at how we can make our teams more productive, learning from other European systems that are able to process decisions more quickly, partly through investment in digital transformation.

Let me conclude by expressing my gratitude to the hon. Lady for raising this important issue. I am grateful to all in her community for the support that they provide to those who are accommodated among them while waiting for a decision on their asylum claim. We are reforming the asylum system to make it fairer and more effective. I suspect that the hon. Lady and I disagree about some of the moves we are making to do that, but there is no doubt that an overhaul is needed, not least to put an end to some of the lengthy delays people face while waiting for determination of their asylum claim, and to reduce the time people spend in accommodation that was only designed for them to spend a short period in before moving on to dispersed accommodation. We are committed to making this happen, and we remain committed, as ever, to meeting our statutory duties to support those who would otherwise be destitute and delivering the decisions they require in a timely way.

Question put and agreed to.