Torture and the Treatment of Asylum Claims

Margaret Ferrier Excerpts

Thursday 2nd March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I extend my appreciation to the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias), who, along with other Members, was responsible for securing this important debate. I thank everyone who has taken part in it.

I should begin by stating my party’s position. The Scottish National party believes that asylum seekers and refugees must be treated humanely, fairly and with dignity, and that their rights must be upheld at every stage of the asylum process. Indeed, Freedom from Torture has welcomed the SNP’s efforts to put pressure on the UK Government to influence immigration and asylum policy to protect survivors of torture across the whole of the UK. We will continue to use our position in Westminster to influence policy areas across the whole of the UK.

Asylum seekers are among the most vulnerable groups in society. Having fled their home countries, often they will have left all of their possessions behind. They may have been subjected to torture or witnessed their loved ones being killed, or sometimes both. Often, their health and wellbeing will be seriously affected. The findings of the recent Freedom from Torture report “Proving Torture” make for tough reading. The organisation’s expert clinicians provide in-depth evidence, in line with international standards, documenting torture scars and psychological trauma as part of a torture survivor’s asylum claim.

Bureaucracy and poor decision making mean that torture survivors can be wrongly refused asylum and experience months—often years—of disbelief and uncertainty. When a survivor of torture is wrongly refused asylum, they experience unimaginable distress. For many people, it is life or death. They know that when the wrong decision is made, they could be forced to return to their torturers. The hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) mentioned that, after being denied asylum, some of the Sri Lankans who have been returned have faced ill treatment, abuse or worse back in Sri Lanka. Legal appeals are harrowing for these people and, as has been mentioned, let us not forget that they are costly to UK taxpayers.

The precise number of torture survivors seeking protection in the UK is unknown. The Home Office does not collect statistics on the number of asylum claims involving torture allegations. A recent study suggests that 27% of adult forced migrants living in high-income countries such as the UK are survivors of torture. Perhaps when the Minister responds he could expand on why those statistics are not routinely collected. I am very concerned that our system is letting down extremely vulnerable individuals.

What survivors of torture need is safety and access to rehabilitation. That cannot even begin until a sound decision is made on their claim, yet the report found that survivors seeking asylum in the UK can find it almost impossible to prove to the Home Office that they were tortured.

As we have heard, many of the report’s findings focus on the role that caseworkers play. I take on board what was mentioned by the hon. Member for Twickenham and the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) that caseworkers should not become hardened to the stories of asylum seekers; indeed their physical and mental health should be monitored regularly.

There appear to be so many failures when cases are assessed, with some of the charges being levelled including: failure to apply the correct standard of proof for asylum claims; caseworkers replacing the expert opinion of a clinician with their own; and taking the wrong approach to medical evidence when assessing the credibility of the asylum claim. That will likely come as no surprise, unfortunately, to any Member who has dealt with an asylum case. There certainly seem to be failings in how asylum seekers are dealt with. I appreciate that there are some fantastic people working for the Home Office, dealing with incredibly difficult histories and vulnerable people. From my experience, however, there certainly seem to be occasions when the process is lacking in fairness and dignity. At the core of the problem seems to be bad practice. I certainly hope that the Minister will seriously address that when responding.

The chief executive of Freedom from Torture has said:

“Most of the bad practice revealed in our research clearly contravenes Home Office policy guidance for asylum caseworkers on the correct treatment of medical evidence of torture. The Home Office has an excellent training programme to help caseworkers implement this policy correctly but has never rolled it out.”

Home Office employees should be adequately resourced to carry out their duties in a humane manner and training should be the cornerstone of that. That training is crucial if guidance is to be appropriately followed.

In a joint letter to the immigration and border policy directorate, signatories from several organisations including Medical Justice, Liberty, the UK Lesbian & Gay Immigration Group and Women for Refugee Women expressed concern that, in their experience, Home Office caseworkers do not regularly or properly apply the full rigour of guidance in relation to the “very exceptional circumstances” for detention of vulnerable individuals. Those detained individuals are being failed by the system.

The SNP shares the Scottish Refugee Council’s concerns about short-term holding facilities

“which have consistently received poor inspection reports by HM inspectorate of prisons and have been deemed unsafe for women.”

Perhaps the Minister in response would care to address that point and the application of guidance in that regard.

The SNP believes that the Home Office also needs to drop its proposals on the definition of torture for asylum seekers, which further erode safeguards for torture survivors, and institute a process that properly protects vulnerable detainees. The fact that the most recent change in the Home Office rules on definition of torture in December was rejected by the courts after 21 days is yet another example of the Government’s disregard for the treatment of asylum seekers in their pursuit of toxic policies toward refugees.

It is utterly shameful that that was introduced despite mounting criticism of the welfare of vulnerable people in detention, including in the Shaw report, which the Government have yet to respond to. The direction of travel is particularly worrying; the detention of vulnerable people used to happen only in very exceptional circumstances, but now there is guidance that the Home Office should seek to balance risk of harm in detention against the individual’s immigration factors. Again, the principles of fairness and dignity appear to have been all but discarded.

In summary, I would appreciate it if the Minister could address the following. Why are statistics on the number of asylum claims involving torture allegations not available? Will the Home Office commit to rectifying that? An investigation needs to happen on the allegations of bad practice among Home Office caseworkers. Will he also address the reasons why the training programme has not been rolled out and the Home Office’s intentions in that regard, and the issues with applying guidance on detention of vulnerable individuals?

As the hon. Member for Harrow West stated, the UK takes allegations of torture seriously. It would be good if the Minister would consult with his Foreign Office colleagues on torture happening around the globe and ask them to use their influence positively to try to change the thinking of some of the worst perpetrators of torture throughout the world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Goodwill]

Certainly. We get a number of requests. I know there has also been some discussion with the Home Affairs Committee, and we are particularly keen to prioritise that visit if we can, because it is important that the Committee sees that as part of its work. However, I will look at that request and see what we can do to accelerate it.

I want to make it absolutely clear that where people are detained, it is for the minimum time possible. The dignity and welfare of those in our care is of the utmost importance. I would like to leave a few minutes for my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham to sum up, so I will make a final comment. We are clear that the claims of those who seek asylum in the UK will be carefully considered by well-trained and conscientious decision makers, who are expected to take into account all available evidence to reach an informed decision.

[Margaret Ferrier]

I would like to repeat the question I asked earlier about the number of asylum claims involving torture allegations. There is no log of that at the moment. Will the Minister give a clear guarantee that he will look at that and put in place a log, so that we know how many asylum claims involve torture allegations?

[Mr Goodwill]

Interestingly, I have asked the same question myself, and the answer is not quite as simple as it may seem, because in some cases multiple reasons are given for an asylum claim, and in other cases in which asylum has been refused on one ground, a new ground has then been put forward. Sometimes the figures are not quite as easily come to as perhaps we would like. I will certainly see what I can do, but I have been asking the same question myself and have been told, “It isn’t as simple, Minister, as you would like to think.” There are often quite complex cases involving a number of different reasons that may have been submitted at different times during the legal process.