Asylum (Time Limit) Bill

Mike Penning Excerpts

Friday 16th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims (Mike Penning)]

I fully understand why my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) brought his Bill before the House today. He did so with the right intentions, but like the shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), we feel that there are serious problems with its drafting. I understand that my hon. Friend is trying to address the abuse and misuse of the asylum system that this generous country has in place for those who need it.

I welcome any contributions to the forthcoming manifesto, which others will be looking for from these debates. As I said, the Bill seeks to address the abuse and misuse of our generous asylum system. The Government have already taken many steps to restore control of the asylum and immigration system that we inherited. Let me outline the situation that we inherited. Asylum applications peaked in this country in 2002 at 84,132. I fully accept on behalf of the Government that last year asylum claims went up by 2% to 24,257. If we look around the world, especially at events taking place in sub-Saharan Africa and the middle east, which the right hon. Member for Delyn mentioned, we can to some extent understand that rise.

The Government are determined, and legislated in the Immigration Act 2014, to tighten our borders and our immigration laws to make sure that asylum is not used as an excuse by someone against whom we are about to take enforcement action because they do not meet the requirements to stay in this country.

Two aspects of the comments from the right hon. Member for Delyn and the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) struck a chord with me. As a new MP in Hemel Hempstead, a seat that I was not exactly expecting to win, although I was immensely proud to do so and am immensely proud to represent, I met a Tamil man aged 24. He came here to study—a very clever man—and went on to become a very good doctor. He is progressing towards becoming a consultant now. While he was here, his whole family in Sri Lanka was wiped out. Death threats against him and his brothers were displayed across the media in Sri Lanka, just because of his parents’ beliefs and birth. He had been here for 18 months. I am sure that my hon. Friend would not have wanted that young man to be sent back to Sri Lanka under his Bill. That, personally, is why I cannot support it, and why the Government will not support it either.

We do understand the need for alternative measures. That is why, as the shadow Minister and the hon. Member for Brent North said, we introduced the Modern Slavery Bill. There are people in this country who perhaps never wanted to be here but were brought here under false pretences, bundled into the back of a lorry and abused in ways that we cannot imagine and perhaps prayed would never happen in this country in the 21st century— but the Government know that it has happened, as did the previous Administration. It was a difficult piece of legislation to bring forward, but it is the right legislation.

If someone had been forced to come to this country and, say, forced into prostitution, and we knew that if that person went back to their place of origin after three months they would not only be persecuted again but their lives would be under threat, not least if they gave evidence against the people who had committed those crimes against them, I do not think we would send them back.

I really do understand why my hon. Friend has introduced this Bill. I hear concerns about this in my constituency as well. We are right to be a generous nation, going back further than the events before and during the second world war and the persecution of the Jews—way back to times when we have assisted vulnerable people from around the world. Yes, we want people to declare that they are in a safe place long before they get to this country if that is possible. Yes, some of them are enormously vulnerable and very traumatised when they arrive. I have met such people—some, sadly, within our criminal justice system, where we have people with mental health issues, whether they are British nationals or non-British nationals who needed help long before they came here.

I accept that the Bill has every understandable intention in trying to stop bogus asylum seekers abusing our system and speed the process up, which is what the Government are trying to do as much as possible, as well as, wherever possible, encouraging asylum seekers to look elsewhere. The most recent figures show that in the rest of Europe asylum applications have reached the highest point since the peak of 2002, but our figures are still way below that. However, that is not because we are not a generous nation. I think the rest of the world is starting to realise that we are not a soft touch, but we do have a generous system. Sadly, we cannot support the Bill because it has anomalies that I personally, and the Government, find difficult.