---

Mr. Straw: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. There is no need for this measure to be controversial. There is agreement across the Floor--[Interruption.] Oh yes, there is agreement on the need to cut abuse and delays, while meeting our international obligations. The issue is how that should be achieved; how that blannce between firmness and fairness should be struck.

I shall now spell out why the Bill needs the scrutiny of a Special Standing Committee.

Sir Peter Emery: (Honiton) If the hon. Gentleman has finished his diatribe about the Special Standing Committee, may I say that it would have been fair of him to point out one or two matters that, for some reason, he found it better to neglect? It was not at the suggestion of any person.

Mr. Straw: Where is the question?

Sir Peter Emery: I am asking you a question so that you understand what you are doing wrong. [Interrup[tion.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): Order.

Sir Peter Emery: First, does the hon. gentleman understand only too clearly that the letter I wrote to his leader starts with the words:

"I refrained from interrupting your speech"?

It was the speech of the Leader of the Opposition that brought about the letter. It was not anything to do with the Government Front-Bench team or myself. That is quite clear.

Secondly, does the hon. gentleman understand that, in fact, the entire proceedings of the committee's meetings, which I chaired on both poccasions, made it absolutely clear, as i said in the letter--which again was neglected--that

"Apart from the Handful of Bills each Session which excite great party political controversy, there are many which, though controversial in parts involve no party commitment".

If there was ever any proof that this Bill--

11 Dec 1995 : Column 716

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The right hon. Gentleman has been in the House a very long time, and he knows that interventions should last about a minute. So far, I have given him the latitude of just over two minutes. I hope that he will be winding up his intervention immediately.

Sir Peter Emery: I understand only too well, and will do so, but I have not interrupted a number of times, although there have been many comments about what I have said.

Will the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) understand that the majority of members of the Procedure Committee never suggested that this sort of controversial Bill should go to a Special Standing Committee.

Mr. Straw: The right hon. Gentleman took a very long time to get to the point. Given the length of that intervention, he was wise not to intervene on my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. [Hon. Members: "Answer."] I have given the answer. It is in the right hon. Gentleman's report and in the Standing Orders, the change to which he moved in 1987.

Let me explain why we need a Special Standing Committee. We need to know why the 1993 Act has failed. We need much better evidence about the scale of the problem, and why enforcement is so poor in so many areas. We need to know whether the proposed offences aimed at racketeering will be effective. We also need an examination of other measures that might be taken, such as reception centres and the registration of so-called asylum advisers, to exclude the unscrupulous self-styled advice centres that make money from other people's misery.

The Secretary of State said in his statement three weeks ago that the 1993 Act had not worked as intended because

"we did not anticipate at the time that that measure was enacted that the increase in the number . . . would be on such a scale"--[Official Report, 20 November 1995; Vol. 267, c. 340.]

That is simply not correct.

The Home Secretary's predecessor, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), was explicit when he said on Third Reading:

"we must expect that even greater numbers of people will want to come to this country".

In virtually the same breath, he said that the 1993 Act would provide a quicker way to deal with applications and

"a better and more sensible way"--[Official Report, 11 January 1993; Vol. 216, c. 731.]

to deal with fraud.

An increase was anticipated--at least to the numbers now reached. The numbers were higher in 1991 than they are likely to be this year, and they fell spontaneously by 40 per cent. the following year, without any change in legislation. The previous Secretary of State promised a three-month time limit from initial application to disposal of appeal. Those time limits have been missed, not by a few weeks, but by more than a year. Three months has become 19 months.

The Secretary of State points to an increase in resources, but while the number of staff has undoubtedly increased, the number of decisions went down from 35,000 in 1992 to 21,000 in 1994, before making some recovery this year. Could it be that the hon. Member for Broxtowe was right again, when he told the House that one of the reasons why the 1993 Act "has failed"

11 Dec 1995 : Column 717

--his words--was because the suggestions of practitioners who offered evidence were "not taken into account" by Ministers when framing this Bill?

With the Home Secretary's refusal to allow effective scrutiny of this Bill, is there not every likelihood of another piece of badly drafted legislation ending up on the statute book?

Mr. Howard: Will the hon. Gentleman now do his bit for effective scrutiny of the Bill by withdrawing the disgracefully misleading claim in the document that he put out for the parliamentary Labour party, that, in 1994, 30 per cent. of appeals under the fast-track mechanism were successful? He must now know that that is a complete distortion of the truth.

Mr. Straw: The reference came directly from a brief provided by Amnesty International. [Hon. Members: "Oh."] Contrary to the mockery from the Conservative Benches, that organisation has a high reputation for accuracy. If the information is wrong, I will be delighted to withdraw it.

The House and the country deserve a much better analysis of why numbers have risen. Ministers insinuate that, because applications for asylum have risen from 4,000 in 1988 to around 40,000 now, while acceptances have fallen, bogus applicants must account for almost all the increase. Of course there are bogus asylum seekers, but that is not sufficient explanation for the increase.

The end of the cold war was of huge importance in reducing the prospect of thermo-nuclear conflict, but since its end, the world has in many ways become a much more dangerous place. Let us look at the areas of internal disruption and civil war, and consider the trend in the figures. Look at Algeria, the Sudan, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia and, of course, Nigeria. As conflicts develop, so the number of applications for asylum shoots up.

Mr. Stephen rose--

Mr. Straw: I have already given way enough.

Let us look at those areas in which some semblance of peace has been restored, and where applications have generally fallen. Applications from the Lebanon have fallen by 90 per cent. since 1990, and there were half the number of applications from Iran last year as compared with 1986. As the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees commented:

"in our view, the rise in asylum claims may be more rationally seen as a consequence of the unprecedented scale of global conflict which produces refugee flows".

Mr. Corbyn: Does my hon. Friend recall the Immigration (Carriers' Liability) Act 1987, which was forced through the House? The fines that resulted from that Act were uprated in the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act 1993. Does he concede that that Act in itself makes it much more difficult for people to flee persecution and in effect gives rise to an illegal trade? It gives racketeers a market opportunity to smuggle people into this country who ought legitimately to be able to board a plane and travel without the airlines acting as bogus immigration officers.

Mr. Straw: My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. Evidence should be taken by the Special Standing Committee on exactly those issues, before, not after, judgments are made.

11 Dec 1995 : Column 718

Mr. John Carlisle (Luton, North) rose--

Mr. Straw: I have already given way sufficiently to the hon. Gentleman's hon. Friends.

The Home Secretary never ceases to repeat his mantra that the number of asylum seekers in continental Europe is falling, while the number in Britain is rising. The fact that the numbers shot up in other European countries in 1992 while they fell here by 40 per cent. did not stop Ministers rushing forward with the ill-drafted and incompetent 1993 Act.

The huge increase in refugees that Germany faced in the early 1990s was in the most part due to immigration across its land borders because of the disintegration of former communist bloc states. Numbers in Germany have fallen, but last year they were still treble the United Kingdom level, while in the Netherlands they rose 40 per cent. in a year from 1993 to 1994.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Miss Ann Widdecombe): Does the hon. Gentleman accept that his thesis is entirely wrong? Numbers did not fall spontaneously, as he put it, between 1991 and 1992. The fall was due to the fact that screening was introduced, and because the 1991 figures contained a large number of multiple applications. Does he further accept that the screening procedures introduced in 1991 were reinforced by fingerprinting in the 1993 Act? Does he think that that had any effect, or was it all somehow spontaneous?

---