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we should forget about the cause of asylum seekers, I ask them to read some of the evidence of people who fled from Chile, El Salvador, Burma and so many other places where they could not cope with the oppression against them.It is not easy for people to leave their own country, possibly never to return. Such a decision is not taken lightly. It is a sense of defeat and having to start over again. This country has not faced such a decision in the past 300 or 400 years and I hope that we never shall. But we should understand those who face such oppression and recognise that, in framing legislation, we should not introduce the remotest chance of anyone being wrongly returned. If they are, in many cases it means certain death for them.
The concept of a safe third country was mentioned so glibly by the Minister. He should think for a moment what that means. Is he saying that France, Germany or the United States are automatically safe ? They are not. Is someone who has moved to Louisiana safe from the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke ? Is a Moroccan asylum seeker safe in the suburbs of Paris ? Is a Vietnamese migrant worker safe living in Leipzig with Nazi gangs going around ? The Home Secretary should think much more carefully about the concept of a safe third country. We should also think about the problems of the world as a whole, which cause mass migration in the first place. People do not lightly take the decision to migrate. The poverty that is created in some African countries by a combination of the debt crisis, poor harvests and droughts forces people to seek survival somewhere else. Indeed, Irish people have sought survival elsewhere, and people often left this country because they did not wish to stay in the slums of London, Birmingham or Liverpool but sought a better life in Australia or elsewhere. We should not be quite so narrow-minded, blinkered and xenophobic about the rest of the world.
The House has not had a good record in the past years. The Immigration (Carriers' Liability) Act 1987 was an abominable piece of legislation, privatising immigration and putting it in the hands of aircraft and shipping companies, encouraging the use of bogus identity documents and, in many cases, making it impossible for legitimate asylum seekers to leave their own countries. People living under oppression cannot go to the British embassy and seek an entry clearance document, present it to an airline office, take a plane to this country and then seek political asylum. The world is not like that. The British embassy may be observed by the secret police, as may the airline office and many other places. We should think more carefully about the effects of the legislation.
We should consider the psychological condition in which people arrive. I know people who were prisoners of war in Japanese camps during the second world war and who, even now, find it hard to talk about the abuse that they suffered. I was talking to an old man in my constituency only last week. He found it hard to describe to me the abominable way in which he was treated in a prisoner of war camp. The same is true of victims of the holocaust who were placed in concentration camps. People who have been in prison in Zaire, Somalia and many other places find it hard, after the long, arduous and frightening experience of travelling abroad to seek asylum, to talk instantly about everything that happened.
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The excellent organisation, the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, collected evidence showing the psychological condition in which people arrive in this country. The procedure proposed--the fast track, the instant decision, the lack of proper appeal--continually works against those people. It is hard for people fleeing from oppression to explain everything that has happened. They have to reveal all, and if something goes wrong how are they to know that all that information will not be handed back to the secret police from whom they are trying to escape by seeking asylum? I hope that the House will reject the Bill, but I fear that it will not. We shall fight it in Committee, and I hope that there will be a campaign in this country against the Bill, the xenophobia that it perpetrates and the principles behind it which are so wrong. 8.32 pmMr. Jacques Arnold (Gravesham) : The Bill must be one of the most sensitive to come before the House for many years. It affects people and this country's reputation. We have given asylum to political refugees over many centuries : the Huguenots, the Jews from eastern Europe and Russia at the turn of the century, continental Europeans during the last war-- including my father--and many others. This country has a proud record to uphold.
In this day and age, continuing problems around the world throw up refugees. One such problem is particularly close to home for many of my Gravesham constituents. My constituency includes a large community of Sikhs from the Punjab in India. I do not need to detain the House with a contemporary history of that sad state. Grievances against the federal Government of the republic of India go back to the time of independence,when many Sikhs felt that Nehru and his Congress party reneged on solemn undertakings.
Since then, relations between the Sikhs of Punjab and the federal Government have been poor and there has been an escalating round of rebellion and repression. The conflict, highlighted by the sacking of the Golden temple at Amritsar, has thrown up refugees fleeing from the conflict in fear of their lives. But those represent a comparatively small number, and we must continue our tradition of granting political asylum. The Bill provides a framework within which to do so.
Race relations in this country are good. Gravesend and Northfleet contain 7,000 Sikh residents who live in the local community in peace, a condition of which I am proud. They can hold their religious processions to celebrate their Baisakhi festival without disturbances. The National Front has declined into oblivion. However, there are immense pressures on this country from economic migrants. I believe that our tight immigration laws provide a safeguard for British residents against overpopulation, and are a major cause in avoiding racist unrest. As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said, we have only to contrast our recent experience with that of France and Germany--the French action against north African immigrants and the way that the Germans treated eastern European and third-world immigrants. The way that neo-fascist mobs smashed up hostels in Germany is a dire warning to us to heed the pressures.
Despite the political claims of Opposition Members, this is a wonderful and prosperous country in which to bring up a family. Millions of people in the less-well-off
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parts of the world would migrate here on precisely those economic grounds. Given the immense pressure caused by economic migrants, it is natural that loopholes and weak points in our immigration law have been sought out. Application procedures for asylum have proved a major weak point. Only last year, some Sikh constituents came to tell me of that very problem, which shows that the Bill is somewhat overdue.Under the guidance of paid Mr. Fixits, the political asylum applicants have begun to abuse the system on a grand scale. There have also been instances of fraudulent multiple applications. My right hon. Friend cited the case in Gravesend of 47 applications being received from just one address. The measures in the Bill will allow us to investigate the veracity of those applications. My right hon. Friend said that, only three years ago, applications numbered 5,000 per year, of which only 25 per cent. proved genuine. Since then, applications have vastly escalated and clogged up the system, causing delays of up to two years. There are now 60,000 outstanding applications. Why? Have human rights around the world deteriorated so sharply while dictatorships have tumbled? No, it is merely that thousands of people are attempting to charge through the loophole in our immigration controls.
I know of many cases in Gravesend. People come to Britain to visit relatives, or as tourists or students, on six-month visas. At the end of that period, they suddenly receive letters from home telling them that their return would imperil their lives because of their political views, so they apply for political asylum which gives them two more years in Britain. Most of the applications are turned down, as the claimants are identified as economic migrants. However, by that time they may well have married and have British-born children. Some 25 per cent. of applicants are identified as political refugees, and a further 60 per cent. are granted exceptional leave to remain on compassionate grounds. The remaining 15 per cent. of applicants appeal, and months, if not years, ensue. At the end of that period, the applicants succeed or are granted exceptional leave to remain on compassionate grounds. The few unsuccessful applicants frequently embark on an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. That shows that, if skilfully handled, applications for political asylum are a one-way bet to overcome our immigration laws. Ministers are right to act on grounds of equity.
Equity must be given not only to the British people but also to those such as my Sikh constituents. We should not overlook what happens to applicants while they are waiting. Some of them occupy council housing at the expense of local people who are in housing need. Many of them take low-paid jobs in the local labouring market, thus forcing down wages at the expense of my local Sikh residents.
Mr. Corbyn : The hon. Gentleman is making a case for the minimum wage.
Mr. Arnold : Opposition Members may laugh and jeer, but labourers in the Sikh community in my constituency do not welcome cheats who force down their pay. Not only do my Sikh constituents resent such people, but such activities dent their belief in British justice and fair play. The Sikhs in Gravesend and Northfleet have accepted the need for tight immigration rules, and they resent what is, in effect, queue jumping.
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The Bill deals with cheats, who cheat my constituents--native Britons and Sikhs. Screams of racism from Opposition Members show just how far they are from understanding the views of their ethnic minority communities. The Bill will speed up procedures, help the real political asylum seekers to obtain approval for their application, limit the scope for Mr. Fixits who batten expensively on human misery, and restore justice and equity. It will close a vast loophole, and it certainly has my support.8.38 pm
Mr. Keith Vaz (Leicester, East) : Exactly four years ago, in November 1987, the then Home Secretary, now the Foreign Secretary, introduced an Immigration Bill saying that it was being introduced, rather like this measure, to provide better customer service. He said that the procedures under the Bill would mean that people would be able to obtain a better service from the immigration and nationality department. In exactly the same way, the Government hope that this measure will mean that applications will be dealt with swiftly and, in their words, bogus applications will be prevented.
We are dealing not with bogus asylum seekers, however, but with a bogus Home Secretary who seems to think that he is in charge of immigration policy. Judging by the way in which he presented this measure to the House, it is clear that he has no understanding of the misery and anxiety caused to hundreds of thousands of people by the operation of the Government's immigration policy. The Bill will make matters worse, not better.
As the House knows, I serve on the Home Affairs Select Committee which in 1988 published a report severely critical of the Government. The Committee discovered that there were more than 250,000 unopened letters at Lunar house in Croydon, and it described the manner in which Home Office Ministers handled the immigration and nationality department as scandalous. Certain targets were set by Ministers, targets to do with naturalisation and applications. Today, a person who applies in this country for naturalisation and who has already waited five years to make an application will have to wait a further three years for his or her application to be dealt with.
That is the problem at the heart of this legislation : the need to provide more resources. The Government's failure to provide them has meant that outstanding applications for political asylum have not been dealt with more speedily. The way to solve that problem is not to pass a measure that has been condemned by every reasonable and right-thinking group in this country. It is to pass legislation that will have a positive effect on the situation.
This legislation is wholly unnecessary. If proper resources had been deployed to deal quickly with the problems at Lunar house and with the applications for political asylum, we would not need to be debating this Bill today.
If the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) is honest, he will bear testament to the fact that, if he writes to the immigration department about a political asylum case, it will take many months for that case to be dealt with. Perhaps the Under-Secretary will tell us exactly how long it takes for a political asylum case to be dealt with. If he claims that it takes a long time because there are so many applications, that too is his fault. He is charged by Parliament with dealing with these matters, and he has
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failed, as have successive Home Secretaries in the past 12 years. They have not provided the extra staff needed at Lunar house. This is why so many critical reports have been published by the Select Committee and why so many independent studies by organisations such as the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants have condemned the Government's management of the service. The customer service provided by the Home Office in respect of applications for immigration or political asylum is the worst provided by any Government Department. If we applied the Prime Minister's citizens charter to the way in which the immigration service operates in Lunar House, the charter would fall to pieces.The Home Secretary today tried to link immigration to race relations. I came to this country when I was nine years old. My family came from Aden in south Arabia, although we were of Indian origin. My parents chose to come here because they believed that this was a stable country and because they wanted the best possible education for their children. They exercised the rights to which they were then entitled to bring us to this country.
When we left Aden, people were being blown up in cars and in the buildings in which we lived and visited people. The situation was dreadful. So we arrived and settled in this country. In 1968, Enoch Powell made his speech predicting that rivers of blood would flow through the cities of Leicester, Bradford, Manchester and London by 1990-91. But the fact that we have had good order in our inner cities has been due to the good work done by members of both communities in those cities. It has nothing to do with the Government's immigration policy.
Race relations are in no way linked to the Immigration Act 1971 or the British Nationality Act 1981 or the Immigration (Carriers' Liability) Act 1987--or this measure. Relations are good because people of good will have decided together that there should be no disorder, and Powell's prophecy has been shown to be hopelessly wrong.
Those who try to play on the prejudices and fears of people of any colour will be rightly condemned by all right-thinking people. If the Government believe that passing this legislation will in some way help race relations in this country, they are hopelessly wrong. I do not believe that the amount of money spent on legal aid--we heard earlier that it is about £2.6 million--is a great deal. I should like to examine the way in which legal aid is dispensed among the agencies that perform immigration work. If there are solicitors who take green form and legal aid work but who do not do a proper job, they should be rooted out. I am prepared to look carefully at the arrangements in our cities : they should suit local needs. There may be a strong case for providing an even bigger grant for UKIAS, which is already stretched--not as a means of taking legal aid from other organisations but as a way to give the service more money with which to set up branches in different parts of the country. I know that the citizens of Leicester would welcome the establishment of a UKIAS branch there, because they know it is a good organisation. It does good work, but it does not want to
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take all the money provided by the Government if that means that other agencies that have built up expertise in immigration legislation will suffer.I, and other hon. Members, and representatives of the carriers and one of the aircraft companies, Air India, met the Minister to discuss the results of the carriers' liability Act. The Minister was rightly condemned for failing to take the carriers' views into consideration. They told him that their check-in staff could not become immigration officers.
In the middle of the meeting, the Under-Secretary produced two identical- looking pieces of paper. One was a genuine passport, the other a forgery. He asked us to examine this example of a forgery. I ask hon. Members to imagine turning up to check in for a flight and boarding an aircraft where immigration officers check the traveller's passport against samples supplied by the Home Office. The Home Office says that it will provide more training, but the carriers want no part of that because they do not want to be immigration officers. They lack the expertise and the inclination to do that work.
Mr. Peter Lloyd : Will the hon. Gentleman go on to recount what else happened at that meeting? I made it perfectly clear that only forgeries that could be identified by a reasonably competent member of an airline's staff would give rise to fines. If there was disagreement, the airline would be expected to appeal to the Home Office, which would adjudicate the matter. I invited the carriers to bring me specific cases. They may have put some in the post to me, but they have not yet arrived on my desk.
Mr. Vaz : They will supply examples for the Minister, and they will say, as I do, that he must think again about the carriers' liability Act. I also urge and beg the Government to think again about this Bill.
8.49 pm
Mr. Jim Lester (Broxtowe) : I am glad to have an opportunity to speak about the Bill. Over the years I have gained considerable experience of both ends of this internationally increasing problem. Far from what has been suggested--that the problem is becoming less serious--there may be 17 million refugees worldwide, but there are up to 30 million displaced persons who are not classified as refugees. The suggestion that the problem is decreasing internationally cannot be supported.
I have been chairman for many years of the African committee of the British Refugee Council whose helpful work has been praised by the Minister. I have also travelled widely to many countries in Africa and south-east Asia with the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs. The regimes in those countries are such that they create a demand for asylum.
The majority of the people who are currently displaced are likely to be neither political refugees, as strictly defined by the 1951 convention, nor economic migrants--people who seek to move only for personal betterment-- about whom there has been much debate. Many of the people are not targeted for persecution, but they have good reason to believe that they will be in danger if they remain in their countries of origin. That is far more relevant to the present international situation than a division between economic migrants and political refugees.
Anyone who has seen the camps in Mozambique, which have been mentioned in the debate, and heard about the
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many millions of people who have fled from that country because of the activities of Renamo would not say that those people have fled for reasons of economic betterment. Some hon. Members spoke about bogus applications. A dispassionate analysis of the situation in Africa, which I know best, will show a clear relationship between war, civil war and breakdown of countries and regimes and the number of migrants who seek access to other countries. Some 60 per cent. of applications for asylum in this country this year were from Africa. They come from countries in Africa which I shall list in order of size. They are Zaire, Angola, Ghana, Somalia, Ethiopia, Uganda, Togo and the Sudan. For some reason or other those countries either have civil war or a totally disruptive national situation which forces people out.Mr. Gerald Howarth (Cannock and Burntwood) : Does my hon. Friend agree that that says something about the utter incompetence of the regimes that run those countries? We are constantly being told that we have to bale them out. Is it not time that they put their house in order?
Mr. Lester : I am discussing the current situation. As some hon. Members have said, terrible regimes in Germany and many other countries have caused people to flee. The greatest problem at the moment is in Africa.
As I have said, I am chairman of the Africa committee of the British Refugee Council. I listened with interest to the speeches by the hon. Members for Tottenham (Mr. Grant) and for Vauxhall (Miss Hoey).
No one supports bogus applications, but the vast majority of applicants are well motivated and qualified. We know from the training they have received that they are anxious to get into work and not to make multiple claims. Not all of them seek permanent settlement here. I have had to deal with Uganda for many years. That country has had regimes under Amin and Obote and now that country has the Museveni Government. One sees the refugees change depending on the nature of the tribal leader and the persecution. The happiest days have occurred when there was an opportunity to go home. People returned when human rights were established and they felt safe. We must look more dispassionately at the problem rather than engage in some of the lurid language that we have heard in the debate. During the Iraq-Iran war many of the students at Nottingham's very good university applied for exceptional leave to remain. They had worked and studied together in this country and the last thing that they wanted to do was to return home and be recruited to fight each other in a war with which they did not agree. Many of the 50,000 current applicants are in such categories.
Economic migration has been mentioned. It is likely that many of those who buy false documents can afford to do so. They are not in countries suffering from civil war and they seek economic betterment in more affluent countries. One can foresee that happening in Vietnam. As a result of the war there, Vietnamese people went to affluent countries such as Australia and places such as California. They write to people in Vietnam living in abject poverty telling of the lifestyle that they enjoy, and that is a clear incentive for people to get into a boat and seek a better life. Many of us are aware of the consequences of that, and, in spite of what the Opposition say about the return of people to Vietnam, no country is prepared to
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take people from Vietnam who cannot be screened as refugees. It is hard enough to get those who have been screened accepted by other countries, never mind the majority of those people.I agree with the Home Secretary about the prospects for eastern Europe. In Russia I have heard it said that 7 million potential refugees could leave what used to be the Soviet Union--if they get the opportunity. There should be no confusion about what we seek to do. The proposed measures must be transparently fair. We all agree that we need speedier procedures, but we must recognise the nature of the trauma suffered by those who leave familiar landscapes and end up at Heathrow and Dover.
I am sorry that the Bill has given rise to such intense political differences. I had hoped that we could deal with such legislation impartially. The legislation should not be linked to nascent immigration fears, and I hope that in Committee we shall seek a wider consensus with those who have been most critical of the Bill and who have the most contact with asylum seekers.
I hope that we can solve the problem of fingerprinting. It is one thing to fingerprint people who have no evidence of their identity, but it should not apply to all people seeking asylum. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Leicestershire, North-West (Mr. Ashby) about the need to give sympathetic advice to people who arrive in this country. Somebody should be there to guide them and prevent them from making embarrassing statements or putting a foot wrong, because such actions could be used against them.
During the debate on the Gracious Speech I spoke about this problem. I recognised that we need to expand our foreign service in the countries from which immigrants are likely to come. Those of us who know our foreign service appreciate that in almost every country it knows the problems, the dissidents and the opposition. Those of us who have travelled in eastern Europe have had meals with people who used to be dissidents but are now running their countries. For example, I remember the President of Czechoslovakia coming straight from his boilerhouse as a member of Charter 77 to have a meal with us. Our foreign service knows what is happening and can be helpful in ensuring that those who need asylum are guided.
We need to move faster than we have done. For example, the time to move on Yugoslavia was when Milosevic started his campaign of hate in 1987. It is now too late to deal with the consequences of that. I got the intimation from my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary that he agrees that we should also devote as much energy and funds to tackling the political and economic catastrophes that cause people to flee from their homes and to dealing with the imbalances in living standards from which the majority of people on this globe suffer. We should not rely on a system of control to stem the potential tide. Several Hon. Members rose --
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean) : Order. The winding-up speeches are expected to start at 9.20. I hope that the three hon. Members who are seeking to catch my eye will agree to divide the time between them. That would give them about six minutes each.
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8.59 pmMr. Elliot Morley (Glanford and Scunthorpe) : It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester), who made a reasonable and considered speech one of the few such speeches from Conservative Benches. I agree that the level of abuse of the system by asylum seekers is debatable. Even the Government's figures show that those granted leave to remain and those allowed to stay because of exceptional circumstances account for nearly 90 per cent. of the applications last year. Therefore, only 10 per cent. were considered unreasonable, and that is not a large proportion.
I do not deny that there are some fraudulent applications that are without merit, and nobody will defend those who apply on bogus grounds. We all agree that, even though there is so much intimidation and fear and such wretched conditions around the world, there must be priorities to ensure that those who apply to come here do so because they are genuinely in danger.
It is worth reminding the House that we have a responsibility. Who sold these countries the weapons that they are using to tear themselves apart? Who burdened developing countries with huge and crippling debts that are causing massive economic problems and adding to the misery and difficulties that they face?
Only a tiny minority of those seeking asylum want council houses and income support. Many of those who seek asylum--I have experience of this in my constituency--do so, first, because they have a great respect for our record of caring for people in danger and seeking asylum and, more importantly, because in many cases their families are already living here. They know that jobs and accommodation can be found with their families, so they will not be a burden on the country.
The less reputable papers have been trying to blow up the problem of demands for council houses. This causes resentment because there is not enough council housing to go round. There is a deepening housing crisis and, even if not a single applicant were granted asylum, that would not detract from that crisis, which is a result of the failure of the Government's housing policy.
For genuine applicants, I am worried by the changes that the Bill will make to such factors as legal aid. For example, the proposal to abolish the green form system, which enabled those seeking legal advice to go to specialist solicitors, both locally and nationally, will make it more difficult for applicants to obtain such advice. In my area, the Humberside law centre deals with many such cases and the nearest advisory centre is that at the United Kingdom Immigrants Advisory Service office in Leeds. I have the greatest respect for UKIAS, which does a good job and works hard. It is to its credit that it has turned down the bribes and temptation to take extra resources for becoming the sole advisory centre for asylum cases. It knows that in many cases that would cause problems for those seeking advice. I am also concerned about the way that people arriving here with forged documents will be treated. I accept that some people try to enter the country on bogus grounds, and that unscrupulous individuals may make a living from selling forged documents and encouraging that trade. The fact remains, however, that often the only opportunity available to someone who is living in fear of persecution and wishes to leave his country is provided by the sale of such documents. A person who is in fear of his life, or who
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faces the threat of gaol or the persecution of his family, can hardly go down to the local consulate, or the relevant office, to obtain proper documentation. Such action would undermine his position and, indeed, put him in considerable jeopardy.The pressure on this country may be increased, given the break-up of the system in eastern Europe and the civil unrest in such nations as Yugoslavia. Many of my constituents, however, have relatives in eastern Europe. One has a mother living in Dubrovnik, and he and his wife are very concerned about her treatment and what will happen to her. It might be impossible for her to obtain the necessary travel documents to enable her to escape from the bloodshed, the chaos and the breakdown of law and order that have been caused by the rise of extremist nationalism--which, in many countries, poses a greater threat than the communism that it has replaced.
There is no need for the Bill, and I am surprised that the Government are presenting it at this stage--although many people have their suspicions about the reason. One problem with the handling of asylum applications has been delay, but that problem could be solved if the immigration service were reorganised so that applications could be dealt with more quickly and efficiently. Dare I add that more staff should be employed?
I do not feel that legislation that could jeopardise the lives of genuine asylum seekers can make up for the incompetence, delay, underfunding and general mismanagement from which the immigration service currently suffers. It has brought many problems on its own head, and it will not be improved by such restrictive and ill-thought-out legislation.
9.7 pm
Mr. Hugo Summerson (Walthamstow) : I am grateful to the hon. Member for Glanford and Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley) for curtailing his remarks. Unfortunately, one of the problems of speaking at the end of a debate is that everyone else has already grabbed one's best lines. I understand and approve of the principles behind the Bill. Without doubt, immigration procedures are abused, as is illustrated by a letter from a firm of letting agents in my constituency : "I have in mind the case of refugees in distress in search of accommodation. In this instance accommodation was provided on a short term tenancy for six months. At the end of this period the refugees no longer were interested in alternative accommodation but demanded eviction notice for the purpose of obtaining a council house on the basis of strict court procedure and its effects What can be observed is that some refugees use the strict procedures for their own purpose which is an abuse of the system and the system working as a social mechanism obliges."
Is this country to accept asylum seekers at all, however? We are signatories to the 1951 United Nations convention on refugees, and we have a long and proud history of offering hospitality to those who are fleeing from persecution. The answer to my rhetorical question is yes ; that being so, however, we must ensure that a proper legal framework exists to deal with such people. Nor must we assume that they are conversant with that framework. It exists to protect them, but they may not be aware of its existence. They must be made aware of it, and proper legal advice must be available to them so that they can interpret it.
Early-day motion 130, in my name and in those of other right hon. and hon. Members, is a cross-party motion
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expressing considerable concern about the proposed withdrawal of legal aid for immigration and asylum advice. In the words of the Bar Council of England and Wales, in its paper, "Proposals for Asylum Seekers" :"it is essential that the advice of an independent expert solicitor should be available to those seeking asylum. Such assistance under our system of law is available to all whose means are such that they cannot afford to pay for legal services and who face serious penalties as a result of legal procedures. There can be no excuse for seeking to remove this elementary protection from this particularly vulnerable class and the Bar objects in the strongest possible terms to the arbitrary proposal which was made by the Government without any prior consultation that legal aid should be withdrawn The need for legal aid is obvious and it is further a matter of regret that the Government is seeking to achieve the removal of legal aid not in the new statute itself but by way of amending regulations. It is to be hoped that this device will not preclude debate in both Houses of Parliament on this important issue."
The matter is indeed being well debated.
On fingerprinting, I fully understand the Government's intention to prevent multiple and fraudulent applications, but I have some reservations. There appear to be no safeguards in the Bill covering the following matters : first, the release of the information to third parties, possibly even Governments in the asylum seekers' own countries ; and, secondly, the consent of the asylum seeker to the release of the information.
I shall go straight to the heart of the question raised by clause 5--is three days long enough to make an application for leave to appeal? Three days is a lot better than two days, but even three days is not quite long enough.
I have reservations, too, about the apparent fact that the immigration officer or the Secretary of State shall send the special adjudicator the application, together with the notes of interview, and so on, whereas the applicant has no right to send any such papers. As Amnesty International puts it :
"When determining an application for leave to appeal the Special Adjudicator will have before him or her only the Home Office's notice of refusal together with the notes of interview and any documents upon which reliance was placed in reaching the decision [to refuse asylum]'."
I have one or two final comments on the Home Office rules under the heading, "Consideration of Cases", whereby
"the Secretary of State will have regard to the following matters".
I shall pick out two of those matters. The first is :
"that the applicant has failed to apply forthwith upon arrival in the United Kingdom, unless the application is founded on events which have taken place since his arrival in the United Kingdom." The asylum seeker may not be aware of the existence of what will become the Asylum Act 1992, or of the existence of the Home Office rules--or even the Home Office.
The second consideration is :
"that the applicant has failed to make a prompt or full disclosure of material factors, either orally or in writing or otherwise to assist the Secretary of State to the full in establishing the facts of the case."
The applicant may not be aware of the various processes involved in seeking asylum.
There must be guarantees of competence, independence and impartiality. Apart from those few reservations, I am delighted that the Government are committed to the convention on refugees, and I fully accept their wish to do justice to genuine asylum seekers.
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9.12 pmMr. Gerald Howarth (Cannock and Burntwood) : I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Summerson) and to the hon. Member for Glanford and Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley) for kindly curtailing their speeches to allow me to participate in the debate. In a sense, this is a revisitation of the subject on which the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) and I sparred on 8 May when he presented his Bill on asylum seekers.
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is right to resist any notion that this is a racist Bill. That accusation, made by the Labour party, reflects that party's paranoia about any discussion of asylum seekers or immigration. Such matters are important to our constituents and they should be discussed as dispassionately as possible. The Opposition do not do themselves, or the interests of rational debate, a service by calling us all names.
The United Kingdom has a record on this matter of which it is right to be proud. It is absurd of the Opposition to suggest that we have not played our part in shouldering the burden of providing refuge for those who suffer persecution in their homeland. Let us take some examples. Since the war, we have taken in many thousands of people from eastern Europe, virtually all of whom have made enormous contributions to the life of our country. I have many Poles in my constituency--as, I suspect, have many hon. Members on both sides of the House. It is right and proper that we should have taken them in. In the 1970s, we took in the Ugandan Asians. The Vietnamese boat people have been taken in. Most recently, the House resolved that 50, 000 heads of household and their families should be admitted from Hong Kong. That is a very good record. Add to that the hundreds of thousands of economic migrants from the new Commonwealth and elsewhere, and I do not believe that anyone can hold a candle to our record in showing compassion and humanitarian concern for the victims of persecution.
Of course, people want to come to this country in ever-increasing numbers. We have had a splendid Conservative Government for 12 years. Every day, the United Kingdom becomes more attractive to hundreds of thousands of people who wish to make their way to these shores. How sensible of them : one cannot question their judgment. But the logic of the Labour party's position is that, if we must take in the victims of persecution, we must take them all in, and that is simply not a sensible or practical proposition. What distresses me--and, I suspect, some of my hon. Friends-- is that Opposition Members do not criticise the regimes from which those people are being forced to flee. Indeed, Opposition Members nearly always request that we should grant further aid to those countries.
Labour Members and the Social Democrats refer solely to the obligations that we are said to have to migrants. There is no reference whatever in their speeches to the genuine and reasonable concerns of our fellow citizens--the electors and constituents to whom we are accountable. In my view, if ever the Labour party were returned to office, it would display the contempt for the fears of ordinary British people--including many migrants already here--that has been the hallmark of Labour Governments in the past.
I think that we all agree that good race relations depend on the tolerance of the indigenous population and on newcomers' willingness to adapt. Attempts to get us to
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change our nursery rhymes and demands that we adjust our customs are not guaranteed to help. The fact that the Commission for Racial Equality has sought legal advice on its opposition to the Bill reinforces my conviction that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has it right. I only wish that he would add another clause seeking to abolish the CRE, as such a step would be widely welcomed throughout the country.Mr. Henry McLeish (Fife, Central) : Disgraceful.
Mr. Howarth : The hon. Gentleman may think it disgraceful, but many people feel that the CRE does not help to maintain good race relations.
The hon. Member for Glanford and Scunthorpe mentioned the existing pressure on housing. I cannot understand how, having acknowledged that we have a housing problem, the hon. Gentleman can apparently be almost oblivious to the impact that the failure to tackle the problem of asylum seekers is likely to have on many communities in our country. I understand that each week something like 300 people from one country alone are admitted to certain parts of London at present. We must address the intolerable position facing housing officers when they try to house those people. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State have done well to ensure that that point is encompassed in the Bill. The Bill is fair and reasonable. It establishes a sensible framework for speedily processing the applications of asylum seekers. It addresses a serious problem honestly and squarely and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on introducing the Bill, notwithstanding the unwarranted accusations about his motives. He will have the support of the British people in introducing the Bill and I hope that people will have noticed that the intransigence of the Opposition means that the matter will not proceed as speedily as it should through the House.
9.19 pm
Mr. Alistair Darling (Edinburgh, Central) : The hon. Member for Cannock and Burntwood (Mr. Howarth) is an example of the many Conservative Members who seem to derive pleasure from deliberately confusing asylum with the more general issue of immigration. The House will have noted that the Home Secretary appeared to derive an unsavoury relish when he cited examples of what he referred to as bogus asylum applications. He appeared to derive pleasure from raising the spectre of millions of people threatening to come to this country. He did that tonight ; he did it in his statement to the House on 2 July ; and he did it when he spoke to the Tory party conference a few weeks ago.
All that is unfortunate because there are serious issues which must be addressed rationally. There is no doubt that the number of people seeking asylum in this country is rising. It is running at about 3, 000 to 4,000 a month. There is no doubt that the number is likely to increase and that the existing system cannot cope. There is already a backlog of 60,000 applicants. The reasons for that are obvious. There continue to be civil wars and starvation in many parts of the world and that means that it is inevitable that people will try to move to countries where they might
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better their lot. Among those people seeking to improve their economic, social and political circumstances, there are some people who are entitled to asylum.Nothing in the Bill will stop the increase in applications. That should be made clear to those Conservative Members who spoke earlier this evening, but are no longer in the Chamber. We can do nothing about the increase in the number of applications. Instead, we should consider how we deal with those applications. Nothing in the Bill will stop the pressure to migrate from former USSR and eastern bloc countries, although we should get that into perspective. I believe that 175 applications have been received from the USSR this year. Although for the most part that pressure will be felt by Germany, France and Italy, that is clearly a problem for the European Community as a whole. That pressure will be resolved only by economic assistance to eastern Europe, to the former Soviet Union and to other parts of the world.
Reference has been made to the rise in racism, particularly on the continent. We should not pander to that racism. We should condemn it and remember that immigration is not the cause of racism. Immigration is simply an excuse for racism. If there was no immigration, those who propagate racist sentiments would find something else. It is common ground that asylum claims take far too long to determine and in some cases that undoubtedly helps people who want to abuse the system. I agree that the procedures could be streamlined provided that there are safeguards. However, instead of that, the Government are proposing to remove some of the present safeguards. It is also common ground between us that among those who apply for asylum are many who are not entitled to it, in some cases, despite their circumstances. The Home Secretary referred to the question of bogus refugees and no doubt the Under-Secretary of State will refer to it when he replies to the debate. It was referred to in the Home Office press notice issued last week which stated :
"The myth is : most asylum claims are genuine, because nine out of ten are allowed to stay. The fact is : only a quarter are genuine refugees."
How on earth can the Department say that, because more than 90 per cent. of the people who apply for asylum receive asylum or exceptional leave to remain? Or are the Government saying that those who have exceptional leave to remain should not have received it? If that is so, why did they grant it in the first place?
What is a bogus refugee? Is it someone who has applied and been rejected? That is an important point, because the Government seem to suggest that, by definition, if one does not receive asylum, one must be bogus. I should have thought that a bogus refugee or a bogus asylum seeker is someone who knew all along that he had no chance and that his application was ill- founded. That does not seem to include the classification of people who were referred to by the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester), who are probably not asylum seekers in the proper sense of the word, but, because of the difficult circumstances in their country, it makes it difficult to return them. Indeed, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State said as much on "Panorama" a couple of weeks ago when we both appeared on it. He must accept that, although many people do not obtain asylum, it would be wrong to characterise them as bogus. The term "bogus refugee" is
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