House of Commons Hansard Debates for 11 Jan 1993

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of children. We asked whether it would be 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, or 12 years of age--right down to children aged two or one, or even babies--but the Government were not prepared to state the lower age limit. Are we to permit the indignity of frightened children arriving in this country as asylum seekers being fingerprinted? That is on the cards.

I remind the House--perhaps the Minister will confirm this--that the fingerprinting provisions are retrospective. Some current asylum applicants arrived in this country three years ago or longer. I know of some applications that remain under consideration after five years. I do not complain about the length of time involved, because some applications require detailed examination and the collection of evidence. However, because of the retrospective nature of the Bill, those applicants--who arrived in this country long before the right hon. and learned Gentleman became Home Secretary--will also have to be fingerprinted.

I hope that the Minister appreciates that we are unhappy about the fingerprinting provision and do not accept that the Government's amendments go anywhere near meeting our objections. First, children should not be fingerprinted. It is wholly inappropriate, disturbing for the children, and unnecessary. The Government have not convinced me or anyone else of the need for fingerprinting other than as part of the process of curtailing individual rights by the creation of a central fingerprinting bank that can be used for other purposes. Even if we cannot defeat this part of the Bill, I hope that it will be radically amended or defeated when it reaches another place, or will subsequently be ruled inadmissible because the Government are a signatory to other conventions--such as the United Nations convention on the rights of the child--which prohibit them from implementing this particularly nasty undertaking.

Mrs. Roche : My hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow, Central (Mr. Watson) and for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) graphically described why the Opposition object so strongly to the Bill's fingerprinting provision. The idea of fingerprinting children is the most abhorrent of all.

I listened with interest to the description by the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) of children being fingerprinted in the United States and of his experience of being fingerprinted in this country so that he could be eliminated from inquiries into a car crime. That was a perfectly natural and understandable use of fingerprinting of a kind that arises every day. There is, however, no way in which the hon. Member for Ribble Valley can equate those harmless instances with the taking of fingerprints of children arriving in this country in a traumatised state.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North said, the Government have not imposed any minimum age on the fingerprinting of children. If the Government win the day and the fingerprinting of children is done in our name, that will bring shame on us all. That is the reason for our series of amendments. I would like no fingerprinting at all, but if that cannot be done, there should be no fingerprinting of children.

Amendment No. 28 has cross-party support, including support from the hon. Members for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) and for Chingford (Mr. Duncan-Smith). It seeks to ensure that if fingerprinting is to be undertaken, an appropriate adult--a parent, guardian, advocate or social worker--will be present. In

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Committee, the difficuties affecting unaccompanied children arriving in the United Kingdom were described. The numbers are relatively small. In 1991, 128 children aged 16 or below applied for asylum on arrival--when they are often traumatised by conflict in their home countries. They may have suffered torture or bereavement. Local authorities face many difficulties in catering for their needs--not least because it is impossible to predict their arrival, or their linguistic or cultural background. My own borough of Haringey experienced a number of cases of unaccompanied refugee children and I know that my hon. Friends the Members for Tottenham (Mr. Grant) and for Islington, North have had similar experiences of these cases. Such considerations led to a certain amount of cross-party support for a panel of advocates with statutory responsibilities for befriending children who have been through horrific traumas and for ensuring that they receive appropriate and co- ordinated services. That would apply to children living in the community as well as to those in local authority care and would extend to representing a child's interests in the determination of the process.

Right hon. and hon. Members may have read in the The Guardian today a persuasive letter signed by a wide range of children's organisations, including Save the Children Fund, Refugee Council, children's legal centre, Barnardo's and the Association of Directors of Social Services. Many other organisations concerned with children and with refugees also support the proposals.

That letter points out that,

"at the moment, asylum law in the UK makes no distinction between adults and children A small change to the current Asylum Bill would remedy that and would be of great benefit to an extremely vulnerable group of children."

In Committee, amendments were withdrawn because the Government promised to discuss the matter with the Department of Health. Since then, we have heard nothing about the progress of those discussions. I should be grateful if the Home Secretary would tell us how they are progressing ; as I am sure he will appreciate, there is a great deal of interest in and support for the proposal on both sides of the House.

It is often said, in the Chamber and elsewhere, that a civilised society should be judged according to the way in which it treats children--not only children who are British citizens, but children who come to this country traumatised, frightened and threatened by what they have seen and experienced elsewhere. That is why our proposal is so important ; and that is why it is so invidious even to contemplate fingerprinting children.

8.30 pm

Mr. Kenneth Clarke : At least the hon. Member for Glasgow, Central (Mr. Watson) made it clear at the outset that the main purpose of amendment No. 4--the principal amendment in the group--was to remove the requirement for fingerprinting from the Bill altogether. The hon. Gentleman rightly anticipated that we would resist that proposal : we believe that it would largely destroy the measures that we have put together to combat misuse of the asylum system.

Let me begin by addressing the main question : why we have decided that we must take this power to fingerprint applicants. Our straightforward aim is to establish a system whereby we can identify individual applicants. We need to establish the exact identity of people who present

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themselves--as people frequently do--with no documents at all, or with forged documents, to guard against multiple applications. Such applications may involve the same person applying in several different identities for the purpose of social security fraud-- there is a substantial history of that and we have recently been tackling it--or the same person trying repeatedly, with a different story and in a different guise, to obtain entry.

If we are to establish the fair and proper system of assessing each asylum claim that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State and I have described, we must first establish the identity of the applicant. Currently, nearly two thirds of asylum seekers at ports arrive either with no documents or with forged documents. In the second quarter of 1992--the latest period for which I have figures--46 per cent. of applicants had no documents at all, 14 per cent. had forged documents and 1 per cent. had mutilated documents. That represents nearly 300 asylum seekers a month arriving in the United Kingdom whose identities could not be satisfactorily established in any objective way.

The hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) gave examples of why that might be. In our debates on the Bill, he has frequently given dramatic examples of escapes by persecuted people who felt the need to destroy their documents on the way. I acknowledge--as has my hon. Friend the Under- Secretary of State--that such cases can occur. I feel, however, that it is naive in the extreme to believe that nearly half the people who arrive at our ports seeking asylum have arrived there in the circumstances described by the hon. Gentleman. The fact is that the vast majority do not turn up in a particularly distressed condition, having either destroyed the documents in the course of their journey or handed them back to the agent who arranged their provision so that they can be used by another applicant. Given that, for one reason or another, those people have arrived with no documents, it is surely not unreasonable to provide a straightforward, foolproof way of establishing their identity once they are here. Let me also remind the hon. Gentleman that a majority of applicants for asylum are already living here. They have entered the country on some other basis and, after they have been here for a while, have applied for asylum. Between one third and 50 per cent. of such applicants now present themselves without documents. The hon. Members for Islington, North and for Hornsey and Wood Green (Mrs. Roche) have described traumatised people fleeing persecution. Many more people who come here claiming asylum have destroyed their

documents--frequently on advice--simply to throw confusion into the system, believing that that will somehow help them to extend their stay here. We need a method of distinguishing the traumatised people seeking asylum from those who have destroyed their documents as a device to extend the time that dealing with their claim will take, and fingerprinting is the most straightforward method.

Mr. Corbyn : Does not the Home Secretary accept that people destroy documents, or try to hide their identities, because if it is known to the authorities that they have sought asylum in certain countries, their families are liable to be taken into custody and may be imprisoned or badly treated?

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Will the Home Secretary also concede that the Immigration (Carriers' Liability) Act 1987, which he supported, encouraged the use of agents and the spiv culture because of the fines that it imposed on airlines? Is not that Act the main cause of the problem-- although it recognised the need for people to use forged documents in the first place?

Mr. Clarke : We never disclose to the country from which an applicant has come that the applicant has made an asylum application, precisely to avoid reprisals in that country. It may be that a small proportion of those who destroy documents--for some reason best known to themselves--fear that somehow the news of their applications will get back to their own country, although I do not know why they should believe that.

Although we cannot specify the exact figures, I think that the cases cited by the hon. Gentleman represent a small minority. We all know that people who come here in the knowledge that they have no grounds for entry according to the rules are frequently advised to destroy their documents on the journey and to leave the aeroplane or port saying that they are asylum seekers in order to cause confusion and delay in this country. We also have considerable experience of multiple applications--by which I mean either the same person seeking asylum in several different identities to substantiate several social security claims, or the same applicant presenting himself with a variety of identities and a variety of stories.

At present, 1,600 cases of multiple application are under investigation. So far, 11 convictions have been obtained for fraud against the Department of Social Security. In one investigation, 15 individuals were found to have used 76 identities and to have obtained overpayment of £80,000 in benefits. The main defendant pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to four years' imprisonment. In another investigation, five individuals were found to have used 19 identities and to have obtained overpayment of £50,000. One individual, with his wife and two children, has been identified as the subject of no fewer than 54 separate files in various identities. I think that that establishes sufficient reason--even on the ground of social security abuse alone--for wanting to establish specific identities.

The Opposition propose no measures to protect against multiple applications. They propose to allow people to present themselves with no identity checks of any validity. Internationalism has become important. Under the Dublin convention, we have agreed that asylum applications will be dealt with by the country to which the first application is made. There is plenty of experience of people presenting themselves to different countries with different identities trying to establish different claims. Our partner countries in the European Community, all of which have the same civilised values as ourselves towards asylum applications under the Geneva convention, are moving towards fingerprinting.

All Community countries, except Ireland, have the power to take fingerprints. France introduced a system of fingerprinting all asylum applicants in January 1990. When France introduced its system it found initially that almost a fifth of the applications involved false identities. When the Dutch introduced a fingerprinting system they found that 10 per cent. of the applications were multiple applications. The Opposition ignore all that. All that they talk about are traumatised people arriving at our ports, terrified of the country from which they come.

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We have already established that 19 out of 20 applications in this country turn out not to be well founded when investigations are made. I have now revealed that a fifth of French applications for asylum are made under a false identity and that 10 per cent. of the Dutch applications are multiple applications. What protection do the Opposition urge against that? None whatsoever. They argue that we should not have this protection because the very fact of taking fingerprints is, somehow, criminalising, an argument with which my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) dealt very adequately.

Mr. Allen : Oh, dear. We have just heard the press release that has been drafted for The Sun and other newspapers tomorrow. The minuscule percentage of people whom the Secretary of State quoted as defrauding social security have been discovered under a system that does not use fingerprints. The question that I have for the Secretary of State, who is a reasonable man, is this : let him imagine that he is being politically persecuted and is fleeing for his life with his family and that to get out of the country he must obtain forged documents, perhaps from dubious sources, and that other members of his family have perhaps acquired dubious documents. What would the Secretary of State then do on the aeroplane?

Mr. Clarke : In such a case, I believe that under our proposed system we would grant that person political asylum.

Mr. Allen : Would the Secretary of State destroy the documents?

Mr. Clarke : No, I would not. I know that to destroy the documents would be of no earthly assistance in obtaining asylum and would add nothing to my story. I believe that our system identifies those people and that they would be given political asylum. I am sure that occasionally we make mistakes, but the circumstances in which such people are returned to a country where they face persecution are few and far between. I have not encountered one such case during my comparatively brief period as Home Secretary. They are not typical cases. I know that there are campaigns when such cases arise. I well remember the Sri Lankan who was holed up in a Manchester church. Although he was passionately believed in by those who campaigned on his behalf, his case turned out to be total nonsense.

The fact is that 19 out of 20 applications turn out not to fall within the description just given by the hon. Member for Nottingham, North. We have had cases of multiple applications. There have been spectacular frauds of the kind that I have just described. Other countries with the same values as ourselves which have introduced fingerprinting have discovered almost straight away that there have been large numbers of false and multiple applications.

What defence do the Opposition offer against that ? None whatsoever. They continue to produce arguments as though 100 per cent. of those arriving here are fleeing from dictatorships and that they are in a traumatised state when they arrive. I remind the hon. Gentleman that three quarters of them have not arrived from anywhere. They are living here when they make the application.

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8.45 pm

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman (Lancaster) : The person to whom my right hon. and learned Friend referred was holed up in a Manchester church with the full authority of the bishop of Manchester and the curate. The curate went back to Sri Lanka with that person and found that there was no problem whatsoever. When he arrived in Sri Lanka the only people who met that person were members of the press--nobody else. He had no difficulties whatsoever.

Mr. Clarke : I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I am sure that, like me, she does not traduce the sincerely held views of those who supported that man at the time. I encountered some of them. They all believed profoundly that they were protecting this man against persecution. What they proved guilty of was naivety in the extreme, a naivety that is frequently repeated by Opposition Members. They have conjured up for themselves this picture of men, women and children arriving here after torture in a traumatised and shocked state. They refuse to take the slightest notice of what we say : that three quarters of those people are already living here and that they said that they were visitors or students before they even made their application. They take not the slightest notice of the evidence we have of multiple applications and fraud, although they concede that there are unpleasant agents who batten on to these people and tell them that they can get them here, if they take advice about how to make an asylum application. They take not the slightest notice of experience in other countries where fingerprinting has been introduced and has exposed multiple applications. They offer no defence against abuse. They present a naive and emotional picture of the applicants and then resist the procedures that we put forward to protect this country against fraud.

It is said that fingerprinting is wrong because it means that people are accused of having committed a criminal offence. It does not mean that, unless that is what they are told. Children in particular will not think that, unless someone has told them so, which encourages them to believe it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley rightly said, there can be few people in this House who have not given fingerprints at some stage in their lives. I have ; my hon. Friend has. It depends for what purposes the fingerprints are asked. In this case it is perfectly clear to almost all the applicants that they are not being asked for fingerprints because they are being accused of a criminal offence but that it is in order to establish their identity when they--as the hon. Member for Nottingham, North says, for good reasons--have destroyed every other proof that they might have of who they are and where they come from. A system without any identity check has been proved to be porous in the extreme and not valid.

It is just possible that people will believe that they are being accused of a criminal offence. Therefore, we propose to present each applicant with a written notice explaining that they are not being singled out and that this is a routine fingerprinting test to establish identity and does not involve any allegation of crime. Without there being any serious suggestion as to how else to identify individual applicants and stop them turning up again using another name, or to stop them applying to every other country in Europe for asylum, using a different story, or to stop them making 10 claims so that they can have the benefit of 10 social security benefit entitlements, I believe that our

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system is the right one to adopt. The Opposition will not face up to the fact that there are such people who bedevil the system for genuine asylum seekers who will benefit, if we get rid of all this nonsense and have a practical system that identifies who they are.

Mr. Madden : What puzzles me and a number of other hon. Members is why the Home Secretary wishes to extend the identification to fingerprinting when his Administration introduced what are called standard acknowledgment letters that include photographs and details of each asylum applicant, including their dependants. That is an adequate safeguard against social security fraud and multiple applications for political asylum. Why is the Home Secretary so enthusiastic about going down the fingerprinting route? I suspect that he gave the game away when he said that this had already been agreed as a general policy throughout the European Community. That I think is the truth. Why on earth does he not admit it?

Mr. Clarke : We are under no Community obligation, if that is what the hon. Gentleman thinks. We are following a practice that other European countries have followed, bar one. It is the only foolproof way of establishing identity. Photographs are not so foolproof. I have just returned from a visit to our entry clearance officers in the Indian subcontinent. I have seen at first hand the way in which applications for entry clearance or visitors' visas are being handled. It is a pity that more people cannot see the process. The criticisms and fears that have been expressed about the way in which applications are handled would be considerably allayed if people could see the professionalism and care with which they are entertained.

I saw cases of multiple applications. I saw a case of a man who undoubtedly was applying under the second identity that he had used in the past two to three years to find a fresh basis for settlement in the United Kingdom. One of the bases with which he was confronted was his photograph. The man in the photograph certainly looked like the same man to me and it looked like the same man to the clearance officer. The man said that it was his brother, thereby seeking to disclaim the close resemblance between the man in the photograph and himself. Subsequent questioning about his relationship with his brother and everything else rapidly revealed that he was talking a lot of nonsense. He was not able to answer the questions in a way which correlated with the answers that his so-called brother had given about the family.

Such cases do occur. A photograph is not an adequate defence. Fingerprints are straightforward and foolproof. It is not the case that the very act of taking fingerprints in all circumstances implies an accusation of crime. That argument is used by Opposition Members, but they do not do themselves credit when they use it.

Mr. Nigel Evans : Does my right hon. and learned Friend accept that most people, certainly my constituents who have read about these matters in the newspapers, would be appalled by cases such as those listed by my right hon. and learned Friend of people who have made multiple applications so that they can defraud social security, which costs the country thousands of pounds? Most people would wholeheartedly welcome the measures being taken by the Government to prevent such fraud

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from taking place in the future. The Government's measures will have the wholehearted support of the country.

Mr. Clarke : I do. I do not think that the support is confined, as the hon. Member for Nottingham, North always tries to make out, to the redneck reactionaries in the United Kingdom.

Opposition Members pay lip service to the view. Of course, they are against bogus and multiple applications. I doubt whether any Opposition Member would defend somebody who enters the United Kingdom with 15 different identities and makes 15 different social security claims. Opposition Members say all the right things about such applications because they know that the view is held not just by shell-back reactionaries. All sensible members of the public know that we should take steps against multiple applications and social security fraud.

Every time the Government table a proposition to deal with the matter, Opposition Members are against it. They retreat into a Mickey Mouse, make- believe world in which everybody who applies for asylum in the United Kingdom is a traumatised victim of torture who arrives trembling on our shores. In so far as traumatised victims of torture arrive on our shores, we give them political asylum. Opposition Members should face up to the common sense of having a system which protects us against other people.

Mr. Corbyn : Will the Home Secretary give way?

Mr. Clarke : Before I give way I shall emphasise the extent to which the Government have tabled amendments to meet some of the fears expressed, although we think that those fears are exaggerated. Amendment No. 29 clarifies the classes of person who will be authorised to take the fingerprints of asylum seekers and their dependants. The powers will normally be exercised by civil servants in the asylum division of the Home Office or by immigration officers at ports. In some circumstances it may be necessary for the fingerprints to be taken by a police officer or prison officer. The wording in the amendment,

"officer of the Secretary of State authorised for the purposes of this section"

makes it clear that only Home Office civil servants will be so authorised, occasionally together with police or prison officers. We do not anticipate having to fingerprint routinely every child. However, there is no particular reason why a child of 16 or younger should not be involved in somebody else's fraud plan. Indeed, children are frequently involved in such plans. It is just as important to establish the identity of children who may otherwise be presented under a variety of different identities. If we simply excluded the fingerprinting of all people under the age of 16, as amendment No. 5 suggests, there would be the danger of deciding the exact age of a child, which could create difficulties in some cases in which there is no documentation. In some cases children will be presented in multiple identities with different fraudulent claims. We are persuaded that it should normally be necessary for somebody to be present to protect the child if he or she becomes frightened or to give some independent oversight of what is occurring. Hence, we have tabled amendment No. 30 to meet some of the concerns expressed in Committee.

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In Committee, my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department undertook to consider including in the Bill a requirement for an independent person to be present when a child is fingerprinted. Amendment No. 30 incorporates such a requirement. The amendment is drawn in wider terms than the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland would like and an alternative amendment specifies rather more tightly the adult who should be present when a child is fingerprinted.

I accept that normally the child should be accompanied by the parents or guardian or, when a child is unaccompanied, a local authority social worker or a person from the refugee legal centre or some other suitable voluntary body. If such a requirement is prescribed tightly in the legislation, as the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland would wish, the effect could be that on occasions it will be difficult to give effect to the requirement or it will cause more delay while someone in that category was obtained. A suitable independent volunteer may be required on occasions, outside any tight definition that we could devise. Therefore, we prefer the wording set out in amendment No. 30.

In this debate hon. Members have expressed concern about multiple applications and possible abuse of the system, but those who oppose the Government have not tabled any serious proposals of their own. Fingerprinting is a straightforward way of ensuring that we know the identity of each applicant. The applicant can then have the case fairly and properly considered. No one has any reason to fear adverse consequences as a result of being fingerprinted by our officials in the United Kingdom when they seek asylum. I ask the House to support the amendments that the Government have tabled and to resist amendment No. 4 and the other amendments tabled by Opposition Members.

Mr. Corbyn : With the leave of the House, I would like to say that the Home Secretary has failed to answer two questions. He has failed to say whether the Bill is likely to lead to the extension of the use of fingerprinting to, in his words, deal with social security frauds. All the cases of multiple applications and so on which the Home Secretary has quoted at length have all been discovered without the use of fingerprints. They have been discovered only by the use of photographic evidence which is available at present on the standard acknowledgement form, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden) said.

Secondly, the Home Secretary referred in a jocular fashion along with several of his hon. Friends to the case of Viraj Mendis. Many Opposition Members strongly supported his case at the time. He sought asylum in the Church of the Ascension in Manchester.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman : You were wrong.

Mr. Corbyn : We were not wrong, with respect to the hon. Lady. We were correct and honest at the time and we remain so.

Mr. Mendis spent 16 years in this country. He was eventually bundled out by the most enormous police phalanx I have ever seen in my life. He was dragged out of a church in the process. He spent a year in Sri Lanka. During that time he had to change his identity every several days. He had to go from hiding place to hiding place. His mother's house was surrounded by--

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[Interruption.] I do not know why the Under-Secretary finds this so amusing. Mr. Mendis' mother's house was surrounded by jeeploads of armed police asking for him and looking for him. He managed to escape and change his identity yet again. He sought another place of safety and sanctuary in another part of Sri Lanka.

Mr. Mendis spent a year of absolute nightmare. The reason why he survived the death squads in Sri Lanka was that he had international support and friends in Sri Lanka. Six people went from Britain specifically to look after him in Sri Lanka during that year. If he was not in any danger whatever, why were so many people and organisations in Britain and in Europe so prepared to support his case? He has now been given permission to live in Germany. Yet he was refused asylum by the British Government.

The Minister should be ashamed of himself. If he thinks that it was correct to deport Viraj Mendis from Britain, perhaps he will have the courtesy to read the information that Viraj Mendis has provided of his experiences during that year in Sri Lanka.

9 pm

Mr. Bernie Grant : The Home Secretary has not answered the points that have been raised by Opposition Members. He stated that in any event three quarters of applications for asylum are from people who are already in Britain as either visitors or students. If that is the case, presumably their identities have been established because they are living in Britain and attending colleges and so on. They are here legally. I do not understand how the Home Secretary can give that reason to support his case.

If the Home Secretary now believes that photographic evidence is not enough to support a case, whether for asylum or anything else, is he saying that people who provide photographic evidence to entry clearance officers to enter Britain as visitors or to settle will be required to be fingerprinted? That is obviously the import of what he says. I wish that the Home Secretary would answer that point. If photographic or other evidence is not sufficient to support the case of an asylum seeker, why should it be sufficient to support a case for settlement or to visit Britain?

Mr. Clarke : Photographic evidence in itself is not always conclusive. I am not sure what photographic evidence we are talking about. Obviously, a photograph is one proof of identity, but if one has a database, it is extremely difficult to check every photograph to discover multiple applications. The entry clearance officers in Delhi whom I visited had turned up this chap's previous application. However, it is not always easy to do so. If one is lucky, sometimes it is possible to do so.

It is the intention that eventually all applicants for asylum will have given their fingerprints so that we have a quick and foolproof way of establishing their identity. Any future applications by that individual will be dealt with in the light of the previous application. I see nothing wrong with that. As we all know, fingerprints are a foolproof way of establishing identity. It merely means that every applicant will apply only once. Whatever name applicants choose to give, we shall have some previous record of the basis on which they applied before.

A tremendous amount of froth has been worked up about fingerprinting by Opposition Members, but they are silent about how we should protect against multiple applications, which plainly take place on quite a scale. In

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the absence of any explanation of what the Opposition would do, I invite the House to reject their various proposals.

Amendment negatived .

Amendments made : No. 29, in page 1, line 21, leave out from beginning to may' in line 22 and insert

"an authorised person', that is to say, an immigration officer, constable, prison officer or officer of the Secretary of State authorised for the purposes of this section".

No. 30, in page 2, line 3, at end insert

"but in the exercise of the power conferred by paragraph (a) of that subsection, fingerprints shall not be taken from a person under the age of sixteen except in the presence of a person of full age who is not an authorised person".

No. 31, in page 2, line 44, after section', insert (a)'. No. 32, in page 2, line 45, at end add and

(b) "dependant", in relation to the claimant, means a person-- (

(i) who is his spouse or a child of his under the age of eighteen ; and

(ii) who has neither a right of abode in the United Kingdom nor indefinite leave under the 1971 Act to enter or remain in the United Kingdom'.-- [Mr. Kenneth Clarke.]

Clause 4

Housing of asylum-seekers and their dependants

Mr. Neil Gerrard (Walthamstow) : I beg to move amendment No. 7, in page 3, line 42, at end insert--

(6) "Dependant" in this section or section 5 does not include a person who has leave to be in the United Kingdom other than as an asylum seeker or a person who has been granted political asylum, or who is a United Kingdom citizen.'.

Mr. Deputy Speaker : With this it will be convenient to take Government amendment No. 33.

Mr. Gerrard : The amendment deals with the housing clauses and in particular the definition of who is a dependant of an asylum seeker. The housing clauses refer to not only asylum seekers but their dependants. I welcome the Government amendment which is similar to my amendment but I suggest that its scope is not as wide as that of my amendment. I shall return to that later.

It is important to clarify exactly who is to be treated as a dependant as such people will fall within the scope of the Bill. While it may be a minor point in terms of the scope of the Bill and it is certainly minor in terms of clauses 4 and 5, it is something that we need to clarify.

We still object in principle to clauses 4 and 5, which deal with housing and we believe that it is wrong to single out one group of people for inferior status and treatment when they apply for local authority housing. Harsher criteria will be applied to determining their applications. They will be eligible only for temporary housing and, once their asylum status is determined, they will have to reapply and be reassessed, which does not apply to other applicants. We argue that that is unnecessary and that it is based on, at best, a misunderstanding of the way in which the homelessness legislation works.

At the moment people have to overcome three hurdles and must prove : first that they are homeless ; secondly that they are in priority need ; and thirdly that they are not

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intentionally homeless. The latter is particularly relevant to someone who comes to a local authority from another area. As it stands, the legislation will deal with intentional homelessness. I believe, and I think that my hon. Friends would agree, that the housing provisions are based on the myth that homeless people, and asylum seekers and their dependants, are responsible for the present housing and homelessness crisis. However, that crisis is entirely due to lack of investment. Although resources may be short, at least local authorities are operating a system which does not discriminate against one type of applicant.

Local authorities should not have any part in asylum control and, inevitably, if they are drawn into it, people who apply as homeless at the housing department will be treated differently if their name is not English or if their face is black. Those people will be asked to produce passports and to prove that they are eligible for rehousing because they are homeless.

The removal of the reference to dependants will at least remove some people from the group that will receive inferior treatment. As the Bill is worded, it applies equally to asylum seekers or to anyone who is classed as a dependant of an asylum seeker. People who have permanent right of residence in this country may become dependants of asylum seekers. For example, it is conceivable that someone might marry an asylum seeker and thus become a dependant--they would certainly then be regarded as such by the Department of Social Security. The Government accept that asylum seekers may have been in this country legitimately for some years before applying for asylum and so it is feasible that that could happen. As the Bill is worded, anyone who becomes a dependant of an asylum seeker will lose his rights and we must safeguard against that.

Perhaps the Minister could clarify the point of Government amendment No. 33 and the differences between it and amendment No. 7. The Government amendment applies only to people who have neither a right of abode nor indefinite leave under the Immigration Act 1971 to enter or to remain in the United Kingdom. As a result, someone who might well have been in the country for some years and have been given exceptional leave to remain by the Government--exceptional leave which could be renewed in due course and which would often become indefinite leave--will not be covered by the Bill.

They may still be treated as a dependant even though they have been in the country for a number of years and have leave to remain. Amendment No. 33 is narrower than amendment No. 7, which seeks to limit the effects of the clause to deal with asylum seekers only. Ideally, we should like the clauses relating to housing removed altogether, but at the very least it is important that people who have rights of residence--people who have had rights to housing--should not lose them simply because they become the dependant of an asylum seeker.

Mr. Charles Wardle : I should like to deal first with amendment No. 33 because that is the one on which the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) sought clarification. That amendment defines "dependant" of an asylum seeker for the purpose of the housing provisions of the Bill in the same way as amendment No. 32 defined "dependant" for the purposes of fingerprinting powers--

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that is as a spouse or child under 18 who does not have the right of abode or indefinite leave to remain in the United Kingdom. Amendment No. 7, which relates only to the housing provisions of the Bill, like amendment No. 33, would exclude from the definition of dependant anyone who had a limited leave, as well as those who have indefinite leave. In response to the question posed by the hon. Gentleman, the exclusion relating to those with limited leave would avoid the situation that could arise if, for example, a woman obtained leave to enter as a visitor and her husband then arrived to claim asylum. It is right that a person in that position should be treated as a dependant.

For those reasons I urge the House to support amendment No. 33 but to reject amendment No. 7.

Amendment negatived.

Amendment made : No. 33, in clause 5, page 4, line 18, at end insert--

( ) In relation to an asylum-seeker, "dependant" means a person-- (

(a) who is his spouse or a child of his under the age of eighteen ; and

(b) who has neither a right of abode in the United Kingdom nor indefinite leave under the 1971 Act to enter or remain in the United Kingdom.'.-- [Mr. Charles Wardle.]

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