| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
5.50 pm
Mr. David Alton (Liverpool, Mossley Hill): I beg to move, to leave out from "That" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
- That this House, while recognising the need to prevent fraudulent claims for asylum, declines to give the Asylum and Immigration Bill a Second Reading because the Bill will adversely affect genuine asylum seekers; believes that designating countries as safe by order is contrary to the law and spirit of international human rights; and further condemns the removal by order of social security provision for asylum seekers, noting that social security spending on asylum seekers amounts to only 0.25 per cent. of the total social security budget, as this will result in the widespread destitution of asylum seekers awaiting the result of appeals against refusal.
The hon. and learned Gentleman said that a range of matters needed to be considered in greater detail. If that is true, surely the less adversarial and combative atmosphere of a Special Standing Committee that could consider the evidence and hear the witnesses would be preferable. Instead, we are now embarked on an exercise which, as the Chairman of the Conservative party put it, has more to do with smoking out opponents than examining issues. Yet again, we are embarked on the legislative process of introducing another Bill, just three years after the 1993 Act and at enormous cost to our reputation, not to mention time and money. It is better to be smoked out as caring about asylum seekers and refugees than to use them as a smokescreen behind which to hide. I fear that the Bill seeks to do just that.
It would have been better to have reviewed the 1993 Act, found a common approach with our European neighbours and accepted the proposal for a Special Standing Committee that the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden) has placed before us again this evening, and on which I hope there will be a vote.
I want to examine the necessity for and nature of the Bill and to refer briefly to what others have said about it. The right hon. Member for City of London and Westminster, South (Mr. Brooke) rightly rebutted the charge that it is racist. I agree with him, and I do not believe that the Home Secretary or the Minister of State, Home Office, the hon. Member for Maidstone (Miss Widdecombe), are racist, but the distinction was well made by Paul Goodman in the Daily Telegraph on 26 October:
The Economist agreed with that and said of the legislation:
The Times, in an editorial on 26 October, referred to the 1951 United Nations convention on the status of refugees and said that the Government, in introducing the legislation,
My last reference to the opinion of people outside the House is from the Catholic bishops' conference and states:
Mr. Robert G. Hughes:
It is all very well for the hon. Gentleman to tell us what other people say and think, but can he answer the question that the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) conspicuously avoided? Do he and his party recognise that there is a problem and, if so, what are his remedies for doing something about it?
Mr. Alton:
I shall deal with those points later in my speech. The reasoned amendment on the Order Paper on which there will be a vote this evening sets out my party's position, and I intend to say more about it. First, I want to put the debate into perspective.
Justice, not numbers, should be the issue. All the evidence points not to bogus applications, but to bogus refusals and unjust determinations. The overwhelming number of lengthy delays are caused not by the applicants themselves, as Conservative Members have implied, but by the Home Office. The Bill seeks simply to camouflage the Government's failure to deal with applications efficiently and to provide adequate resources.
The facts that the Government may wish to ignore are undisputable. Prior to the 1993 Act, the then Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Mole Valley (Mr. Baker), in a speech issued by the Home Office and another issued by the Conservative party central office, quoted a figure mentioned at the Vienna conference. He said that some 7 million Russians would seek to come here. Before the last general election, he said that some 7 million Russians would wash up on our shores and those of every country in Europe and deluge us. According to the statistical memorandum published by the Home Office in June this year, since 1991 just 1,500 applications have been received from the former USSR and just 10 of those potential 7 million people were accepted as refugees.
If those figures do not impress, the House should consider that between 1986 and 1994, just 30 people were accepted as refugees from the former Yugoslavia. Since General Abacha's coup in 1993, there have been 9,000 asylum applications from Nigeria. Just four of those applicants have been given refugee status and 15 have
been given exceptional leave to remain in the United Kingdom. Those facts put the matter into perspective and entitle us to some gentle scepticism when we listen to the repetition of the same scaremongering canards when such Bills are introduced.
It is an incontrovertible fact that Britain receives fewer applications for asylum than many other countries. Germany receives 10 times more than the United Kingdom per million of population. We receive 380 asylum applications per million of our population.
Sir Ivan Lawrence:
I know that the hon. Gentleman would not wish to give the wrong impression. The reason why so few asylum seekers from the former Yugoslavia have been granted asylum is that thousands of them have been allowed to settle temporarily in Britain pending the conclusion of the war.
Mr. Alton:
Thousands is a gross exaggeration. The figure is below 2,000. If the hon. and learned Gentleman wishes to make such interventions, he should give the House the facts. Last year, more people left the United Kingdom than arrived in it, with 215,000 people emigrating and 210,000 people immigrating, of whom 90,000 were British citizens. Just 825 were allowed here as refugees and 3,660 were given exceptional leave to remain in the United Kingdom for a limited period. Only a handful of cases have been deemed to be without foundation, as frivolous or vexatious under the terms of the 1993 Act. Nevertheless, based on that experience, five new categories are being introduced under the without foundation procedures. One is where any evidence submitted in support of an application is clearly false. Anyone who has seen "Schindler's List" knows that refugees have always fled using false papers. In Hollywood, that is worth an Oscar--in this country, it will be worth seven years in prison.
Another awkward fact is that far from making unreasonable demands on our national social security budget, last year asylum seekers accounted for one quarter of 1 per cent. of claimants. Let us view the matter in perspective. Many of those cases would, by definition, have been genuine.
Some individuals will undoubtedly seek to abuse any system, but the greatest reason for unnecessary payments has been Home Office delays. That is an uncontrovertible fact. The Minister of State, who is in her place, has provided me with the information that 3,333 people have waited for five years or more for their applications to be processed--more than 13,000 since 1991, 23,000 since 1993 and 49,000 for more than 11 months. At 31 October this year, 66,000 applications were still awaiting an initial decision.
As the system fails the refugee and the asylum seeker, instead of devoting more resources to tackling the backlog we make a molehill into a legislative mountain. The Minister also informed me that the Bill will require 8,000 hours of civil servants' time and will cost the Home Office--and other Departments will be involved--more than £210,000 to promote. Think how many asylum cases could be processed or refugees helped with that time and those resources.
Many other hon. Members will try to disentangle myth from reality, as I have tried to do, but time does not permit me to do so in more detail. Instead, I shall address the Bill's practical effects and the white list. The Government
have said repeatedly that all claims will be considered individually and on their merits, but that no longer can that be the case if there is a white list. Little account will be taken of changes in Governments, the risks of real unfairness and the idiosyncrasies of some Governments. Sri Lanka and India, which the Home Secretary mentioned, are likely to be listed--but regional variations, minority questions and local discrepancies make the white list approach wholly undesirable.
The Government point to international experience. They always mention Germany, but fail to mention that countries that do not operate a white list include Italy, Spain, France and Austria. Belgium introduced a designated list but abolished it in 1993. In Germany since 1993, appellants have been given the opportunity to show that, despite the general situation, they are subject to political persecution. The German constitutional court is considering whether that procedure is unconstitutional. A judgment will not be produced until February and use of the procedure has been abandoned in the meantime, yet the House is being offered that procedure today.
The Bill allows the Home Secretary to draw up a white list where it appears to him that
The Bill uses the term "serious risk of persecution". The 1951 convention only requires the asylum seeker to have a
Today, we have been given the names of countries on the white list on which we have not had a chance to reflect. We have simply been told about them in the course of debate. The Minister recently informed me that designation orders would be laid before Parliament under the negative resolution procedure and that the list of designated countries would be subject to amendment by the same procedure: that is, without debate other than in rare instances--and that could take months, by the time that we have prayed against, tabled motions and the orders have been discussed in Committee. Rarely will they be debated on the Floor of the House. We should jealously guard our privileges and the right to speak out for people for whom nobody else will speak.
In addition to the white list's practical effects, the restriction on the right to appeal, removal of asylum seekers to third countries, denial of any right of appeal while in the United Kingdom, introduction of new immigration offences, employee sanctions that will
endanger good community relations, the driving on to the streets of destitute, frightened people--causing incalculable hardship--is a deeply immoral measure. I use that word in response to the Home Secretary's earlier claim that the Bill is a moral measure. It is deeply immoral to place people on the streets, without any concern about what will happen to them. We all know that the burden will fall on local authorities and charities, which are already sufficiently hard-pressed.
Of all the issues on which the Home Office might seek legislation--the availability of knives, age of criminal responsibility, exploitation and degradation of women through computer pornography, prosecution of British nationals involved in international child abuse or any of the other pressing problems of law and order, policing, prison reform and drug abuse--why has the Home Office chosen refugees and asylum seekers yet again? We last considered the matter in 1993. How many letters have Back Benchers received on the subject? I have received not one letter urging action from any of my constituents, but over the past month I have sent the Home Office hundreds of letters from constituents about policing levels in Merseyside. Britain would do better to take a more proactive role in asserting to despotic regimes the importance of human rights.
"Mr. Howard's proposals are not racist since they will not apply only to ethnic minorities."
He wrote:
"Mr. Howard is certainly playing, to use that most dog-eared of metaphors, the race card . . . Mr. Howard is playing low politics for high stakes, and proposals to curtail the benefits of asylum seekers, through the responsibility of the Department of Social Security, are essentially part of his package."
"What difference will it make? It may win a few votes for the Tories. It will make a few people suffer. It will make Britain look mean. And it will erode the liberal anti-authoritarian tradition that sets Britain apart from much of the rest of Europe--which is an odd thing for Britain's nationalist tendency to want to do.".
"could put Britain in breach of that legal obligation . . . They could also sour race relations in this country.".
That bears out the point made by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley). It continued:
"Britain is anything but a 'soft touch' for would-be refugees . . . the way to cut these costs is not to pauperise innocent refugees, and their children, along with illegal immigrants; it is to speed up Britain's sluggish asylum procedures."--
to which I shall refer in just a moment.
"the effect of such a decision would be punitive and de facto will mean the denial of the right of appeal to the very poorest of this vulnerable and disadvantaged group. It is tragic that only two years after giving the right to appeal to asylum seekers, an opportunity to exercise that right is being rendered meaningless. We call on the Government to withdraw these proposals and allocate adequate resources for cases to be decided on efficiently and fairly in keeping with our obligations to the 1951 United Nations convention on the Status of Refugees."
"there is in general no serious risk of persecution."
The fast track is expected to take 10 days, reducing the time available to prepare a challenge. The House should examine that provision closely. The words
"in general no serious risk"
could be interpreted as meaning that, as most of the general population do not claim to have been persecuted, there is no risk of anyone being persecuted. That is nonsense. That provision directly contradicts the 1951 convention.
"well-founded fear of persecution"--
a rather less onerous yardstick. The Government, who have been the casualty in so many judicial reviews, will live to regret the day that they included those words in the Bill. The 1951 convention is being used as a trap, which it was never designed to be, and that use of it is completely against the spirit of the convention.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |