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Mr. Straw: If the hon. Lady looks at the figures country by country, she will see that my point is made. As a conflict develops, numbers rise, and as a conflict is settled, they fall. In any event, there is much anecdotal evidence to suggest that, with the tightening of the asylum regime in continental Europe but the weakening of border controls, many would-be asylum seekers have simply gone underground.
At the end of last month, the Secretary of State deferred agreement on plans for a European Union directive against racism. He did so on the grounds that Britain has
Race relations have indeed been better in this country than in other European countries. That is not only due to our race relations legislation, but because our system of immigration control has generally been fairer, less arbitrary and less capricious. That is one reason, among many, why Labour is determined that policies relating to immigration, border controls and asylum are for the UK Government and Parliament to decide and not Brussels.
Mr. John Carlisle:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Straw:
I have already given way quite sufficiently.
Several hon. Members rose--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. Hon. Members must recognise that the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) is not giving way at this point.
Mr. Straw:
Our obligations under the United Nations convention require that each application should be
If the Home Secretary wants to rely on other countries' experience, why does he not look to that of the United States? The State Department in the United States of America actively considered a white list in the 1980s, but rejected the idea both because of the adverse consequences for relations with countries omitted or dropped from the list, and because it felt that such a list would be an open encouragement to asylum seekers from the countries that were on it.
Ministers must also recognise that there is huge anxiety about the justice of the current arrangements, even without a white list. The whole world now knows about the brutality of the Nigerian regime, but there is much more to be told about the corruption of that regime and the involvement of the military junta in all sorts of international rackets, such as drugs, social security benefits and illegal immigration--rackets that could endanger those who dare to speak out against the regime. While that is all known to our Government, they have consistently played down the threat to human rights in Nigeria.
Is it not incredible that, of 1,495 applications for asylum from Nigeria last year, only two were accepted? It is incredible, until we learn that, as late as September this year, while Ken Saro-Wiwa and his eight colleagues were awaiting trial for their lives, the Home Office was still advising its staff:
What a mockery of justice will be created by the new regime for so-called "safe" third-country appeals. Asylum seekers who enter the United Kingdom via a transit country--typically, another European country--will be returned to that country, from where they could, in turn, be bounced back to a fourth or fifth country.
Under these new, Kafkaesque rules, asylum seekers, as we heard from the Home Secretary, have a right of appeal, but they cannot appeal as to whether they are genuine refugees, or even as to whether the countries to which they are to be dispatched are safe for them. The only right of appeal they have is as to whether the Secretary of State has acted unreasonably in asserting that that country would be safe. The final injustice is that the application can be made only from outside the United Kingdom-- from the very country that the applicant believes to be unsafe.
In interventions, the Home Secretary tried to justify the extraordinary provision in the Bill under which there will no further appeal to the Immigration Appeal Tribunal. One of the problems with the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act 1993 is that, in attempting to produce fast procedures, it over-complicated its procedures in such a way that a large number of cases have ended up before the High Court for judicial review. If the right of appeal on a point of law to the Immigration Appeal Tribunal is taken away in such cases, the Home Secretary will only encourage more expensive, complicated and time-consuming appeals to the divisional court.
The rights of appeal for safe third-country cases are so elusive that they will almost certainly put Britain in breach of its international obligations, as the executive of the UNHCR has categorically claimed.
The Home Secretary again prays Europe in aid on employer checks. He said that Britain and Ireland are the only EU states that do not have such checks, but where is the evidence that they work and are fair? It certainly does not come from Italy, which has a huge problem of illegal migrant workers; certainly not from Germany, where the Government have just reported that there are an estimated 500,000 illegally employed immigrant workers in the construction industry alone.
The employer checks will be neither firm nor fair. They have been questioned by the Secretary of State for Education and Employment herself. In a letter of September this year, she said that she believed that they could result in "racial discrimination". She is right. The checks have been criticised by all the main employer organisations. Mr. Tim Melville-Ross of the Institute of Directors has said that the proposals are "unacceptable" and have clear and adverse "racial implications"
Mr. Howard:
May I reassure the hon. Gentleman about his anxieties on that point? I have today received a letter from Mr. Tim Melville-Ross, who says:
Mr. Straw:
It does not provide any reassurance at all. Four days after the Secretary of State published his consultative document, Mr. Tim Melville-Ross, in the Financial Times, said of the proposals that it was too much to expect businesses to act in such a policeman's capacity, and that they had plain "racial implications".
With 20 million spare national insurance numbers, the checks will not deter those intent on fraud. They will deter the small and medium-sized employer, who will be scared away from taking any risk with the employment of applicants with black or brown skins or foreign-sounding names.
The 1951 convention places Britain under a clear obligation to provide social security to "refugees lawfully staying" in the contracting state. Until now, that obligation has been interpreted as including those whose application for refugee status is under consideration. The Home Secretary complains that the benefit bill for asylum seekers has increased to £200 million a year. The reason for that increase is not so much because the number of asylum seekers in Britain has risen as because of the time they stay while their applications and appeals are being considered.
If the 1993 deadlines had been kept to, the benefit bill would be not £200 million but £40 million. How typical of the Government that, instead of seeking to cut delays, they cut people's benefit. Under the proposals, there will be no benefit: not for those in severe hardship or ill-health; nothing for babies, infants or children; not a
penny for pregnant women; none for the victims of torture. To mock the plight of those people even more, Ministers say that these asylum seekers can apply for a social fund crisis loan, when they know that no such applications can be accepted because the asylum seeker will have no benefit from which to pay back the loan.
What is saved on benefit may have to be spent elsewhere, because many of the refugee children made destitute by these changes will become the responsibility of local authorities under the Children Act 1989, to be taken into care, at a cost of £870 a week, to save benefits of around £100 a week.
Of all the measures in the Bill, the one which most cries out for proper scrutiny by a Special Standing Committee, and which meanwhile has raised the gravest doubts about the Government's motives, is that relating to child benefit. My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) quoted from clauses 10 and 12. Clause 10 plainly states:
"better race relations than almost any other country . . . and more comprehensive legislation".
He is right about our record on legislation, but the Conservative party can take little credit. After all, the Conservatives voted in this House to block the Race Relations Acts 1965 and 1968.
"there is no evidence to suggest that Ogonis . . . face persecution from the Nigerian authorities"
for membership of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People--the very organisation that Ken Saro-Wiwa led, and in respect of which he lost his life.
"I wrote to you in October expressing concern about aspects of proposed legislation on this subject as reported in the press. I have now received the Consultation Document dated 20 November. Whilst we have yet to prepare a detailed reply, I am bound to say that the concerns we raised do seem in large measure to have been met. I thought I should write to you at this stage to express my appreciation that our views have been taken on board, in particular since I shall be making a statement to this effect to the Press."
I hope that that reassures the hon. Gentleman about the Institute of Directors.
"No immigrant within the meaning of the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 shall be entitled to child benefit for any week unless he satisfies prescribed conditions."
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