Delays in the Asylum System

Paula Barker Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell.

I start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) for securing this vital debate. I say to the Minister that I am angry. I am angry because, as an MP, I see the daily occurrence of the human misery caused by the failings in his Government’s asylum system. I see that everywhere in my constituency. I am angry because I see my staff dedicating so much of their time to asylum cases, although that is a mere sticking plaster on his Government’s shortcomings.

Countless examples demonstrate how the chaos in the system is inextricably linked to the human misery on display in our urban centres. Let me give one example. I will refer to the man involved as C. He was in the asylum system for four years. He made an initial application followed by a fresh claim. He waited 18 months for a decision on his fresh claim. During that time, his mental health deteriorated. He was hospitalised on several occasions following serious incidents of self-harm. He repeatedly told those helping him that he needed a decision, one way or another. The waiting was so unbearable for him that he resorted to going to the Home Office building in Liverpool and attempted to take his own life in its reception area.

I pay tribute to the work of organisations such as Asylum Link Merseyside, which, alongside MPs’ staff, do the vital work of supporting those in need of support. For all the tough talk that emanates from the Home Secretary’s mouth, it is not her self-styled steeliness that will come to define her tenure; it is incompetence. The Home Secretary is more concerned with playing to the gallery than with tackling any of the causes, symptoms or problems that exist in the system. That incompetence fails asylum seekers, fails communities and fails the British people.

Let us understand the facts. First, the problems in our asylum system long predate the pandemic. As of March 2021, the total work in progress asylum case load consisted of 109,000 cases. Since 2014, the asylum case load has doubled—yes, doubled—in size. It has been driven by both applicants waiting longer for initial decision and a growth in the number of people subject to removal action following a negative decision. Minister, we cannot separate that spiralling case load from workforce issues. These range from downgrading the decision-making grade in the Home Office earlier in the last decade, to announcing increases in weekly targets to 10, as well as failing to initiate recruitment in a timely fashion when higher executive officers started to jump ship. All of those issues have been raised time and again by the Public and Commercial Services Union and ignored by the powers that be. Even one of the former permanent secretaries, Mark Sedwill, called the decision “ill-judged”. This caused so much chaos that attrition rates in the asylum workforce reached 37%.

Alongside the PCS, I want to thank the Refugee Council for its excellent briefing on these related topics. Its summary of evidence shows that the size of the backlog is most evidently influenced by the difference between the number of applications and the number of initial decisions made each year. The delays in the asylum system are of the Government’s own making.

Sadly, it gets worse. In March 2021, the Government published their “New Plan for Immigration” and began a six-week public consultation on proposals to make wide-ranging changes—changes that I have opposed for their contravention of the 1951 United Nations refugee convention. While asylum seekers end up being treated like animals at Napier barracks, the Minister for Future Borders and Immigration wrote in a letter to me two days ago that

“our New Plan for Immigration will reform the broken asylum system”.

Minister, it will not. None of the proposals outlined in the paper was aimed at addressing the backlog of asylum cases. To describe it as a missed opportunity would be an understatement. Instead, all we have is more posturing from a Government who benefit from their own chaos. It is that chaos that has brought the system to breaking point.

Criminal Justice Review: Response to Rape

Paula Barker Excerpts

Tuesday 25th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we need to create a self-reinforcing story of success, where the support we give to victims and the changes in our methodology and indeed practices between the police and the CPS lead to a greater number of cases going into court, and that in turn leads to a greater number of convictions, which should build confidence among victims. I hope that is exactly the kind of spiral of success that the report will produce.

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab) [V]]

Seven in 10 women say the Government’s efforts to make the UK safer for women are lacking. Does the Minister back Labour’s Bill to end violence against women and girls, and if not, does he believe seven in 10 women are wrong?

Support for Asylum Seekers

Paula Barker Excerpts

Tuesday 27th April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab) [V]]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) for securing this much-needed debate, and I pay tribute to the incredible work of Asylum Link Merseyside in my constituency. My constituents regularly contact me expressing dismay and often anger at the way this country operates its asylum system to the detriment of the most vulnerable and the communities in which they hope to integrate. As a humanitarian, I too, like my constituents, believe that we can and should do more to provide much-needed dignity in the way we treat asylum seekers.

Most recently, I have been contacted by constituents horrified at the treatment of fellow human beings in military barracks. Asylum accommodation has always been inadequate to the needs of people awaiting a decision on their claim, but throughout 2020 the conditions and standards of this accommodation have worsened drastically. Forced room-sharing with strangers, accommodation that lacks basic hygiene measures and inadequate provision of food, non-prescription medicines and other essentials are now the norm. Indeed, drastic failings had been uncovered in a report submitted to the Home Office by prison inspectors, as well as in correspondence sent by the outgoing independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, David Bolt. This underlines the need for an urgent change of course on the use of this type of accommodation.

With the idea of refugees being kept on a rock in the south Atlantic being floated by the make-it-up-as-you-go-along Home Secretary, no wonder the Government seemingly intend to continue such a barbaric and inhumane practice as currently exists in Kent. I am often reminded of the infamous quote from the late, great Tony Benn:

“The way a government treats refugees is very instructive because it shows you how they would treat the rest of us if they thought they could get away with it.”

In short, and in reference to the debate’s motion, the effectiveness of asylum accommodation and the dispersal scheme is woefully inadequate. There exists only one adequate system: one that puts the human front and centre of the system and affords dignity and respect. As a whole, we must achieve a fair and equitable system that sees Whitehall pulling its weight alongside local authorities, with no local authorities in the Tory shires ducking their responsibilities under the dispersal scheme. Ultimately, big changes are needed.