Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Green of Deddington Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Thursday 3rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group and I ask the Minister to address in her response a couple of issues, particularly in relation to Amendments 57 and 61, about restricting the placing of vulnerable people in accommodation centres—military barracks. When a similar amendment to Amendment 57 was tabled in Committee in the other place, the Home Office Minister, Tom Pursglove, said it was

“unnecessary because there are no plans to place those with children in accommodation centres”.—[Official Report, Commons, Nationality and Borders Bill Committee, 21/10/21; col. 295.]

If the Home Office has no such plans, which is a welcome commitment, why will it not accept a statutory shield against placing at least children in those centres?

Wider than that, I am grateful to the British Red Cross, which has reminded us that there is a Home Office policy document, of which the latest update was in May 2021, called Allocation of Accommodation Policy. It has a section on “Asylum seekers considered unsuitable for Napier”, which starts with the statement:

“Women and dependent children are not suitable to be accommodated at Napier”,


before listing further cases, including potential survivors of modern slavery, people with a disability and those with complex health needs. The tablers of Amendment 57, which I support, say the list should be longer and should include those under Amendment 61. If the Home Office has these policy commitments, it is my contention that it ought to accept the amendments restricting the types of people who would be sent to these accommodation centres. I would be very pleased to hear the Minister agree and therefore accept at least Amendments 57 and 61.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, noble Lords will not be surprised if I strike a somewhat different note; none the less, it is a note that needs to be heard. I think we need to stand back before addressing this group of amendments. We cannot and should not assume that everyone who claims asylum in this country has a case and is a genuine asylum seeker. The Home Secretary said recently that of those crossing the channel, 70% were more likely to be, and were in fact, economic migrants rather than genuine refugees. A historical view, I think, gives a figure of something like 50% of asylum seekers whose cases were rejected after very careful legal procedure. So, I think we have to stand back and not simply assume that all applicants have two wings and a halo.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord but, according to the Refugee Council, which did a very careful analysis of those coming over on boats—and this was an analysis, not just throwing out statistics in the way the Home Secretary did, perhaps—the great majority would be expected to receive refugee status. So, yes, of course, there are always going to be some people who are not “genuine” asylum seekers, but surely the assumption should be that they are until proved otherwise, rather than that they are not until it is proved that they are. The noble Lord seems to be assuming that they are not genuine asylum seekers and there is no evidence to support that.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

I think we need to be careful not to make an assumption in either direction. I was quoting the Home Secretary in the expectation that she has information to back that up. Even without that, and the noble Baroness did not address this point, the historical record is that 50% over the last 10 years have had their cases refused. I leave it at that. My point is clear on that matter.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

Does my noble friend agree that it would be helpful to the Committee if, when the Minister comes to reply, she provides two specific facts? One is about the number of people, said to be 125,000, awaiting decisions on their asylum claim; and the other is the average length of time it is now taking to expedite those decisions. This returns to the point made by the right reverend Prelate earlier about the pressure that would be taken off accommodation if those matters were attended to in a much more efficient way.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

Yes, 125,000 is correct, and I think that many—most—are waiting for more than a year. But if I may continue with my point—which does not address that; what I am addressing is the way this discussion has gone—the issue of scale is an important one. I have some sympathy with the Home Office: it is having to deal with a very large problem that is extraordinarily difficult to deal with. It is clear that the situation in the channel is a shambles. It is also clear that it is going to get worse. The number who arrived last year was 30,000 just on the channel, with another 10,000 elsewhere. We could, this year, have something like 60,000 arriving and claiming asylum. That is a massive logistical task and we should have that well in mind in making recommendations to the Home Office.

It is clear that the system is already buckling under the strain. One major problem is, of course, accommodation. Provision of accommodation in four-star hotels does nobody any good: it does the Government no good, it does the cause of refugees no good and it should not be taking place. That, presumably, is why the Government are now legislating in connection with accommodation centres, but the response to that legislation is to propose eight amendments that, taken together, would make it unworkable, given the scale of applications that we can expect. For a start, if we limited it to 100 for each accommodation centre, we would have to build something like 100 centres. If we get to the higher end of what I have just been describing, it would be 200. We have to be realistic and recognise what the Home Office has to deal with. I have not always been its great friend, but I think it has a problem and we should be conscious of that.

To conclude, I advocate a rather different approach. I think we should set up accommodation centres, we should establish them and mark their boundaries, we should provide medical assistance and legal advice, but we should simply make it the case that if applicants leave that accommodation without permission, their application is refused.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Will the noble Lord give way?

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

No; it is very simple —too simple for the noble Baroness—but it would mean that we do not need huge amounts of security in order to keep people where we put them. I hope that Government will take powers to do something on those lines. I do not think what they are now proposing will work, and I think it would be even worse if some of the proposals we have heard today came into effect.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, I would not want this whole debate to turn on the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Green. All I would say is that his suggestion that people should be kept in a form of virtual detention and penalised if they happen to leave it is surely unacceptable. I am afraid that I do not accept the thrust of his arguments anyway. If he looks at the figures, he will also find that, although more people came across the Channel by boat in the last year or so, the numbers have not increased all that much, compared with those who came on the back of lorries before. The numbers have actually gone down a bit.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

That is correct. If the two are added together, it averages about 40,000 a year over the last eight or 10 years. The problem now is the publicity surrounding all this, which makes it more difficult. Also, these numbers could easily double, as the Home Office says, and then we are in a new situation, going back to the early 1960s when it ran completely out of control.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

I do not want to pursue the point, because it is diverting us from the particular amendments, which I support. I say at the outset that the Minister has the advantage that, having been able to look at the Joint Committee on Human Rights reports on this, she will know exactly the quotes and arguments that we are going to use. It will be no surprise to her at all. She knows exactly what we are on about. I am certainly speaking as a member of that committee.

Before that, perhaps I could pay tribute to the Kent Refugee Action Network. During the pandemic—at its height—when the issue of Napier barracks arose, it drew our attention to what was going on. I am sorry I could not go with the right reverend Prelate on his recent visit, but at the time of the pandemic, we were not able to go on visits and I am sure the Minister was not able to, either. She gave us a version of what was going on in the barracks which frankly was disproved by the local people on the ground, who told us that the conditions were bad, and that people with Covid were mixed up in dormitories with people who did not have Covid. I am afraid the Minister at that time appeared to be misinformed as to the situation there. All these issues were raised at the time. I cannot remember how long ago it was. We had quite a long earlier debate.

I do not want to go over the ground that other noble Lords have covered. The Joint Committee on Human Rights looked at this. We have some good quotes from Bail for Immigration Detainees and from Médecins Sans Frontières. I will not quote those, but I do want to quote paragraph 91 of the JCHR report:

“It is imperative that the Government learns from the poor treatment of asylum seekers housed in former military barracks. If accommodation centres are to be used to house those awaiting asylum decisions and appeals or awaiting removal from the UK the conditions must ensure that residents are free to come and go, treated with respect, provided with adequate access to healthcare and legal advice and not prevented from mixing with the rest of society”.


I will say one other thing. At the time this issue arose, the Home Secretary said that the barracks were used by the British Army and asked why we were complaining. That was wrong in a number of respects. First, it was years previously that the Army had used the barracks. Secondly, they were not mixing up people with Covid with other people. If the conditions were not adequate now, they were not adequate for the Army then—but to use that as an excuse, and say, “It’s good enough for refugees because the Army used it 10 or 15 years earlier” seems an unacceptable argument.

I am sorry the Home Office has been put in this position. I welcome what the Kent Refugee Action Network has been doing to support refugees in Kent generally, to support refugees in the barracks and to campaign on the same arguments that are characterised by these amendments.

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There is a problem with accommodation and housing generally in the UK. However, asylum seekers need to be accommodated in buildings that seek to avoid all the drawbacks that noble Lords have outlined and in accommodation centres that promote recovery from trauma, dignity of the individual and integration into the community—for the benefit of not just asylum seekers but society as a whole, of which most of those accommodated will eventually become members. The sort of accommodation we are talking about is along the lines described by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, in his amendment. As my noble friend Lady Hamwee put it to me, accommodation centres should promote the welfare of asylum seekers.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

The noble Lord mentioned that most applicants will become refugees. I have the Home Office figures here: 49% of the 450,000 asylum applications between 2004 and 2020 were withdrawn or rejected, including those that went to appeal. Those are the basic stats from the Home Office; they should surely underline the whole debate.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

I am very grateful for the historic information that the noble Lord has provided. My understanding is that, as the years have gone on, the number of successful appeals has increased and the number of first-time decisions to reject application from refugees has gone down. While I do not deny that those might be the overall numbers going back to 2004, in saying that most applicants for refugee status are successful, we are basing it on the last few years—the current trend rather than the historic numbers the noble Lord refers to.

I am reminded of heavy-handed policing of football supporters in the 1980s. I remember a football fan saying to me, “If you treat us like animals, we’ll behave like animals”. Warehousing asylum seekers may be a short-term gain, but it is likely to create long-term problems.

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

I too express my appreciation to my noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett for the determination and commitment she has shown in pursuing not only this but so many other key issues about which she rightly feels very strongly. I repeat what the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, said: this clause and these amendments are about asylum seekers. In the Bill—a government document—Clause 12 is titled “Accommodation for asylum-seekers etc”. We are talking about asylum seekers, not illegal immigration, although I accept that there are those who make no distinction between the two. The other point I make at this stage is about the quite interesting exchange between my noble friend Lord Dubs and the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington. I think there was rough agreement—if not I am sure I will stand corrected—that the kind of numbers coming over in the back of a lorry are very similar to those coming over in small boats across the channel.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

To get the timescale on this, I say that 10 years ago it was 40,000 asylum seekers a year. That is roughly the number now—30,000 on the channel and 10,000 by other means. The difference, as I mentioned, is the potential in the channel for the numbers to go up very fast and make it even more difficult for the Home Office and local government.

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

The potential is, of course, a matter of speculation. I note the point the noble Lord makes, but up to now there is agreement between him and my noble friend Lord Dubs that the numbers have been roughly the same.

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[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank Committee Members for their kind words and, more importantly, those who made strong contributions in support of these amendments. It is not appropriate to cover them all in detail, but what is important is that the case was made for decent accommodation for asylum seekers that promotes their welfare and is based on a recognition of their common humanity.

While to an extent it is true that, as the noble Lord, Lord Horam, said, I am not opposed to accommodation centres in principle, I am opposed to what I think is envisaged. I am sorry if I did not make that clear. It is one thing to have small, homely centres; it is another to have things based on military barracks or their equivalent.

I will refer to what two noble Lords said before turning to the Minister. First, the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, asked me a specific question about why 100 residents. To be honest, I do not know the answer. The British Red Cross suggested 100 and I have great respect for its work in this area, but the specific number is not important. What is important is that people at such a centre can feel that it is their home for a while. That point was made powerfully by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. There is a real danger that big centres—this is what HOPE not hate is afraid of—will attract the kind of hostility that residents of Napier have faced. The noble Lord made the point that it would be easier to accommodate families, but the Minister herself said that this is not the intention; these are not appropriate for families. I have not come up with an actual answer, but the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, also had the grace to acknowledge that his argument was based on anecdote that people might prefer to be in larger groups. But I have been using the evidence from both research and organisations working on the ground.

I also want to pick out what the right reverend Prelate said, partly because he made an important point at the outset about how, not in all but in many cases, we are talking about future citizens. He made a wonderful remark: he said that we should treat them as

“a gift to us rather than a problem”.

Too much of this debate has been based on the assumption that these people are problems. Please bear in mind what the right reverend Prelate said.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

Does the noble Baroness agree that there should be a distinction between those who have had their cases examined and are refugees and those whose cases have not yet been examined? That is all I am asking for.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

No, I am sorry; I do not, because they are all people. We should start by accepting their common humanity, and then we can see how people fare in the system. That is my working assumption and I think it is the right reverend Prelate’s too.

It was helpful that this debate was postponed, because it was originally supposed to have been while the right reverend Prelate was at Napier. In fact, I am supposed to be at Napier today with the APPG. I was struck by what he said and that there have been improvements. That is welcome and we should acknowledge it. However, he said that—I am paraphrasing—despite the improvements, he could not help getting the impression of a prison camp rather than a place of safety. We should be creating places of safety, not prison camps. That is my other working assumption.

I am very grateful to the Minister. She was on her feet responding for nearly an hour and I appreciate how she has really tried to address many of the points made. All noble Lords appreciate that. It is very difficult with so many amendments and so many questions. I am still very worried about children because, despite being pressed, the Minister said that there could be circumstances when children would be accommodated. My fear is that this would open the door, but she said that she would take this away and look at it. We will have to come back to lots of these aspects on Report, that one in particular. If the amendment about children’s education is unnecessary and there is no intention for these centres to provide education, I do not understand why the prior information notice included how they should be able to provide education facilities. I am not asking the Minister to respond now, but perhaps she could look at that.

Despite the Minister’s valiant attempts to answer them, a number of questions went unanswered. I will not push them now, but perhaps she could write one of her famous letters—and make sure that it actually gets sent. I have been asking the Library about one of them and it knew nothing about it, but I am glad it has been sent now. I am also worried about the emphasis on individual assessment, because that is supposed to happen now yet we find that many people in vulnerable circumstances end up in places like Napier. She might want to look at that and we might want to come back to it.

I am conscious that we have spent a lot of time on this and rightly so, because it is such an important issue. I am very grateful to every noble Lord who contributed and to the Minister for her engagement on the issues, even if I am left dissatisfied, because I am not sure we have moved on much further than the Commons in answering the questions asked—even though she tried very hard to do so. I suspect we will come back to at least some aspects of the accommodation centres on Report. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, this is a rare treat: a group with only two amendments. I will speak both to Amendment 64 in my name and to Amendment 65. I am reminded of the phrase “lies, damned lies, and statistics”, but apparently, according to the figures that I have—perhaps we need a Hansard fact-checker, like the BBC has—every year from 2012 to 2019 the majority of asylum seekers in the UK were successful.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

Yes, indeed, and 49% were not.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

There is agreement. In 2019, it was 65%. To prevent such a large proportion of asylum seekers working while their claim is resolved is demoralising, debilitating and expensive—increasingly so as the time taken to process applications continues to increase. The latest Home Office data shows 76% of applications taking more than six months to resolve. The Minister did not have the average figures, but I appear to have them. Figures published by the Independent suggest that more than 1,200 asylum seekers currently in the system have waited more than five years for a decision and 399 have waited more than a decade. That can result in asylum seekers becoming deskilled, leaving gaps in their work experience and long-lasting demotivation. To be willing and able to work but not be allowed to, for months or even years, must be devastating.

Our amendment, supported by the noble Baronesses, Lady Chakrabarti, Lady Meacher and Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, simply allows an asylum seeker to ask the Home Office for permission to work if their application has not been resolved after three months, instead of the current 12 months. It is intended to establish the principle that it is better for asylum seekers and for society if they are allowed to work. Amendment 65, in the name of noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, goes into more detail, requiring the Home Office to allow an asylum seeker to work without restriction after six months, rather than the current situation where asylum seekers can apply to work. Currently, however, they will only be given permission to work in the types of employment on the shortage occupation list maintained by the Home Secretary. These jobs are very limited and asylum seekers are unlikely to be qualified for them or have recent experience of them. Moreover, asylum seekers are unlikely to be attractive to potential employers while their claim for asylum is being considered. We are currently facing worker shortages in some sectors. Providing asylum seekers with work means they can start to pay their own way in society through tax and national insurance rather than relying on handouts. They are less likely to disappear if they have a job and a steady income.

In November, a cross-party group of MPs and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham wrote an open letter to the Home Secretary saying it was “nonsensical” that there were people in the UK who wanted to work but were not permitted to do so. They described allowing asylum seekers to work as common sense, fiscally responsible, and enabling those living here to pull themselves and their families out of poverty. The Lift the Ban coalition, which includes businesses, recruitment firms, trade unions and refugee organisations, estimates that removing the ban would save the economy £181 million a year. As I said in the previous group, the key to any successful immigration policy is integration, and allowing people to work is key to their integration into society. It also makes them less likely to be exploited, for example by becoming victims of modern slavery. We support Amendment 65—

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[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, it is quite daunting to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. I very much hope that she will not be driven to writing a book about this, although if she did, maybe we would see some change.

I shall speak to Amendment 65 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, with the support of the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister, Lady Ludford and Lady Prashar. As has been discussed, this aims, quite rightly, to introduce the right to work for asylum seekers who have been in the UK for more than six months.

My noble friend the Minister will know the gist of my argument from my comments on Tuesday. I am grateful for her forbearance then. Suffice it to say, I believe that this amendment is a matter of complete common sense. It is exactly the sort of policy that should underpin global Britain’s new immigration system.

This is a moment when we have to decide who we are as a nation. We want an immigration system that takes back control—one where the British people can see that we are trying to manage our borders and are actually doing so. They can also see that we have compassion for those in need when we, as a nation, have so much already.

This is not a niche opinion. I note that all wings of the Conservative and Labour Parties, the Liberal Democrats, other Cross-Benchers and the Deputy Prime Minister support the extension of the right to work for asylum seekers.

The arguments for this right to work are overwhelming. I will restate a couple of them. I hope that it will be helpful to hear them from these Benches. First, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, the latest figures show that 125,000 people are waiting for asylum decisions. Every study shows that the net benefit to the state would be in the tens or even hundreds of millions of pounds a year in increased tax take if this measure were enacted.

The UK economy is recovering after Covid. A lot of jobs have been created but this has, in turn, created labour shortages. It makes no sense whatever for asylum seekers who can drive HGVs or serve in the NHS to be forced to sit around doing nothing for over a year while they await a decision from the Home Office. The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, made that point very powerfully.

Secondly, there is very persuasive evidence that the right to work has a large, positive impact on the integration of asylum seekers who successfully settle. As other noble Lords have already mentioned, the Government’s Migration Advisory Committee recently underlined that shorter waiting times have a large, positive impact on long-term employment outcomes for asylum seekers.

As noble Lords have noted, these measures have overwhelming public support. I will mention one niche statistic. According to recent polling, 73% of red wall voters questioned support a right to work. As others have mentioned, business leaders back the easing of the ban on the right to work.

There is a basic human dignity argument for this policy. I believe that every individual should be able to support themselves and their family. I would go further and say that, as Conservatives, we believe that every family has a personal responsibility to do so where they can. I have often made the argument that work is the best route out of poverty. The aim and intention of this amendment are to do precisely that: let people support themselves and create their own pathway from poverty to prosperity while they wait for the decision.

The lack of the right to work leaves people vulnerable to exploitation, declining mental health, poverty and modern slavery. If the human dignity arguments do not seal the deal, the amendment could also be viewed as purely pragmatic. Reforms to the asylum system proposed through the Nationality and Borders Bill will take time to come into full effect. In the interim, while asylum cases are being processed, the asylum system continues to be under considerable strain. By offering asylum seekers the right to work, the Government would take pressure off themselves.

I anticipate that the Minister and other colleagues might be inclined to respond to this amendment using the pull factors argument, and I know others have addressed it. However, let me address those points from these Benches. First, it is push factors such as war and famine which drive refugees to these shores, not pull factors. If there are any pull factors, they are those which encourage people to come to the UK: our language, culture, rule of law, democracy, historic ties through the Commonwealth, family connections, and liberty, not the welfare payments.

It is worth noting that the UK is currently an outlier in enforcing a 12-month wait period for work and then placing long restrictions on which employment can be taken up. No other nation across Europe, USA, Australia or Canada has such stringent requirements. It is worth asking why they have not considered the right to work to be a pull factor. This view is totally backed by the experts. The Migration Advisory Committee underlined that there is no evidence in academic research that people decide to claim asylum based on these kinds of factors. The Home Office commissioned a study, which others have mentioned, that also shows that there is little evidence of this.

All of this is to say that I believe the Government could quite legitimately, without nervousness and in line with their poverty strategy for families working their way out of poverty, adopt this amendment that allows asylum seekers to work after six months of being in the UK.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, we have heard eight speakers on one side of this debate, and I think a word is in order from the other side. We are back to the same point: should we or should we not assume that all those who come here to seek asylum are genuine? It is, to me, no answer to reply that we are all human. Of course we are, but so are the population of this country and the constituents of those who were MPs.

In the medium and longer term, any asylum system has to have the support of the public. That could be brought into doubt if they saw increasing numbers of mainly young men arriving in this country, as others have mentioned, in a very visible fashion. As for public opinion, that will depend very much on the outcome of the next months and years. If that is a bad outcome from the point of view of numbers—numbers who are not perhaps genuine—that will decide itself.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, and it may be that he was going on to acknowledge this, but the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and I think the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, quoted actual public opinion surveys which showed big majorities in favour of the right to work for asylum seekers.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

Yes, I heard that opinion poll mentioned a couple of times. I would actually like to see the question and the context in what it was put. Any opinion poll needs to be looked at very carefully, but it may well be the case—I do not know, I have not looked at this particular one—if you ask the public that question today, they will say “Okay, sounds sensible”. What I am saying is that, if we set the asylum system in such a manner that the numbers will increase significantly month after month and year after year, that will change. So we need to be careful about what we do with this amendment at this point.

We know that the system is already under considerable pressure; we have talked about that. We know that the present conditions on work are very tight, as other noble Lords have mentioned. They are deliberately tight. The case must have been undecided for 12 months —there are far too many of those now—and the job must be on the official shortage occupation list, which is barely relevant to the qualifications of most asylum seekers.

My argument is that it would be a serious mistake to abolish both these requirements as the amendment proposes. It would make for a very clear incentive to spin out the claims process—not that they need to at the moment, but in the longer term—to get permission to work in any capacity. With the current delays in the system, additional numbers would get permission, thus adding to the pull factors at the channel.

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[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I know that the noble Lord is concerned about asylum seekers who turn out not to be recognised. No doubt he is even more concerned about the smaller proportion of them who may be wicked people in some way. Does he acknowledge that wicked people who are convicted of crimes in this country, even those who go to prison, are allowed to work? Does he consider that a pull factor or an incentive to commit serious crime?

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

I do not see the relevance of that question.

Let me conclude, if I may. As we discussed earlier in this debate, the Government’s asylum workload has tripled from 40,000 cases in 2012 to 120,000 cases in 2021. Furthermore, nearly half of all cases awaiting an initial decision have been waiting for 12 months or more. In the present situation, they would in any case get permission to work. However, it is vital for these delays to be tackled. On that point, the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and I are agreed. It makes no sense to me to adjust the immigration system to encourage delay. This Bill contains some useful measures designed to speed up the asylum process, and they should be supported.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 64 and 65. Before I specifically speak to them, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Green, that at some point in this Bill we are going to have to have a debate in this Chamber about the idea that this is a debate between those on the side of the public and those of us who are some kind of middle-class liberal elite who do not care about the opinions of the public—who believe that we need a draconian system to try to deal with this—because that is not what this debate is about. It is a caricature of the Government’s position and of those of us who oppose what the Government are doing.

We are saying that many of the policies being put forward by this Government to deal with the problem as they see it simply will not work. They go too far sometimes and compromise some of the principles every Member of this House would agree on. That is the clash. At some point we will have a debate about this, although perhaps there are other groups of amendments where it is more appropriate. I say again, there will have to be debate between those who—to be fair to the noble Lord, Lord Green—think they represent public opinion on this, and people like me who think he has got it wrong.

As part of the middle-class liberal intelligentsia—maybe not the intelligentsia, but the elite—let me say that I very much support that. Let me say why. As we stand here now, debating this, there are tens of thousands of asylum seekers who have applied for asylum in this country who have been waiting for a decision for more than a year. There are so many statistics sometimes you drown in them and are not sure which are actually right, so I will quote the Joint Committee on Human Rights, as it is slightly different to my own statistics. It says:

“approximately 65% of asylum applicants awaiting initial decisions had been waiting more than six months and that the average time to make an initial decision is now more than a year”.

That means tens of thousands of asylum seekers are waiting to have their application determined.

It would be interesting to hear from the Minister about the Home Office’s assessment of how long this is. Are there thousands of people waiting two years? When I was a Member of Parliament, people would sometimes come to me whose asylum claim had been neither agreed nor disagreed. They had actually disappeared and were there, and had been there for years and years. Now nobody wants that system. It’s ridiculous; of course nobody wants a situation that works like that. The reason I labour this point is that it goes back to the debates on the last group. The key to this issue is speeding up the process. We cannot have a situation where people are languishing for months and years before a decision is made. To be fair, the Minister believes that what the Government are proposing will speed up the process. I hope that they are right, but I do not think that they are. This is what bedevils the asylum system; it is not fair to the country, the public or the asylum applicants themselves. That is the basis of it.

Then you are left with the question of how you deal with this problem and what you do about it. At the moment, the Government’s position is that you have to wait a year before you can apply to work and then, if you do, you can work in specific occupations and jobs. I go back to the point made by my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti—supported I think by the noble Lord, Lord Bethell. The problem then becomes the denial of the opportunity for asylum seekers to work unless they have been here for a year. The community cohesion impact of that is enormous. What happens is that people then look at it and say, “What are they doing?” Noble Lords know the things that people say. “They’re not working. They’re not doing anything. They’re living on benefits. It’s about time they got out and did something”. Yet that is exactly what they want to do. Then some of them go out and work illegally, and they undercut the wages of legal workers or are employed in various occupations that we know about. So the whole system is undermined. To be fair, the last Labour Government did it. We introduced it, actually. I say to the Minister that, working in the Home Office, if she ever comes to this side, she will find quoted back to her things that she agreed to. So I accept that, right at the beginning of 2002, I think, we introduced this legislation for the same reason: we were worried about it being a pull factor.

But, if you look at it, where is the evidence? It clearly has not been, because it has not stopped asylum taking place—in fact, it has gone up. I will be fair and honest about it. My noble friend Lord Blunkett has done it once or twice in here, to his credit. Sometimes you introduce a policy with the best intentions—but what do you do if it does not work? Carry on? Do you just blindly say, “Well, it hasn’t worked but we’re going to carry on with it”? In supporting these amendments, we are saying to the Government that we have a policy that undermines community cohesion and does not work.

We then have the ludicrous situation where we have a Statement made by the Minister in the other place where he will not even publish the evidence for why the Government will continue with the current policy. He just refuses to publish it. So the Home Office has a review and does not publish the evidence. Then its own advisory committee says, “You’re wrong—you should do, and the policy is wrong anyway”. So the Government then turn around and say, “That’s ridiculous. We don’t agree with you”. They do not say why—other than that it is the pull factor. But then they do not publish the evidence that says that it is the pull factor.

It is not only that. I looked to see whether there was anybody else and found out that the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner said:

“As the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, I am aware of the harm caused to survivors of modern slavery and human trafficking unable to access training and work opportunities while they face delays in asylum status decisions.”


So the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner is wrong as well.

So, to answer this, I say that the Minister does not want to penalise asylum seekers, but this is ridiculous. We have public policy that is not working and is undermining community cohesion and a government response that simply says, “We don’t agree with all the people who disagree with us but we’re not going to tell you what the evidence is to support that, because it’s the pull factor”—

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

I am a bit puzzled. Although the precise numbers vary from year to year, it is quite clear that substantial numbers—30%, 40% or 50%, depending on which year you take—turn out not to have a case for asylum in this country. Surely that should be a factor. Surely the way forward is, as the noble Lord proposed when he first spoke, to speed this situation up so that we can get the answers within the six months, which would be much better for everybody. Surely that should be the centre of their policy.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

Can I intervene on an intervention? What is wrong if those people are allowed to work? If it is then determined that they have no right to stay, they would then have to leave—but, in the meantime, they are supporting themselves, perhaps using their skills and contributing tax. If they are then found not to have a legal claim to stay, so be it. I cannot see what the harm is in the meantime.