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I share Opposition Members' anxieties about clause 9. If we take away the right of appeal for people who have asked for their families to visit for legitimate and sensible reasons, we must do more to the mechanism at the other end where people apply. Those of my constituents who seek leave to appeal do not do so because they are not clued in to the fact that if the appeal takes place a year after the wedding it is no good. They appeal out of a sense of resentment. Their families have been accused of being guilty of some crime and they want to clear their name. People who issue wedding invitations are more likely to be resentful than some of the people refused the opportunity to come to Britain. Not everyone views coming to Britain as a great prospect, especially if it is winter.I have constantly suggested that we should study people who issue invitations for family functions and judge their credibility and position in society. I have never been let down in my constituency experience, and I have been bitterly resentful when constituents have been let down because their relatives have not been able to come here for a family occasion.
However hard one tries, it is difficult to find a genuine reason for the refusals. I heard it suggested that some people had been refused entry because they had not sent in their documents. I discovered that there was a preliminary procedure when people looked at the documents and said, "You haven't got a chance, don't bother to submit these." When their documents were faxed to me and submitted from this end of the system, I was told that the case would be considered.
This is not the end of the matter. If we refuse leave to appeal through a complicated legal system, we must find a better mechanism to be just to families who want relatives to join them for family occasions--something that we would think of as normal.
7.46 pm
Mr. Keith Vaz (Leicester, East) : It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester). If only he were the Home Secretary piloting the Bill through the House, perhaps its clauses would be different and we would have much to agree about. There is a clock in the office of the Minister with responsibility for immigration--an office which was once occupied by the Minister of State at the Home Office, who is sitting on the Government Front Bench. The hands of the clock are stuck at a particular time--I think that it is 4 o'clock. Whenever I visit the Minister the clock remains at the same time. The clock, like the Government's immigration policy, is stuck in a time warp, which appeals to the prejudices and fears of a section of the community in Britain.
Mr. Peter Lloyd : I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is mistaken. He always comes to see me at 4 o'clock in time for tea and thinks that the clock has stopped. It is his interest in a cup of tea which is responsible for the clock always showing that time.
Mr. Vaz : I shall take up the Minister's challenge and visit him about another case tomorrow at 5 o'clock and find out what time the clock shows.
The prejudice to which the Bill appeals is typical of Conservative Governments. In 1987, when I was first elected to the House, the Immigration Bill was one of the first pieces of legislation tabled by the Government. I
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served with my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden) on the Standing Committee of that Bill. The then Home Secretary, who is now the Foreign Secretary, told the House that that Bill was being tabled to provide a better customer service. If the Home Secretary was the managing director of Marks and Spencer and was providing a customer service, would he still be in a job? Our immigration service has been in a shambles and a crisis for the past 13 years. Even the Select Committee on Home Affairs, of which I was a member until recently, produced an all-party report which described the shambles at Lunar house when 250,000 unopened letters were discovered some years ago. It is a measure of concern about problems which are indicative of the Government's immigration policy that one of the last debates of the Home Affairs Select Committee with which I was involved concerned a proposal to set up a subcommittee on immigration and nationality. I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Mrs. Roche) is to be a member of that subcommittee, because I have felt for many years that it is extremely important for the House and the Select Committee to take a keen interest in immigration and nationality.It is typical of a Conservative Government to try to rush through such a controversial and outrageous piece of legislation as this in the first year of their parliamentary term. It is typical of them to have done so in such a brazen way as that adopted by the Home Secretary. It is as if the Government believe that they are introducing the Bill to benefit people in this country and in some way to appease some unknown section of the community that is demanding tough new immigration and asylum procedures.
There is much to disagree about in the Bill and if I were to go through every single clause, many of which have already been mentioned, I and the House would be here all night. I am conscious of the fact that I only have a few minutes to speak and in that time I should like to refer to the clause concerning the removal of the right of appeal in visitors' cases.
It must be obvious to the Minister of State that there is concern on both sides of the House about that proposal. When the Minister with responsibility for immigration returns from his supper and replies to the debate, I hope that he will address himself not only to the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley), my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) and others but those raised by the hon. and learned Member for Burton (Sir I. Lawrence) and the hon. Member for Broxtowe, because those people speak with the experience gained from working with immigration cases.
Each week at my constituency surgery I deal with 60 new immigration cases, half of which are directly concerned with refusals of visitors' visas. Of course people want to go through the appeal process because they feel that it is vital that they should. I encourage them to do so because I believe that that is the only way in which we can check and double check on the actions of entry clearance officers.
We have already heard what entry clearance officers do when they interview people, some of whom travel from distant parts of the sub-continent to get there. If they are
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refused a visa they must then send in an appeal form. Those people must wait up to nine months before an explanatory statement is sent from Bombay or Islamabad to the Home Office in London. They have to wait a further three months for the statement to go from the Home Office to the immigration tribunal. They then have to wait for up to a further six months until a date is fixed for their hearing. Those delays are the cause of the backlog of 23,000 cases. Insufficient resources have been allocated to the immigration tribunal to deal with the problem. If the explanatory statement was sent from Bombay, Islamabad or New Delhi in a time acceptable to all, the backlog would simply not exist because people would be able to make their appeal in the proper way.I appreciate that Ministers and the Government believe that if they take away the right of appeal, the backlog will disappear. However, I assure them that that means that constituents will lobby their Members of Parliament and that those hon. Members will write not just to the migration and visa correspondence unit--the convenient place where Ministers have now asked us to send our correspondence--but straight to Ministers. We will expect a speedy answer from them. I do not hold a shadow Front Bench position, but I am prepared to do a deal with the Minister, and, if he is in the mood, I hope that he will accept my bargain. If he restores the right of Members of Parliament to intervene in immigration cases, and if every person refused admission on a visitor's visa is allowed to come into this country if their Member of Parliament intervenes so that that visit can take place--it will cost the taxpayer absolutely nothing--I am prepared to support his call for the removal of the right of appeal. If he accepts my offer, the Member of Parliament would still be able to ensure that cases are monitored and a proper result is achieved. I accept that such a deal would result in a lot more work for hon. Members, but I am prepared to take on such a work load because I am sick of people visiting my constituency surgery, many of them weeping and suffering from deep anxiety and distress, because close relatives have been refused admission for a wedding or to visit members of their family.
It was an outrage for the Minister of State to turn up at the temple in Newham and to talk to members of the community as though he were their friend. He appealed to them about their involvement in British society, but in the same month he restricted the rights of that community's relatives to come to this country. He refused relatives the right to visit the very people in the temple at Brent to whom he was trying to appeal and appease. That is an outrage and I promise him and the Home Secretary--
Mr. Peter Lloyd rose--
Mr. Vaz : I will not give way.
I will follow the Minister and the Home Secretary around the country--I hope that other hon. Members will do the same--and when they turn up at places of worship and pretend to be friends of the community, I will point out what they seek to do under the Bill. After the Bill becomes law--I very much hope that that will not happen--what will be the next thing the Government introduce to restrict the rights of people coming into this country? That is my greatest fear. Recently I re-read Enoch Powell's speech of 28 April 1968. I am proud that the country has been able to progress as
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it has in the past 24 years. I fear that Bills of this nature will set the nation back and create even more prejudices than they seek to avert.7.55 pm
Mr. Mike Watson (Glasgow, Central) : I spoke against this Bill's predecessor when it came before the House in November last year and again in January. I am sorry to see that the present version shows little improvement, if any, on the original one. Hon. Members will recall that the Government tried to rush through the original Bill before the general election was called in April. Although there is no such pressure on the Government at present, they are rushing the Bill through again without due time for consideration. That in itself is a matter for great regret.
I have listened to the entire debate and it is noticeable that a number of Conservative Members, including the hon. Members for Portsmouth, North (Mr. Griffiths), for Chingford (Mr. Duncan-Smith) and for Harborough (Mr. Garnier), made great play of the fact that clause 2 mentions the 1951 United Nations convention on refugees. They did not tell us--I hope that the Minister will do so when he replies--that it is impossible to reconcile a commitment to that convention with the fact that clause 11 puts the onus on airlines and shipping companies, on pain of fines, to prevent potential asylum seekers from travelling to this country. It may not be widely known that fines totalling £40 million were levied on shipping and airline companies in 1991 as a result of their contravention of the Immigration (Carriers' Liability) Act 1987. That illustrates the scale of the problem and the extent to which the Government are shifting the burden of dealing with the problem on to airline and shipping companies. That is entirely wrong.
By preventing political refugees from leaving their country of origin to seek asylum the Government are denying them justice and are in breach of the 1951 convention. The Government have not addressed that specific important issue. It is also important to note that paragraphs 6 and 7 of the draft immigration rules issued with the Bill state :
"In determining an asylum application the Secretary of State will have regard to matters, which, if no reasonable explanation is adduced, may damage an asylum applicant's credibility. Among such matters are that the applicant has made false representations, either orally or in writing. That the applicant has destroyed, damaged or disposed of any passport, other document or ticket relevant to his claim."
Those conditions are in direct contravention of article 31 of the United Nations convention, which, according to clause 2, the Government are prepared to stand by. That article accepts that asylum seekers may, in certain cases, be required to disguise their intentions, or indeed their identity, in order to reach safety from their country.
How do Conservative Members, or indeed the Minister, reconcile that with the commitment in clause 2? We might well ask why the European convention on human rights is not included in clause 2 because the immigration rules contravene article 3 of it which forbids the expulsion of people to a territory where they may be tortured. That is precisely what may happen--my hon. Friends and I believe that it will--if this squalid Bill is introduced. There is more to it than the Government would have us believe.
I hope that the Minister will answer those points. Unless the Bill is amended as we suggest, the Government
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will be in contravention of both conventions to which I referred. They will then be vilified much more widely than merely by Opposition Members.Clause 3 contains the scandalous proposal to fingerprint people who have made an asylum claim. That is a basic and fundamental breach of human rights. Not only those who may apply for asylum after the Bill becomes law but those who applied before the Bill was even drafted will be fingerprinted. It is a restrospective measure which further exacerbates the iniquitous nature of the clause.
Those who fail to comply with the requirement to be fingerprinted under clause 3 will be criminalised. It will be assumed that they are guilty and that they have made a bogus application. At present, the only people who can be fingerprinted under the law in Britain are those who have been charged with an imprisonable offence. The measure breaks entirely new ground and for that reason it is worrying. It is not--at least not yet--a criminal offence to apply for asylum in Britain, but it will become so if the Bill becomes law. [Interruption.] Conservative Members may tut, but that is the thrust of the Bill. If people do not provide fingerprints, they will be treated the same as those who are guilty of a criminal offence. If that is not the case, I challenge Conservative Members to gainsay it.
The Government suggest that there is a danger of multiple applications for asylum or of unspecified benefit fraud. The Home Secretary failed to give evidence of the problem and why it was necessary for individuals to be fingerprinted. It is alarmist to suggest that there will be multiple applications or, indeed, fraud. The measure is more likely to engender animosity towards asylum seekers. Even more iniquitously, families, wives and children will also be subjected to fingerprinting. The implication is that they are out to defraud Britain. Automatically, they are required to prove their innocence. If they do not, they are treated as guilty. The provision to apply undue weight to a failure to report for fingerprinting is equally lacking in natural justice. Failure to report for fingerprinting may be taken into account and used when reaching a decision. It is separate from the decision and from the merits of the case whether the individual who seeks asylum has submitted himself to fingerprinting. That underlines that the Government, their supporters and those who were involved in drafting the Bill fundamentally failed to grasp what is involved when many of the people who approach our shores seek asylum.
As my hon. Friends said earlier, it is not possible for people to queue at the embassy in their country of origin to ask for an exit visa. Equally, it may not be possible for individuals who seek asylum to submit themselves to fingerprinting. They almost certainly have suffered at the hands of the authorities in their country. They may mistrust people in authority. They certainly will not find it easy to subject themselves to human rights abuses, which they seek to escape. That shows a lack of understanding on the part of the Government. The Home Secretary and Conservative Back Benchers live in a different world from those of us who deal regularly with asylum and immigration cases.
Clause 3 is just one of the clauses that fail to identify the priorities which I suggest any advanced society should exhibit to people who flee persecution or who simply wish to visit relatives already resident in the United Kingdom.
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I have many members of the ethnic minority community in my constituency. Many of the cases with which I deal involve visitors. Families who come to me because they cannot bring relatives into this country suffer great anguish. Yet the Government propose to make that more difficult, first, by denying people appeals and, secondly, by tainting those people for ever and preventing them from coming to Britain at a later date.I quote two figures. In 1991, some 8,000 appeals were made on behalf of people seeking entry visas. Some 1,700 of those appeals were successful. That is precisely the type of people who will be denied the right to enter Britain if the Bill becomes law in its present form. I and many others will seek to ensure that it does not. The Committee stage offers us the opportunity to so so. For the sake of the reputation of the Government and of our country in the broader community, and especially the United Nations- -in the context of the convention to which I referred--I hope that the Government will take on board the points that I have made and realise that they are out of tune with what people are entitled to expect from the Government. I hope that they will amend the Bill accordingly.
8.4 pm
Mr. Roger Gale (Thanet, North) : I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in the debate. I apologise profusely to the House for not being here earlier because I had to attend to other parliamentary business. I am aware that Opposition Members have been waiting a considerable time to speak. I shall endeavour not to detain them too long.
Some Opposition Members, including the hon. Members for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz) and for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden), are aware of my interest in immigration matters. I was privileged to serve on the Committee which considered the previous Bill, before it fell because the general election was called. That Bill had my support. It will not surprise the House to know that, having reconsidered the arguments, the new Bill also has my support.
As a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee before the dissolution of the previous Parliament, I was privileged, along with some other hon. Members present this evening, to visit the then east German-Polish border and the Italian frontier. My colleagues and I saw for ourselves the scale of the problem of emigration from the former Soviet Union and from northern Africa into Italy and, therefore, into the European Community. It became apparent to all of us who took part in the exercise that a problem existed on a scale with which Europe has not had to deal for a long time.
Germany is introducing measures to control immigration and tighten up its asylum procedures, which are currently prolonged. Other countries in the European Community--not just the United Kingdom--find it necessary to address this matter. If we do not do so, we will see more of the abhorrent incidents that we witnessed in southern Germany recently. They have been described as neo-nazism but are simply racism by whatever name. We all find that abhorrent.
I studied the previous Bill in great detail. I was satisfied that, broadly speaking, it satisfied the ends that we wished to achieve. Any Bill can be improved by fine-tuning in
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Committee and I am sure that the new Bill will be. Our ends were to speed the process of granting asylum for the genuine political asylum seeker and to ensure that fraudulent abuse of the procedure was prevented as far as possible, given a humane approach.As a constituency Member of Parliament, I have dealt--as I am sure other hon. Members have done--with two types of asylum case. The first is that of the genuine asylum seeker, which we have staunchly sought to promote. The second is the case of those whom we have represented to the best of our ability because we represent our constituencies, but we have done so in the fairly certain knowledge that they have sought to abuse the system. I am thinking of students who live in Britain for some years yet who, when the time comes to return home, suddenly choose to claim asylum. I regard that as an abuse of the system.
I have had to reconsider one issue in the light of personal experience. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester) made a plea when my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary was briefly absent and the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr. Lloyd), was on the Front Bench. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe stressed the need to give great consideration to exceptional need to remain and to a careful definition of the manner in which we applied our asylum rules.
I have had two recent cases. The first was a family who fled what was Yugoslavia to their only known relative and safe haven in the United Kingdom. It was a powerful case. The family's grandparents had been murdered by the Nazis during the war and the parents were murdered during the current disturbances in what was Yugoslavia. They were left with nowhere to go, except to one relative who happened to live in my constituency. I was pleased that, with enormous help from my hon. Friend the Minister and his Department, as well as considerable help from the Foreign Office, that family was able to obtain a safe haven in this country. It was absolutely correct that they should be able to do so. It is a slightly moot point as to whether, under the rigid convention, they were political refugees. I was most impressed by the manner in which the immigration service, the Home Office and the Foreign Office exercised compassionate judgment.
My hon. Friend the Minister knows that my wife and I have been involved to some extent in the plight of Romanian refugees. One case is that of a young man, now 18, whose family home burnt down when he was about 15. His parents disappeared, believed shot, under the Ceausescu regime. His sisters were placed in a convent and he and his brothers were placed in an orphanage from which he escaped. He made his way overland to Germany, where he was resident and seeking asylum for 18 months.
The young man found himself on the receiving end of neo-Nazi persecution. Not entirely surprisingly, he got out of Germany as fast as possible. Following a bizarre set of circumstances, he ended up on our shores and he is currently seeking asylum. If experience is anything to go by, I have no doubt that the Home Office will be sympathetic to his case, and I hope and believe that he will be given leave to remain in this country. I appreciate the sympathetic manner with which the immigration services at Dover handled that case. I see that the hon. Member for Leicester, East has returned to the Chamber following his departure on what was, I am sure, parliamentary business. I find it sad that
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someone who I know pays diligent attention to his constituents' needs and to immigration generally thought it necessary to attack my hon. Friend the Minister, who has given sympathetic attention to such matters over many years.I shall most certainly support the Bill, which I believe to be necessary. In the interests both of good relations in this country and of genuine asylum seekers, I hope that the Bill's provisions will be tempered in future, as they have in the past, with the sympathetic and individual consideration of every case.
8.13 pm
Ms. Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Highgate) : The issue of asylum and its possible denial is of particular concern to my constituents. Hampstead and Highgate, in common with many other parts of the country, has played an historic role in providing a haven for those fleeing war and tyranny. In the late 18th century my constituency was home to many refugees fleeing the French revolution's reign of terror. Some 200 years later it provided sanctuary for those members of the Jewish community escaping the scourge of fascism that was enveloping Europe. It now offers home to, among others, refugees from the African continent and eastern Europe. I am proud of my constituency's record in providing a home for those seeking asylum, as are those whom I represent and, I believe, the vast majority of people in the country.
When the Bill's forerunner was introduced immediately prior to the last election I believe its purpose was clear. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) that, by attempting to blur the separate issues of asylum and immigration, the Government tried to introduce a note of racism. Governments facing electoral difficulty often evoke the image of the enemy without to divert attention from problems at home. It is a matter of deep regret that the House was not spared the Bill's reintroduction. In a multi-cultural society it is no longer acceptable to portray the arrival on our shores of those with different nationalities and racial origins as a threat that must be opposed tooth and nail. If the Government had an impeccable record on discharging their obligation to those seeking asylum, one might be prepared to entertain their argument that the Bill's sole purpose was to distinguish quickly and fairly between those genuinely afraid and in danger of persecution and those who are not. However, the Bill is being introduced by a Government who have already, within existing legislation, returned a number of genuine asylum seekers to imprisonment, torture and, in some cases, death. Therefore, for the Government to ask the House for powers to restrict further the ability of people to seek refuge within these islands is little short of incredible.
I shall list some of the legislation to which we, as hon. Members, are being asked to accede. We are being asked to provide the Home Secretary with the power to fingerprint those guilty of no crime and those who are not even suspected of crime. We are being asked to provide the Home Secretary with powers to fingerprint children and even babies. We are being asked to provide the Home Secretary with the power to
"take such steps as may be reasonably necessary"
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to force an asylum seeker to provide his or her fingerprints. What is the definition of reasonable steps? Is that how those fleeing persecution are to be greeted when they enter the United Kingdom? We are being asked to remove local authorities from their obligation to house those asylum seekers deemed to have access to "any accommodation, however temporary, which it would be reasonable to occupy".What is the definition of "reasonable"? The Government deem it reasonable to leave hundreds of their own citizens to sleep in cardboard boxes on the streets. It is disgraceful for the Government to attempt to blame asylum seekers for the appalling housing shortage as the Government could and should have tackled the housing shortage years ago.
The hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway) said that his local authority found it very difficult to provide housing, but every local authority within the London district is experiencing that problem. This nation is a signatory to the United Nations convention ; the problem is a national one, and central Government should help local authorities that still have--as I believe they should--the responsibility at the sharp end to house those granted asylum. The right of appeal is something of which the Government would seem to be proud. In their booklet "Guidance to Members of Parliament" the Government boast :
"Britain is the only nation in the world to offer a statutory right of appeal over refusal of entry from abroad".
However, they are now asking the House to remove that right. The Government seek to destroy all that makes this country unique and special. That will have direct consequences for those who genuinely seek asylum because, as the Foreign Secretary said, the majority of asylum applications are made by people who are already in this country on a genuine and properly documented basis but who, due to a change in the circumstances of their home country, are unwilling or afraid to return.
I have referred to some of the powers that the House is being asked to confer on the Home Secretary under the Bill. One of the most disturbing aspects of Government policy towards asylum and immigration is the amount of power already exercised by the Home Secretary. Clause 11 of the Bill amends the Immigration (Carriers' Liability) Act 1987 to
"provide that the Secretary of State may by order require persons of a description specified in the order to hold a visa if they wish to pass through the United Kingdom en route to another country." Last week I was contacted by one of my constituents who wished to meet for a couple of hours with his sister-in-law--a Sri Lankan national--who was passing through the United Kingdom en route to South Africa. When I contacted the immigration officers at Heathrow I was informed that such a meeting would not be possible as Sri Lankan nationals require a visa even if they wish to pass through the United Kingdom en route to another country.
While the House is being asked to vote on whether to confer powers on the Home Secretary, he is already exercising them. Presumably, if the House votes against conferring those powers on the Home Secretary, he will still continue to exercise them freely. Therefore, I ask the Minister who is to respond to the debate to give the House an assurance that he will suspend the visa restriction on
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those nationals currently passing en route to other destinations until the legislation is either passed or, as I hope and believe, defeated.If this Bill is defeated and the House refuses to grant the powers that the Home Secretary is requesting--even though he is already exercising them--I ask for an assurance that the visa restriction be immediately dropped. Asylum is about providing sanctuary from tyranny and oppression. This Bill returns people to tyranny and oppression. It stands in total opposition to everything that the House has always represented and, I believe, always will represent. It has no place here. 8.20 pm
Mrs. Barbara Roche (Hornsey and Wood Green) : During the course of this debate Conservative Members have spoken of the asylum record of this country. They have said that Great Britain provided a refuge for the Huguenot community and later for the Jewish community--in which case I have personal experience. My great-grandparents were asylum seekers who came to this country. They sought asylum at the beginning of the century from the pogroms in Russia and from anti-semitism in Poland. Were they here today, they would be delighted to learn that their great-granddaughter had been elected to the House of Commons, but they would be appalled by the fact that we were debating a Bill of this nature.
There is a sense of revulsion against the Bill, not just in communities that have come here from elsewhere but among the people of Britain. My post bag is full of letters from constituents who feel that sense of revulsion.
The hon. Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester) put the Bill in its correct context : the majority of the world's refugees seek sanctuary in their own regions. Most of them come from countries in the south and they seek refuge in neighbouring--often poor--countries. Only about 5 per cent. of the world's estimated 17.5 million refugees try to come to Europe. In Somalia one person in six is a refugee ; in Britain, the figure is only one in 5,500. That puts the debate in perspective.
We can, therefore, discount the Government's suggestion that the Bill is being introduced to create a fairer system. It is clearly not about that. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Ms. Jackson) rightly said, the Bill is about diverting attention from the catastrophic economic difficulties in which the Government find themselves--and they are taking it out on the most vulnerable people who are seeking refuge in this country.
Why has there been such an outcry if this is such a fair system? When the Bill last came before the House and then had to be dropped because of the election it was hoped that the Government would talk to all the interested organisations. Have they? Have they spoken to Shelter, to SHAC--the Shelter Housing Aid Centre--to the Refugee Council, to the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants? Have they spoken to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, or to the church groups? As Amnesty International has said :
"It is a matter of deep regret that the Government has failed to use the opportunity provided by the shelving of the Asylum Bill to engage in dialogue".
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The Bill proposes that fingerprints be taken from people who seek asylum here. No wonder there is such a feeling of outrage. To what end will the fingerprints be taken? Who will have access to them ; to whom will the information be passed? The Bill is silent on these points.The 1951 Geneva convention obliges the Government to accord to refugees
"lawfully staying in their territory the same treatment with respect to public relief and assistance as is accorded to their nationals".
Is it not an absolute disgrace that we have been presented with proposals on housing and fingerprinting which will break that convention?
Why do the Government want to keep these fingerprints for 10 years? If a person is refused asylum or leave to remain, is that to disqualify him or her from applying again in new circumstances--new persecution, new threats to life? Cannot these factors be considered when a person applies a second time? There is a strong feeling in this country that fingerprints should be taken only in exceptionally serious circumstances. That has been enshrined in our law, and it is why these proposals have been greeted with such outrage by so many. Opposition Members have already spoken of the indignity that will befall asylum seekers. Having gone through the process of fingerprinting they then face the new restriction on the right of appeal. The Secretary of State and other Conservative Members have told us that, although a fair appeals process is necessary for the people of this country, we should apply lesser standards to others. Let us examine the way in which visitors to this country are treated. Last year, 1,726 such people won their appeals. Some of them were my constituents. I agree with hon. Friends who have told us why it is essential that the right to appeal should remain. Recently a constituent of mine was refused, at first sight, entry to this country to spend a holiday because when she had come here a couple of years before she had said at first that she would stay for a month. Subsequently given six months to stay, she quite properly left after five, but when she returned she was told that that was a reason to deny her. Was she to have no right to appeal against this stain on her character and on her immigration history?
Amnesty International's document "Towards a Credible Asylum Process" suggests some positive principles :
"if each applicant is given a complete personal interview by the official responsible for the determination of the asylum claim, his or her credibility can be fairly assessed a competent interviewer with expert knowledge of current conditions in the applicant's country of origin should be able to make a correct and fair determination promptly."
That does not happen, and nothing in this legislation will bring it about.
If Britain is to live up to its obligations under the United Nations convention on refugees, we must have a just asylum system. As long as there is conflict or abuse of human rights throughout the world, people will apply for asylum and rightly so. Unless we deal with these applications fairly and thoroughly we run the risk of sending people back to countries where they may be tortured or where they may face death. This Bill makes that risk palpable for many asylum seekers as well as creating terrible difficulties for people seeking to visit their families or to study in this country. I urge hon. Members to oppose it.
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8.28 pmMr. Neil Gerrard (Walthamstow) : This quite short Bill contains perhaps only nine clauses covering substantive issues. It would be difficult to find a Bill containing so few clauses which packs in so much obnoxious and discriminatory material. The Bill sets out to attack some of the most vulnerable people. It discriminates against them, harasses them and, above all, seeks to get them out of the country. The public approach of the Government, as we have heard in the debate, is to brand asylum seekers as liars and as bogus. They say that such people are economic refugees and play the numbers game. The Secretary of State said that there were 500,000 or possibly 750, 000 refugees in Europe. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Mrs. Roche) about the need to take a broader view.
The vast majority of the world's 18 million refugees are not in Europe and, of those who are, relatively few are in the United Kingdom. Most refugees are in the poorest countries. It is a dreadful commentary on the way that the so-called civilised world responds to its duties under the UN convention and its moral responsibilities that a country such as Ethiopia, which has gone through a great deal in the past decade, has to play host to several hundred thousand Somali refugees--and it gets little help to deal with the problem. Several hon. Members have spoken about the Home Secretary's comments on exceptional leave to remain. It is plain that the Government consider that people given exceptional leave to remain are not worthy of asylum and are not covered by the 1951 convention. The Home Secretary said that exceptional leave was given because the time taken on decisions and delays meant that it would be unreasonable to remove people from the country. My experience and that of many people who deal with asylum seekers and casework is that it is extremely difficult to see the logic of past decisions. Often people who are given exceptional leave to remain have genuine fears of persecution. It is difficult to follow Home Office logic in deciding who should be chosen for asylum status and who should be chosen for exceptional leave to remain. I recently dealt with the case of two Sri Lankan asylum seekers. Both had been in the same prison in Sri Lanka, both had been tortured and both arrived here and applied for asylum. One was granted asylum and the other was given exceptional leave to remain, although it is impossible to find a distinction between the two. I fear that under the Bill exceptional leave will become a refusal, the refusal rate will go up and more and more people at risk will be deported.
I should like to concentrate on the Bill's housing clauses which are a catalogue of discrimination. The Commission for Racial Equality takes the view that they contradict the Race Relations Act 1976. It is the first time for many years that a specific group of people will be singled out for lesser housing entitlement because of the nature of their case and their race and country. The Bill introduces discrimination to what is now--I was about to say fair, but the legislation could not be described as fair--the practice of treating everybody under the same set of rules.
When some people--not all--go to the housing departments of local authorities, they will be asked to prove their status. Those who will be asked for passports will inevitably be non-white and appear to have a foreign accent and a foreign name. That is how many local
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authority housing officers will set about establishing whether someone is an asylum seeker. Not only asylum seekers but black people going to housing offices will be affected.Mr. Corbyn : The related problem is that the information held by local authority housing departments could be passed to oppressive regimes which could then seek retribution against their relatives.
Mr. Gerrard : I agree. That was mentioned earlier. The Government should state that there will be confidentiality and, if necessary, table amendments to make sure that that is the case.
The Bill specifically overrides the homelessness legislation and directly contradicts the homelessness guidance code which was issued only last year by the Government. The Bill does not even say that an asylum seeker has to be occupying property but simply says that there should be available accommodation which the local authority thinks might be reasonable. It specifically says "however temporary". That might be accommodation that is available for just one or two days. That means that asylum seekers will have to be on the streets before they are considered homeless.
Even when asylum is granted, there is more discrimination because the asylum seeker is sent back to square one and is reassessed by the housing authority as if he had never been dealt with before. That raises the possibility of someone who had applied for asylum six months before being accepted as a person in priority need. For example, under the Bill, a woman who is five months pregnant might have her application determined six months later. If in the meantime she has lost the child, she no longer qualifies for priority need. What is the local authority expected to do? The legislation implies that she will be evicted.
I have not heard any justification for that nasty little piece of discrimination, the 12-month wait for secure or assured tenancy. Why should people be kicked out after they have been granted asylum? Housing pressures, shortages and queues are caused not by asylum seekers but by the Government's failure to invest. I agree with Conservative Members who spoke about the need for extra resources for local authorities that have to deal with asylum seekers. I have been on delegations which met Ministers on precisely that point. We object to the Bill and will campaign and vote against it because it will lead to people living in squalor on the streets. People will be sent back to prison and torture and many will die. When those things happen, we shall remind everyone who votes for the Bill. 8.37 pm
Mr. John Austin-Walker (Woolwich) : My right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) was right when he described the Bill and its forerunner as squalid pieces of legislation. Conservative Members would have us believe that good community and race relations depend upon restrictive immigration policies. The hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) attributed the fact that Britain does not have a powerful National Front party to the imposition of strict immigration controls. The decline of the National Front owes more to the swamping speech by the former Prime Minister, which led to members of the National Front
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leaving in droves to support the Conservative party, than to any immigration or asylum policy. Who needs the National Front or a Le Pen in this country when we have the right hon. Member for Mole Valley (Mr. Baker)?My hon. Friends the Members for Hampstead and Highgate (Ms. Jackson) and for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) were right to say that the Bill and especially its forerunner were used during the general election to fan the flames of racism. I agree with the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester) that it is entirely wrong to introduce to an asylum Bill the whole question of immigration because the two issues are clearly separate. To combine them is to confuse the issue.
The Opposition recognise that there is a need for a process to deal with asylum applications. It must be based on the 1951 United Nations convention on human rights and it must contain an automatic right of appeal, with the time and facilities to prepare a case. The Bill does not fulfil those requirements. The way in which it drags in immigration law is squalid.
I opposed the Immigration Act 1971, but the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath) had no intention of using that Act to stop people coming here to visit their families or to attend weddings, funerals, religious ceremonies and family get-togethers, or to take away from any applicant to be a visitor the right of appeal against an arbitrary decision of an immigration or entry clearance officer. As other hon. Members have pointed out, the strength of any appeals system lies not only in the right of redress for the aggrieved or wronged but in the fact that it acts as a control on arbitrary decision-making by officials. Those who know that their decisions may be subject to appeal are likely to behave differently from those who know that their appeals are not subject to appeal, scrutiny, challenge or review.
Under the present appeals system for visitors entering the country, 20 per cent. of those whose applications are refused are subsequently accepted, on appeal, as genuine visitors. That is 1,700 a year unjustly refused entry, and if the Bill becomes law, they will have no justice.
The Home Secretary said that we do not need an elaborate appeals system for visitors because visits are not a question of life or death. However, people often come to visit a terminally ill relative. They may be grandparents coming for the birth of a grandchild. They may be coming to a daughter's wedding. These may not be the matters of life or death of which we think when we debate asylum, but they are matters of life for the community and they are an essential part of the community's life. The vivid pictures painted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook and my hon. Friends the Members for Coventry, North-East (Mr. Ainsworth) and for Ealing, Southall (Mr. Khabra) of the way in which the Conservative party, which claims to be the party of family life actually divides families, show how squalid is this Bill.
Tory Members say that we should beware of economic refugees, but the Government and their immigration officials assume that anybody coming from a country with a lower standard of living must be attempting to enter by deception. If that is not the assumption, why is it that of white visitors from America, Australia or Canada, one in 2,000 are refused entry, while one in 50 visitors from Jamaica are refused entry? Why is a visitor 40 times more
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