House of Commons Hansard Debates for 11 Jan 1993

New Clause 5

Credibility of asylum-seekers

Notwithstanding anything in any asylum or immigration rule, the credibility of an asylum-seeker may not be judged by reference to any of the following grounds--

(a) a failure to make immediate disclosure of all material facts ; (

(b) the destruction of documents ;

(d) political activities in the United Kingdom.'.-- [Mr. Allen.] Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. Allen : I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time. The new clause refers to the credibility tests that will apply to people applying for political asylum. It is another example of law being made outside the parliamentary process. It is deplorable that the draft immigration rules do not appear on the face of the Bill. They are important to people applying for political asylum and it should not be left to us to devise ways of discussing them in the House. They should be in the Bill, so that those who want to can ask questions about them.

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The rules list the criteria that can be taken into account when dealing with asylum applications. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees office has made its position quite clear. It is of the opinion that the draft provisions

"do not ensure the full implementation of the 1951 Convention [relating to the status of refugees] in the United Kingdom and some of them appear to vary from internationally adopted principles relating to asylum and the protection of refugees.'

That is a clear warning to the Home Office that its proposals may not meet international standards. It is not even clear why the Home Office thought many of these proposals necessary in the first place. Earlier, the hon. Member for Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor) referred to the moves towards European harmonisation, although he did not seem too keen to introduce an element of European accountability to this matter. It appears that the United Kingdom is adopting a tougher line than are many of our European partners. In an interesting exercise the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants compared the text of the draft immigration rules with the text of the resolution adopted by the ad hoc group of European Immigration Ministers. There are a number of revealing comparisons between the allegedly hard-line attitude of some European countries and the actual words used by the ad hoc group of Ministers--words with a softer ring to them than many of the phrases that appear in our immigration rules.

The ad hoc group resolution mentions an asylum seeker who has "deliberately made false representations about his claim, either orally or in writing, after applying for asylum".

The words "deliberately" and "after applying for asylum" do not appear in the English text. Throughout the ad hoc group's document one is aware of more qualifications and greater sensitivity in what is, after all, a brutal political area. Far from harmonising our rules with those of Europe, it seems that we are bringing our European partners down to our level--that level being the lowest common denominator.

One of the conditions in the rules is that the applicant "has made false representations, either orally or in writing". That provides no safeguards for asylum seekers and does not mention the motivation that may have been behind untrue statements. So the Home Office could decide to refuse an application merely because of its own misunderstanding that a false representation had been made. Further, there are no time limits on this, so it would mean that the person who had sought entry as a visitor because he did not understand the procedures for claiming asylum, and who had therefore maintained that he would leave the country after a visit, could be refused on credibility grounds.

The Home Office notes to the rules also state :

"Self-evidently, if the applicant has been shown to have lied on specific points there will be more general doubt about his story", but there is no explanation of the reasons why many asylum seekers do not feel secure enough to reveal all the details of their suffering immediately after meeting an official.

The second criterion is that an applicant has

"destroyed, damaged or disposed of any passport, other document or ticket relevant to his claim".

That needs further examination. As it stands, the rule means that if a passport has been accidentally damaged,

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that can be held against the applicant. There is no requirement to show that the damage occurred deliberately. The Home Office notes assume that such damage is always deliberate so as to make it more difficult to remove people if their applications are refused. The other assumption is that passports may be re-used by agents helping other people to escape. Some asylum seekers are badly advised by agents before reaching the United Kingdom.

The third criterion reflecting on the credibility of an application is that the applicant

"has lodged concurrent applications for asylum in the United Kingdom or in another country".

An interesting example of recent pedigree would be that of someone who has lodged an application in Germany and whose close family members have either reached another country or been granted asylum there because of the dangers that they faced in their first country of asylum. Such people may have been persecuted by racist gangs in east Germany, for instance. How might such cases be dealt with in practice?

Another criterion concerns

"failure to comply with a notice issued by the Secretary of State requiring the applicant to report to a designated place to be fingerprinted".

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Central (Mr. Watson) may want to comment on that shortly. The rules go on :

"or failure to complete an asylum questionnaire, or failure to comply with a request to attend an interview concerning the application".

At first sight these last criteria appear relatively innocuous--but a requirement to be fingerprinted has nothing to do with the substantive nature of an asylum claim. The Home Office frequently writes to the wrong address or gives inadequate notice of interview or fails to provide an interpreter. Such circumstances should not be held against applicants. The rules will mean that asylum seekers will be penalised for factors unconnected with the strength of their claims ; and people who have followed bad advice or who have genuinely lost documents will find their cases prejudiced and may be returned to danger.

It is therefore vital that the rules be amended at least to provide the minimal protections suggested in the ad hoc group's resolution. At best, these restrictions should be removed altogether so that each claim can be considered on its merits.

The UNHCR suggests that it is not advisable

"to list the factors which should be given special consideration when assessing an asylum-seeker's credibility. Evaluation of credibility is a process which involves the consideration of many complex factors, both objective and subjective, which are impossible to enumerate. Since all these may be equally important, singling out any of these factors will, by necessity, be incomplete and arbitrary."

New clause 5 is designed, in short, to make it clear that we should not attempt to define applicants' credibility by such arbitrary means. We believe that these are questions of judgment and that if we introduce such rules, mistakes can be made and people will be excluded. Given that these are matters of life or death, the significance of such exclusions must be plain for all to see.

Mr. Corbyn : I rise to support my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) and to ask the House to think seriously about what he has said. It is often not understood in this House--and certainly not in most newspapers--what it is like for someone who seeks political asylum. Many such people feel a sense of defeat

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because they have had to flee from their own country to seek a new life elsewhere and transfer their energies into a different society. Many of them have to travel in great danger.

The history books record the heroic deeds of people who sought asylum and those who escaped from religious persecution in the middle ages in western Europe. Many people fled from Nazi Germany in the 1920s and 1930s and from Fascist Spain in the late 1930s and 1940s. More recently, people had to leave South Africa or flee from oppressive regimes in central and south America or Africa. People have had to flee from the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. There are numerous other examples. [Interruption.] Perhaps the Home Secretary would listen to the debate on the new clause rather than gossiping with his hon. Friends. Presumably he is discussing football results. He should take seriously my description of what it is like for people who seek political asylum because he makes the decisions and he framed the legislation.

The new clause seeks to remove the destruction of documents, failure to disclose all material facts, failure to apply immediately or political activities in the United Kingdom as bases upon which an application may be refused. Let us consider the case of someone who has been consistently opposed to the regime in Iran. He is forced to live and work underground and to change his name and identity. He manages to flee the country, often paying people to guide him at night, and arrives in Peshawar in Pakistan. He then seeks to buy an identity and to travel to a place of safety in another part of the world. That example is based on an actual case.

When that person finally arrives at, say, Heathrow, he would be loth to reveal all that information. He would seek to enter Britain as a visitor before considering with friends the next step and would apply for political asylum. The fact that such a person does not make an immediate application and has destroyed all evidence of his identity on the way here would be detrimental to his case. He would have destroyed that evidence by throwing documents away, flushing them down a toilet, tearing them up or burning them. People do such things because they are frightened and want to get away to a place of safety. If someone carried such documents during his night time journey in Iran, he would be liable to arrest, detention and possible execution and his family, relatives and friends could suffer a similar fate.

I mentioned political activities in the United Kingdom. The hon. Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) and others represent a rather curious lunatic element in the Conservative party. The hon. Gentleman is not here, but I shall later tell him what I have said about him as I am sure he would be interested to hear it. Political activity in Britain is detrimental to a person's chances of gaining political asylum. Is it so wrong for someone seeking political asylum from a repressive regime to undertake peaceful political activities against that regime? I see nothing wrong with that if he had been consistently opposed to that regime throughout the time that he lived under it.

I know people who have been asked by the immigration service what they had been doing in this country to oppose the regime from which they had fled. They said that they had not done much because they were worried about their

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position. That was counted against them. The new clause seeks to make clear and specific what can or cannot be used in forming a judgment of an asylum seeker's credibility. I hope that no hon. Member will ever have to seek political asylum.

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Many refugees have made enormous contributions to science, art, literature, politics and medicine. Many such people hold senior positions in the health service and in universities and other places both here and in the United States. Many of them sought political asylum, but if the judgments outlined in the Bill had operated in the 1930s, many would not have been granted political asylum. If such judgments had been used against people fleeing from Chile in 1973, they would not have gained asylum. There are many other examples. The new clause would make the legislation more credible and would lead to a greater understanding of the needs of people seeking political asylum because it would ensure that decisions were based on the entire experience of the asylum seeker. Many people have grown up in a society in which people have been taught to mistrust officialdom in any form because it does not work for their benefit and to mistrust anyone in uniform because he may have taken part in attacks or murders of family members. Political asylum seekers with such experiences are unlikely to reveal their entire life story at the first point of entry ; such people are often psychologically disturbed and would be incapable of doing so anyway.

We seek to ensure that all such factors are taken into account and that officers conducting interviews do not try to extract all the information at the first point. People must be given a chance to recover from the nightmare of the journey and the reality of the escape. They should be allowed to consider their situation and their safety and that of their families and friends who may still be living under a totalitarian regime. Unhappily, the world contains far too many such regimes and many countries in western Europe and the United States support them economically and militarily. We should think of the wider implications of what we say and do. I hope that the Minister will recognise the force of the arguments for the new clause.

Mr. Charles Wardle : I do not disagree with the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) about some genuinely harrowing cases to which he has alluded in the debate and raised more than once in Committee. I hope that he appreciates that the Bill will enable us to move more swiftly through unfounded cases so that we can deal more rapidly with precisely the sort of harrowing case that he describes. As I said earlier, about 75 per cent. of those who apply for asylum have already established themselves here as visitors or in some other way.

As the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) will appreciate, the rules that he criticised have to be laid before Parliament and if prayed against can be debated and, in theory, can be disapproved. The new clause is misconceived and impractical, as I shall seek to explain. It would undermine the provisions of the draft rules relating to credibility. There are several reasons for the way in which the factors are set out in the rules.

First, the rules make clear to applicants and advisers and to those determining the claim the factors that may be considered important. In Committee, Opposition Members frequently asserted that an asylum seeker

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arriving here may be unfamiliar with our procedures and may not know what is important and what is not in presenting his case. The rules form a useful guide to the points that may be deemed of interest. Secondly, the rules are drafted to address quite specific problems of which we have become aware through vast experience of processing claims.

Let me give one or two examples. The first is of a person who applies for asylum only after several unsuccessful attempts to extend his or her stay in some other capacity and having exhausted all other rights of appeal under the normal immigration laws, or where there has been no change in the situation in the country of origin. Another is of the person whose story changes markedly when he is confronted with a rebuttal of part of his original story, which changes several times more with each successive interview. Another is of the person who destroys identification documents en route to, or after entering, the United Kingdom in order to delay removal. I understand that that will happen for other reasons, as the hon. Member for Islington, North has pointed out.

We fully appreciate the importance of an asylum claim and of making the right decision. For those reasons, it is vital that all the relevant factors of a case are examined. The general credibility of the applicant is crucial to the eventual decision. Therefore, it is somewhat unworldly to suggest that certain key factors should be taken entirely out of the frame and should play no part in reaching the final decision. It is surely natural to question why a person who has been here for two years suddenly makes an asylum claim in the absence of any obvious changes in his circumstances.

I have stressed on many occasions, and I am pleased to do so again, that the draft rules are framed in conditional language. Some factors may count against an applicant if no reasonable explanation is given. If a credible explanation is forthcoming, applicants may considerably enhance the strength of their claim to asylum. However bizarre the behaviour may have been, if there is a credible explanation, that will be taken into account, and so it should be.

However, it is simply not an option to ignore the fact that someone has deliberately sought to hide his identity or the fact that he has taken part in political activities in which he has never previously taken an interest and thereby placed himself in a particularly difficult situation. It is not unreasonable to explore such behaviour and seek explanations of it as part of the overall assessment of the case. That is what the draft rules provide for. For those reasons, I urge the House to reject new clause 5.

Question put and negatived.

Clause 3

Fingerprinting

Mr. Mike Watson (Glasgow, Central) : I beg to move amendment No. 4, in page 1, line 20, leave out from line 20 to line 47 on page 2.

Mr. Deputy Speaker : With this it will be convenient to take the following amendments : Government amendments Nos. 29 and 30. No. 5, in page 2. line 3, at end insert

; except that no claimant or dependant under the age of 16 years shall be fingerprinted.'.

No. 6, in page 2, line 3, at end insert

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; except that the claimant of dependant under the age of 18 shall not be fingerprinted unless in the presence of their parent or guardian or social worker.'.

Government amendments Nos. 31 and 32.

No. 28, in page 2, line 47, at end insert--

(11) Where a child under 16 years of age is an asylum seeker or is the dependent of an asylum seeker, an appropriate adult shall be present during the fingerprinting procedure ; and an "appropriate adult" is a parent or guardian, advocate, social worker aged 18 or over and who is not employed by the police or immigration services'.'

Mr. Watson : Of all the clauses in the Bill, clause 3 is seen by Opposition Members and many outside as the most offensive. That is one reason why it was vigorously opposed and resisted in Committee. Despite some minor concessions squeezed from the Minister, which appear in the form of four Government amendments, the Opposition are no more convinced than they were when the Bill was first published that fingerprinting of asylum seekers and their relatives is anything other than a denial of basic civil liberties.

Amendment No. 4 offers the Government an honourable escape from the opprobrium that has been heaped upon them by the simple device of deleting the whole clause from the Bill. That would be the easy way out, although we do not anticipate that the Government will accept it, and it would go some way to easing the fears of a wide range of organisations and concerned individuals who have expressed their disgust at the relish with which the Home Secretary and his colleagues appear to wish to criminalise every man, woman and child who arrives on our shores seeking sanctuary.

It is no use the Home Secretary doing what his Minister did in Committee and consoling himself with the thought that fingerprinting is not a humiliating process or, as the Minister said, an unpleasant one. People associate fingerprinting with criminality in this country because hitherto only those charged with, or convicted of, a criminal offence have been forced to submit to it. When this odious Bill becomes law, the situation will be dramatically changed and, on a wide-ranging basis, fingerprinting will be carried out on every asylum seeker.

Opposition Members stressed consistently, both on Second Reading and in Committee, that the provision is not even necessary because the powers that it will bestow already exist. Under the Immigration Act 1971 and the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, fingerprinting is carried out when an offence has been committed or, in some circumstances, when a person is charged with an offence. I see that I have the honour of facing the Home Secretary this evening. I do not know whether he believes that all asylum seekers would be criminalised by the introduction of fingerprinting, but that is not of much significance. What is important is that those facing the fingerprinting process will feel that they have been criminalised, will feel guilty, and will feel that they have to prove themselves innocent when they arrive here. Perhaps even more importantly, the people of Britain will view such people as criminals because that is the way in which we customarily view those who are subjected to fingerprinting. Only rarely have people been fingerprinted and then not been charged with a fairly serious offence. That is undoubtedly how it will be perceived by the British people.

It may be that that latter point serves the Government's overall strategy which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) said in the opening debate, has been

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aimed at characterising all applicants as frauds, scroungers or impostors. It is assumed that their applications are bogus. Only on rare occasions are people treated at face value when they arrive here. The situation will worsen dramatically once the Bill becomes law.

Any country that claims to be a democracy should be able to offer asylum seekers more than that assumption when they arrive at its shores. Neither I nor my colleagues have ever argued, either here or in Committee, that there are not some instances of people applying for asylum in a less-than-honest manner. Sometimes there are multiple claims. That has always happened. What we are talking about here is the scale of the problem. Our argument has always been that the scale fails to justify the knee-jerk reaction embodied by the Bill. Furthermore, it comes nowhere near justifying the universal assumption of guilt being applied to each and every asylum seeker. I do not believe for a moment that much of this will make any impression on the Home Secretary or his colleagues. They have set out their stall clearly. Many of them were involved with the Asylum Bill that was debated last year. Their aim has been clear, and in Committee they have wavered only slightly.

This is a modest amendment in the face of widespread opposition both inside and outside the House. The latest event in that process is what we are seeing this afternoon, with the effective lobby organised by the anti- racist alliance, as a result of which many people were here lobbying their Members of Parliament. I am sure that Conservative Members felt the sharp end of the tongues of many who feel themselves and their families threatened by the Bill. That process has gone on for several months and doubtless will continue even after the Bill is on the statute book. It is unfortunate that the Government have failed to take account of the widespread views of people, but once they have set their course, they sit back rigidly to fight rather than listening to the arguments put by others.

One of the minor concessions made by the Minister in Committee was his promise of what he called a "tighter form" of words in terms of who will be permitted to fingerprint asylum seekers. The wording is rather loose, with its references to other persons, apart from policemen, immigration officers and prison officers, being permitted by the Home Secretary to take fingerprints. We pressed the Minister strongly on that and, although Government amendment No. 29 clarifies the procedure and goes some way towards restricting those who can become involved, it is not clear what it meant. The amendment states that persons other than those to whom I referred--policemen, immigration officers and prison officers--are officers of the Secretary of State. However, all those people are already officers of the Secretary of State, and it is not clear why the other category is needed. I do not understand why it has to be left so vague. The Minister said in Commitee that he did not imagine that the practice would be applied widely. If that is so, why not restrict it to the three categories which, reasonably, have been included in some detail?

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Those who framed the 1991 Bill, when the previous Conservative Government were in office, did not seek to drag into the net of fingerprinting the relatives of asylum seekers. Yet this Bill seeks to cast the net considerably wider to ensnare the dependants of asylum seekers.

In Committee, my hon. Friends and I left the Minister in no doubt about the consequences of clause 3. Indeed, we highlighted in considerable detail the effect that it would have on children. I do not propose to go into that detail again because it would seem that we advanced our arguments to little avail. Some sympathy was forthcoming, however, from some Conservative Members in Committee. It is fair to say that some of them participated in debates on the clause. None the less, I regard the Government's concession to be of little value.

My hon. Friends and I argued in Committee that children should be excluded from fingerprinting, and we talked about children of certain ages. The Government's amendment does not represent an attempt to meet our arguments and it is clear that they remain resolute in their aim to exclude no children.

I find little solace in the Minister saying, in effect, that it is not the Government's intention routinely to fingerprint children. Under the Bill, any child who arrives at our shores can be fingerprinted if those who receive the child feel that that is necessary. The door that faces those who arrive in the United Kingdom is open far too wide. Unfortunately, the Minister's undertaking to produce an amendment to meet our fears has not been fulfilled. Government amendment No. 30 provides that children under the age of 16 years who are fingerprinted should be accompanied by someone who is termed to be

"a person of full age who is not an authorised person." That is a welcome concession, but it does not go far enough. It means that all children will or can be fingerprinted. It goes only part of the way to allaying our fears. Further, it goes only part of the way to meeting the commitment that my colleagues and I believe that the Minister entered into when he responded to the debates on fingerprinting in Committee.

The Government's amendment does not define who the accompanying adult should be. My hon. Friends and I and the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) introduced amendments in Committee which were considerably more detailed and referred exactly to who the accompanying adult should be. Under the Government's definition of who an "authorised person" should be in amendment No. 29, it follows that any adult apart from those referred to who happened to be passing at the time could, in theory, be asked by the officers of the immigration authorities to witness the fingerprinting of a child under the age of 16. The only people excluded are the officers of the Secretary of State. In theory, anyone else could be brought in as a witness.

Surely that is unsatisfactory. That is leaving aside Muslim girls and women who, due to their religion, could become most distressed on being faced with fingerprinting by a man or by being accompanied by a male person. If a child is to be accompanied, and if the provision is to have any meaning, the accompanying adult should be the parent or guardian. It should be a person who the child knows. At the very least, it should be someone who has experience of asylum legislation, of some aspects of social

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work care and of the feelings of children in what will be inevitably a distressing situation, quite apart from the actual fingerprinting.

We are disappointed with the Government's response. There must be some assurance that the person accompanying the child will provide some reassurance to the child. It should be someone in whom the child can have some confidence and feel able to turn to in what will be a difficult situation.

In contrast to Government amendment No. 30 there is amendment No. 28, which offers a much more useful definition of the sort of person who should be permitted to accompany a child in these circumstances. It should be made clear that the accompanying person should have some knowledge of child welfare and of asylum procedures. It is made clear in amendment No. 28 who the accompanying adult should be. The amendment is consistent with the views that were expressed by many Opposition Members in Committee. To provide that someone should be an authorised person and not to go any further fails to secure what we regard as the safeguards that are necessary to build confidence in a child. The Home Secretary must make clear why he feels that Government amendment No. 30 is adequate in that context. It would have been far better if children below the age of 16 had been excluded. That has not happened, and that is regrettable. The impression that has been gained by my colleagues and I is that the Government failed to appreciate the situation that will face children who are fingerprinted. There has been no adequate explanation of why the Bill requires children to be fingerprinted when the previous Bill did not. The Government have failed to give serious thought to the awkward position in which they are placing children.

The Government are over-reacting in believing that it is necessary to go to such lengths. The provisions in clause 3 are distasteful. Our relations with other European countries may lead to certain obligations--in other words, we are seeing an alarming drift. I was not assured by the responses of the Minister in Committee about the exchange of computerised information that may take place on asylum seekers. It will become increasingly difficult for people outwith the European Community to enter any of the EC countries, and that is a matter of great regret. The clause cuts across what has been seen in some senses as a commitment by the United Kingdom to many parts of the developing world, not least those which were part of the Commonwealth.

The amendments highlight the Government's insensitivity to the needs of asylum seekers when they come to the United Kingdom and the Government's failure to grasp their obligations under international conventions. We debated at length in Committee the 1951 convention, which should be taken into account, and the United Nations convention on the rights of the child, which would outlaw the taking of fingerprints if the Government were prepared to be bound by it in relation to the inhumane and cruel treatment that the convention seeks to circumscribe. It is not surprising that the Government have decided not to be so bound, but it is regrettable. We oppose most vigorously the Government's fundamental approach to fingerprinting.

Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) : Much was said in Committee--the argument has been advanced again this

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evening--to the effect that fingerprinting is associated with criminality. But I was fingerprinted when my car was broken into. That was done to ensure that my prints were excluded from any others on the car. When my grandparents' home was the scene of a robbery, they were fingerprinted to exclude them from any possibility of being associated with the prints of those who broke into the house. There are, therefore, aspects of fingerprinting that are good, to which no credence is given by Opposition Members.

When I was in the United States last year I saw many children--they were accompanied by mums or other members of the family--who were lining up voluntarily to have their fingerprintes taken because of the rising problem -- [Interruption.] Perhaps hon. Members will agree to listen the second time around. They may learn something this time. Children were being fingerprinted because of the rising incidence of child abduction. The fingerprint records mean that such children can be traced at a later date. People thought such fingerprinting to be a good idea. In the culture of the United States--indeed, in our culture too--if someone has his fingerprints taken it does not necessarily mean that he has committed a criminal act, or even that people might think that he had done so.

Mrs. Roche : I have listened to the hon. Gentleman with great interest. Does he think that there is a difference between parents in the United States accompanying their children during fingerprinting as part of a voluntary exercise, and the horror felt by children who are fleeing persecution, civil war or torture and are confronted by figures in authority--however kind or benevolent--who insist on taking their fingerprints?

Mr. Evans : I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her remarks. I have tried to show that the act of fingerprinting does not necessarily mean that the person has committed a criminal act. I recognise the trauma of refugees coming to this country, but surely having their fingerprints taken would be one of the least worrying acts that they will have faced during the past four, five or 10 years. People flee from their own countries because of persecution, so having their fingerprints taken in this country would be the least of their concerns.

I believe that the Government's amendment will be beneficial. In Committee many of my hon. Friends made known their concern that someone in uniform might, in certain circumstances, worry some refugees. My right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary has dealt with that specific point and we are grateful to him for that. We have no qualms about his amendment. Opposition Members have blown the fingerprinting issue out of all proportion. Refugees coming to this country will have no cause for concern at having their fingerprints taken.

Mr. Maclennan : It would be ungracious of me not to acknowledge that the Government have moved some way towards fulfilling their undertaking in Committee to introduce an amendment to deal with the problem of children being fingerprinted. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Central (Mr. Watson) well described the limits of the Government's concession and properly drew attention to the doubt whether it goes far enough.

In answer to the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans), may I say that one reason why people have focused on the fingerprinting issue is that there is a much

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more widespread concern about the treatment of children in general under the Bill. During the Committee stage of this Bill and its predecessor, that concern was manifestly shown on all sides of the House, not least by the hon. Member for Ribble Valley and other Conservative Members. I confess that I had hoped that the Government would recognise the advantage of supporting young children seeking asylum and that they would move some way towards the appointment of an advocate or social worker to look after them during consideration of their asylum applications. I still hope that that matter will be considered in another place.

These amendments inevitably are confined to the issue of fingerprinting. I agree with the hon. Member for Glasgow, Central that the way that the Government have drafted their amendment would open the door to inviting almost anyone--perhaps a secretary in the next office who is not technically an officer of the Secretary of State--to witness what was being done. That is not what lay behind the original proposition. We did not want to ensure that the circumstances were regular in a purely legal sense ; we wanted to ensure that a young person, who might well be fleeing from the circumstances described by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Central, did not view the act of fingerprinting as a sign of hostility by those handling the case.

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A number of questions arise about the fingerprinting of children. The Minister said in Committee that he would consider specifying the locations where fingerprinting could take place. He said : "It is easier for all concerned if prints can be taken in a variety of suitable locations by trained personnel."--[ Official Report, Standing Committee A, 19 November 1992 ; c.194.]

There is no amendment on the Order Paper to put that statement into practice. It would be helpful if the Minister said again that that is the intention and that fingerprinting will be done only at a number of properly supervised locations--presumably, ports of entry, the immigration and nationality department, perhaps Home Office public inquiry offices--and that they will be taken only in connection with asylum applications. None of that has been spelt out in the primary legislation. Perhaps it is not important that it is, but it should certainly be clear beyond argument that that is the firm intention and policy of the Home Office.

I prefer the wording of amendment No. 28, which was tabled by myself and hon. Members from both sides of the House, to that of the Government amendment. However, I do not intend to press my amendment over the Government's amendment--at least, not until the Minister has explained why he has chosen such extraordinarily wide language to meet the concerns expressed in Committee and why he did not think it appropriate to ensure that the person who is to accompany a child is supportive in some way, and not merely a witness to the event.

Mr. Corbyn : I endorse the comments of my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Glasgow, Central (Mr. Watson) and the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan). There are serious concerns about the fingerprinting of asylum seekers. The hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) portrayed a picture of lines of

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happy children in United States' supermarkets queueing up to be fingerprinted, having had the position fully explained to them. That may be true. However, in this country even when children are fingerprinted simply to eliminate them from inquiries--to protect them--they are worried about it. It has to be carefully explained to them why they must be fingerprinted. People allow themselves to be fingerprinted only with the greatest reluctance, even when it is in their own interests. The hon. Gentleman's example is not suitable as support for the case for fingerprinting children seeking political asylum. Most of them do not have English as their first language and they may not even speak it at all. Their only experience of fingerprinting will have been in extremely hostile and dangerous circumstances.

There is also the question why fingerprinting is being done in the first place. In Committee on both this and the original Bill, much concern was expressed about the effects of fingerprinting on children and why it need be done. The Minister's predecessor, the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr. Lloyd), said :

"Fingerprinting will maintain our system's integrity and help check cases where there is evidence of multiple social security claims that is what it is intended to do."-- [Official Report, Standing Committee B, 28 November 1991 ; c. 61.]

Those remarks related to the original Bill, which fell because of the onset of the general election.

The new Bill has brought the return of the whole fingerprinting issue. We were told repeatedly in Committee that the purpose of fingerprinting was nothing more than to check against multiple applications for political asylum, yet when introducing the Bill the right hon. Member for Mole Valley (Mr. Baker) spent a great deal of time explaining that multiple social security applications were the real reason for it. He could not provide details, state their total volume, or confirm the level of fraud. Happily, that individual has gone on to do nothing and is no longer a Government Minister--for which we are all grateful.

When the hon. Member for Fareham made his statement in Committee, I believe that he let the cat out of the bag. While the real purpose of introducing fingerprinting is to check against multiple applications, with the very existence of that fingerprinting bank in the Home Office, what is there to stop the Home Secretary's friend, the Secretary of State for Social Security--after reading exaggerated stories in the Daily Mail and other newspapers--deciding that it is necessary to check on social security fraud and to introduce a little Bill giving social security inspectors the right to fingerprint people during the course of their investigations, to eliminate them from inquiries?

The public take their civil liberties and the fingerprinting issue very seriously. I doubt that they accept that the Government amendments go anywhere near meeting the wide range of concerns and opinions expressed on Second Reading and in Committee.

All that has been said in answer to criticisms from the children's legal centre and a number of other organisations concerned with child welfare is that a suitable adult must be present during fingerprinting. Obviously, that is better than no adult or independent person being present--but it would be even better if there were no fingerprinting of children at all.

At no stage has the Home Secretary or his Ministers said what will be the minimum age for the fingerprinting

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