Refugees

Lord McInnes of Kilwinning Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord McInnes of Kilwinning (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate for bringing this report before the House. It is a positive sign that my noble friend the Minister of State is replying to the debate. Most of all, I thank the authors of the report, who have opened my eyes and shone a light on what happens to successful asylum seekers in the UK.

In the UK there was quite rightly a public outcry on behalf of refugees after the tragic death of the child refugee Alan Kurdi. These deaths are unfortunately all too common. As happens in Britain, the Government listened, reacted and committed to accepting 20,000 Syrian refugees in the lifetime of the Parliament. That is a very significant number, given the total number of asylum seekers is normally around 40,000 per year.

This report is timely because it has identified a two-tier system that has been caused because of the creation of a best practice—as we have heard from the right reverend Prelate—that a government focus on the resettlement programmes, especially the Syrian vulnerable people resettlement programme, has brought about. This two-tier system has now been recognised in both the APPG report and the report of the Home Affairs Committee in the other place published in January this year. The Government should be congratulated on their continuing commitment to the resettlement programme, working closely with local authorities across the UK. However, this excellent report from the APPG raises the plight of the four-fifths of refugees seeking asylum in the UK who are not part of the resettlement scheme and whose only choice is to seek asylum once they arrive in the UK. One of the great ironies of that is that 10% of all those seeking asylum are Syrians. That underlines the two-tier process that we have that some people of the same nationality can have two very different experiences.

As we have heard, the report correctly identifies the crucial moving-on period—the point at which the clock starts ticking for the successful applicant with 28 days left in Home Office accommodation and before Home Office financial support comes to an end. That is the period in which a successful asylum applicant has to find accommodation, find a job, seek benefits or enter education. It is clear from the APPG report that too much is currently left to chance. The timing of the arrival of the assigned national insurance number, the biometric residence permit and the letter informing the asylum seeker that they have been successful do not appear to be co-ordinated. In the report, there is an example of a successful asylum seeker who received notice to quit his Home Office accommodation but then did not receive notice that he had been successful in his appeal for asylum for a further fortnight. What should be a moment of vindication and hope for the successful asylum applicant becomes one of confusion and, for some, apparent freefall in the system.

I would be grateful to hear from my noble friend the Minister how the Home Office can further co-ordinate this moving-on period with other departments and local authorities to ensure a seamless move from Home Office accommodation. It is difficult to envisage how this could happen without a dedicated resource to support these vulnerable people and ensure that there is cross-departmental access for such a team. The best practice used for the resettlement programmes has surely provided an opportunity for the expertise gained within the Home Office to be deployed.

The Government have trialled successfully the community sponsorship scheme from Canada, and I would hope that they would also look to other international examples of where refugees have been successfully integrated and been able to fulfil their education and make an active economic contribution to their new state. We cannot allow vulnerable refugees to fall through the net and end up homeless in abject poverty, therefore creating significant and, importantly, more expensive responsibilities for the state further down the line.

The Home Office has demonstrated the ability of central government to work closely with local authorities to ensure that vulnerable people are properly cared for in this country. The report we have from the APPG points in several important ways to how we can ensure that those same vulnerable people receive sustained support, co-ordination and management.