Asylum Support (Children and Young People)

Virendra Sharma Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)]

I thank and congratulate the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) on securing this debate on the important issue of unfairness and injustice. My contribution to the debate is based on my personal knowledge of the subject, my previous work and the casework at my constituency surgeries. I have a large caseload. The views expressed in the report resulted from hearing many experts. The hon. Lady has mentioned many issues that we all face in the community, and I may repeat what she has said, because she expressed the views of many people and many MPs from their experience in their constituencies.

This country has a long-standing tradition of providing sanctuary to those fleeing danger and violence, but unfortunately we are in danger of failing refugees and asylum seekers by giving them inadequate support. It is our duty to provide assistance to those in need, especially to young children and families who have already suffered through war and persecution. Unfortunately, there are many tragic examples of asylum seekers in this country living in terrible conditions due to the low support awarded to them. Some families cannot put food on their tables; some are living in cold, unhygienic, overcrowded and unsafe accommodation; and other people are separated from their families and regularly moved around the country.

The cross-party parliamentary inquiry on asylum support, of which I was a member and which was chaired by the hon. Lady, produced a comprehensive report that examined support for asylum-seeking children and families and made recommendations. One key concern outlined in the report is the discrepancy between support for asylum seekers and families receiving mainstream benefits. Asylum seekers are not permitted to work, and the support that they are entitled to under section 95 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 is considerably less than current income support, which is a minimum level to meet essential living needs.

The situation is detrimental to the well-being of asylum seekers, leaving families hungry and struggling in atrocious conditions. Some children on asylum support are living on as little as £5 a day. As part of the inquiry, we heard tragic stories of parents going hungry, so that they could feed their children, and having to choose between buying food and buying warmer clothes for winter. Parents should never have to go hungry to feed and clothe their children because they cannot afford to; income support for asylum seekers is clearly insufficient if that is the case.

The situation is even more difficult for families with a child or a parent with a disability. Without access to mainstream benefits, families seeking asylum are also not entitled to benefits such as disability living allowance, carer’s allowance or mobility assistance. That leaves asylum-seeking families with disability significantly worse off than families who are able to access mainstream support. Some families are only getting about a quarter of what they would get under the mainstream system. As it may cost up to three times more to raise a disabled child, it is unreasonable for such families not to receive an allowance to meet those extra costs, especially when they already have difficulty making ends meet. Parents raising a disabled child will also require extra support to help them with their child’s education, health and social activities. Unfortunately, once again, the asylum support system does not recognise those additional needs and forces parents to struggle with such challenges unassisted.

The same is true for children caring for a disabled parent, as they are not entitled to supplementary carer’s allowance or any extra assistance. As the hon. Lady has said, the inquiry allowed us to hear about an 11-year-old girl who cared for her disabled mother. It was not unusual for her to have to miss school to take her mother to hospital appointments and help with the shopping and cleaning. Sadly, as her mother was unable to sign in for her support every single week because of her disability, they would sometimes have to go without any money. Had that mother and daughter been given additional support, they would not have had to struggle in that way and the girl would have had an uninterrupted education.

The lack of support for refugees with additional needs is particularly evident and worrying for children affected by HIV. Such children need warm, clean accommodation and high-quality food and health care, which, in most cases, they will not have access to through their asylum support, leaving them vulnerable to serious illness. In addition, mothers who are HIV-positive should not be breastfeeding, but are not given supplementary funds for formula milk, putting their babies at risk.

Refugees who are fleeing war and persecution should be given an extra layer of protection, but in such cases, some of the most vulnerable are those who receive the lowest support. It is clear that the particular needs and additional costs of living for families where there is a disability or illness must be taken into account to determine financial support for asylum seekers. It is unacceptable for parents and children with disability to be left without the support that they desperately need. Asylum-seeking families should be able to access disability living allowance, carer’s allowance or mobility allowance, so that they are able to live without fear of going hungry, cold or scared.

In this country, we put a lot of emphasis on English language skills and knowledge, which I feel is most important. Everyone needs to learn, so that they can fully participate in the system, but it is also the responsibility of the system to recognise the other social and practical skills that such people bring with them, so that they can be used. Not only could people then offer their own skills, but it could be ensured that they contribute more effectively to society after they come in. I hope that the Minister, in responding, will address how we can best use the skills that people carry with them.

Thank you, Mr Davies, for giving me the chance to contribute to this important debate. I hope that the Minister will listen to the contributions made by all Members this morning, as well as what is said by people who have expertise in the field, who are dealing on a day-to-day basis with many cases, and that he will read the recommendations made in the report. I also hope that he will help the families and children who are going through the most difficult period of their lives and take them out of the poverty trap. Furthermore, let them live and move in society with dignity and respect.

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[Mr Virendra Sharma]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point about how the system operates. Does he agree that the present system and environment force many children, women and families into the undesirable field of racial abuse and sexual violence, as my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe has said?

[Mark Durkan]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. People are left vulnerable not just in a social and economic sense, but to all sorts of victimisation and alienation. That would be wrong in any instance, but particularly when we are dealing with vulnerable children. We should not visit such risks on people.

The regime is in relation not just to section 4, but to section 95, which provides for a cash support system. It makes no recognition whatever of disabled children or children who discharge caring duties for a parent with a disability or long-term condition. We would not tolerate that in any other area of benefits for any other of our constituents.

Although people complain about the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority about this, that and the other, we have made sure that there is provision even in the parliamentary allowance system for people with caring responsibilities or disabilities. One of the worst forms of inequality is to treat people in profoundly different circumstances as though they were the same. That is exactly what is happening in the situation that we are discussing.

Originally, section 95 support was pegged at 90% of income support levels. It was then moved by the previous Government to 70%, but that was never adhered to. The report brings that out. People might argue that in the current circumstances it is a relatively modest request to bring section 95 support to 70% of income support levels.

I hope that the Minister, when he addresses the issues, will take care to read all the points and experiences reflected in the report and listen to its sensible recommendations, which have come not just from the Children’s Society, which did much work to support the inquiry, but from many others, including the Law Centre and many other charities in Northern Ireland that work with asylum seekers and refugees.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is a great delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies.

I congratulate my three hon. Friends who spoke in today’s debate and all hon. Members who took part in putting the report together. I also congratulate, as my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) has just done, the various charities and organisations that work with refugees—including those whose primary work is not with refugees, such as the Red Cross—on the diligence that they have brought to the work, to try to make Parliament and the wider public understand the situation faced by many refugees in this country. Of course, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) for the work she has done in bringing the issues together, for getting the report published and for how she presented her case today.

Different parts of the country will make different responses to the issue of asylum, because some parts have more refugees and a longer history of refugee communities than others. I used to be a curate in High Wycombe. Many refugees had come from Poland to High Wycombe in the 1940s, and it was an accepted part of Buckinghamshire society that there was a strong support for asylum and for refugees individually.

A respect for asylum and a desire to protect refugees are essential parts of our British decency. They are things we feel proud of because of our response not only in the 1930s and 1940s, but after that. People in the United Kingdom looked at oppressive dictatorships in Spain, Portugal, Greece and parts of eastern Europe and were proud when we were able to provide others greater freedom and liberty than they were able to have in their own countries.

The hon. Member for Brent Central was absolutely right in saying—though this is not often the version portrayed in the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent or just about any national newspaper—that there is little evidence to suggest that asylum seekers choose a country because of its benefits system or whether they would be able to work. That, incidentally, is also true of other forms of migration.

It is important that we keep asylum and immigration separate and that Government rules do so, too. If someone has suddenly to leave their country, it is far more common for them to go to a country where they already know someone; that stands to reason. If this country suddenly had a dictatorial Government and people suddenly had to leave, they would probably go somewhere where they had family or friends, whose house they might be able to stay in. Alternatively, people might go to a country whose operation of the rule of law they truly respected. Our historical respect for the rule of law is another reason why Britain has sometimes been a place where people seek refuge.

The hon. Lady was also right in saying that being a refugee is tough.

[Mr Virendra Sharma]

I arrived in this country many years ago, but in different circumstances. Does my hon. Friend agree that, when people leave their country, they go to a country where there is a history and tradition of tolerance and where they feel they will get a sense of justice? That is also part of why they move—not the benefits.

[Chris Bryant]

I absolutely agree. That does not mean that we should throw out all the rules on benefits in this country. It is a simple point to make—the vectors of asylum are oppression and dictatorial regimes, not the attraction of some kind of benefits system in this country. That is not to say that we should build palaces for every single person who comes to this country—no refugee expects that—but it is important to realise why people come.

It is also important to realise that no one wants to be a refugee; everyone prefers to live in their own country. The whole Old Testament is about people who are refugees because they had to leave their own country and the oppression that they lived under. The Israelites went off into the desert because of the oppression they were suffering under the Egyptians. That is a fundamental—theological, if one likes—understanding of the role of the refugee.

We need to do a great deal more, where we can, to ensure that our aid budget is deployed to try to ensure that fewer people around the world have to seek refuge. The number of people seeking asylum in this country and in many other parts of the world rose dramatically in the 1990s for the simple reason that there were many more dangerous places from which people had to flee.

We were hideously ill-prepared—in 1994, 1995 and 1996 there were only 50 people to deal with asylum seekers’ applications in this country—and it took a considerable period to put the situation in order. There were something like 170,000 applications a year; we are now talking about something in the region of 19,000, 20,000 or 21,000.

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[Mr Harper]

I accept that point. It is worth making the point on the German case that our rates for families are rather more generous than the German rates. The hon. Lady is right that there was a court challenge and the Germans have had to make their rates more generous. Ours are significantly more generous. The point she makes about 16 and 17-year-olds is correct, but it is still worth noting that her report and, I think, others have referred to the rates being at least 70% of the income support rate. That is still the case for young people of 16 and 17, where it is 71%. It does fall below that for adults. She will be aware—she and I have discussed this—that we are in the process of reviewing the asylum support rates to confirm that they meet essential living needs. The initial work that we have done suggests that they do, but that work is under way. When we have completed it, we will make an announcement in due course.

The hon. Lady and others, particularly the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall, referred to individuals who have higher living costs, especially those with disabilities or complicated medical problems, who might need particular extra care or equipment. The correct way that they are supposed to be supported is through local authorities using their powers and duties under both the National Assistance Act 1948 and the Children Act 2004 to provide that extra support. It sounds like the hon. Gentleman has encountered some cases in his surgeries with constituents, and there were also some in the evidence given to the panel producing the report, where that does not always happen. Obviously I am happy to look at specific cases, so that we can ensure that local authorities are following up on their legal obligations.

Once people have made an asylum claim, if that claim is accepted and they are given refugee status and are permitted to stay in the UK, they have access to the full range of public services and benefits on the same basis as a British citizen. There are some issues about the transition from asylum support to those mainstream benefits, and the UK Border Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions are looking at those to see whether we can smooth that move from asylum support to mainstream benefits for those who are granted refugee status.

It is worth mentioning at this point the speed of decision making, which is important both from a human perspective and to ensure that people do not use the asylum system as a method of economic migration. I agree with the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant): both our parties have been clear when in government that there is a distinction between providing refuge for people fleeing persecution and for people who move, perfectly understandably, for economic reasons. My hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) alluded to that. We now make 50% of asylum decisions within 30 days and 63% are made within a year, and we continue to apply pressure to maintain that progress.

Several hon. Members talked about whether asylum seekers should be able to work. Our view is that they should not be able to, to keep that clear distinction. However, under our obligations under the relevant EU directives, if we take more than a year to make a decision, an asylum seeker is able to apply to work, and we will usually grant them the ability to do so.

[Mr Virendra Sharma]

Does the Minister agree that when asylum seekers are not entitled to work, they sometimes find illegal work, which furthers the black market and disadvantages people who work in that field?

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman’s point would be correct if we were prohibiting people from working and not providing them with any support. While we say they cannot work, so as to maintain that important distinction, we do provide them with housing where the bills are paid and a basic level of subsistence to support them in the period before we make a decision.

In the four minutes I have remaining, I will say a little about the difference between asylum seekers and those who have failed in their claim. That is important and I have made this point to the hon. Lady. If we are to maintain the proud record that the United Kingdom has in giving people refuge from persecution, it is important that those who have gone through the appeal process through the tribunal system, where we will have looked at their cases carefully, and been found not to require that support leave the country. It is important to distinguish that those on section 4 support are those who have been found not to require our protection. They should be leaving the country. We support those cases where there is a temporary barrier to them doing so, but frankly they should not be here. I know that that is a difficult message for people sometimes, but we have looked carefully at their cases and they do not need our protection. They should return home.