| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
6.38 pm
Mr. James Couchman (Gillingham): I have followed the Bill since its Second Reading some months ago. I accept entirely my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State's emphasis of the need for the Bill. He has given hon. Members figures for 1995, which show what a problem bogus asylum seekers present to the Home Office and to its machinery.
During the Bill's consideration, I had a constituency case that underlined just what the problem is. An Albanian wanted to stay here. When all the processes of applying for legitimate permission to stay had been exhausted, what did he do? He applied for political asylum. The
application was entirely bogus; he knew that, as did those who had advised him to submit it. Although the application has now been withdrawn, the case underlines the reasons for which my right hon. and learned Friend felt it necessary to introduce the Bill.
I remain concerned about clause 8, however. The burden on small businesses could indeed be difficult for them to bear: that is one point on which I agree with the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw). Since the Committee stage, further possible problems have been brought to my attention. It has been suggested, for instance, that people running a country pub who wanted to take on staff at short notice might have to make a 20-mile round trip in order to obtain photocopies of relevant documents. Moreover, a publican who employed someone who turned out to be an illegal immigrant could subsequently be prosecuted and receive a criminal conviction under the Bill. He could lose not just his good name, but his livelihood and his home. That should have been taken into account in Committee.
Mr. Alton:
I gladly associate myself with what the hon. Member for Gillingham (Mr. Couchman) said about the Minister of State and the Under-Secretary of State, who always dealt courteously with matters raised by hon. Members of all parties in Committee. I do not agree with him about the Bill, however. The hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) was right to remind us of what that dispassionate commentator The Economist said about this "nasty Bill" in December. It was The Times that said:
That is the one thing that the Committee stage failed to achieve. We are doing nothing to speed up the procedures, but we are introducing more punitive, penalising measures against immigrants and asylum seekers.
The adversarial tone was set on Second Reading. On 11 December, by 314 votes to 287, we refused to set up a Special Standing Committee. Calls for such a Committee, which would have led to a more informed debate and might have helped to remedy significant flaws in the Bill, were rejected by the Government. That has resulted in inadequate pre-legislative scrutiny, and the problem is increased by the absence of the systematic post-legislative review that should have taken place. Only three years after passing the previous asylum Bill, here we are having to introduce more legislation. In the absence of any procedural rules--which the Committee was promised at the outset--how could hon. Members discharge their responsibilities properly?
This is a thoroughly bad Bill. It sacrifices the rights and freedoms of highly vulnerable individuals to administrative convenience and political expediency. It contravenes many of our obligations under international human rights law. It compromises the already fragile
balance between individual freedom and the ever-increasing arbitrary powers of the state, and it encourages racial discrimination and social division. It is taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
This is a bad Bill because clauses 1 to 3 make it more difficult for genuine refugees to enter the asylum process, by compromising the fairness and effectiveness of the asylum appeals procedure, including the right to due process. The proposals will erode important safeguards against mistaken refusal of refugee status, and will abandon many more people to the cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment to which they may be subject in their home countries. It is a thoroughly bad Bill because it creates a designated list, and extends the fast-track appeals. It has serious implications for the right to due process, compromising supposedly independent adjudications by placing certain asylum applicants within a category that prejudices their chances of a fair hearing. That violates one of the key principles of the 1951 United Nations convention on the status of refugees--that each asylum claim should be examined on its merits.
The Bill will almost certainly deter genuine asylum seekers from designated countries from trying to enter the United Kingdom and applying for asylum. Instead, they may decide to remain in hiding in their home countries, facing prosecution, torture and even death. The alternative is to attempt to enter this country illegally, which will simply exacerbate one of the problems that the Government said that they wished to address. Full appeal rights are essential for all those categories of asylum seeker, providing vital safeguards against miscarriages of justice.
This is a bad Bill because it ushers in a new era of internal immigration controls. Clauses 4 to 8 mark a dangerous intensification of such controls, without establishing corresponding safeguards against the potential for abuses of public power that those controls will foster. It is a bad Bill because it sours race relations, and erects a sophisticated system of snooping and snitching in the workplace. As well as increasing race discrimination in employment, the Bill threatens to turn all employers into yet another arm of the state, involving them in the policing of fellow members of the community and undermining the delicate balance between the freedom of the individual and the power of the big state.
This is a bad Bill for parliamentary democracy and public accountability. The Home Secretary had the effrontery to tell the House earlier that there would be parliamentary control over matters such as the designated list, but anyone who knows anything about the negative procedures in the House knows that all that will happen is that a Committee will consider the matter, and that all that the Committee will be able to do is dissent from the decision. That will place no binding power on the Home Secretary, and there will be no debate on the Floor of the House.
We have adopted all the worst features of the systems of other countries such as Germany, without introducing any of the safeguards that apply in those countries. Elected politicians are becoming increasingly irrelevant to our law-making process. One of the most dangerous trends in recent years has been the growth, and the increasing scope, of insufficiently defined delegated powers, which are often arbitrary and not subject to
adequate parliamentary scrutiny. There are three glaring examples of that in the Bill. Clause 1 leaves membership of the white list to the discretion of the Home Secretary, who is empowered to designate whatever countries he likes as posing no general or serious risk of persecution. Clause 8 empowers him arbitrarily to add to the categories of people who may not be specifically prohibited from working. Clauses 9 and 10 empower him to withdraw entitlement to housing assistance and child benefit from unspecified categories of immigrant with the wave of an executive wand.
The Bill is an arbitrary and--in places--deliberately unintelligible and inaccessible piece of legislation. It gives one Minister far too much power. The Bill and the new social security regulations are symptomatic of the inherent dangers of written rules from above. We can never hope for a fair and just asylum and immigration policy until we address the fundamental flaws of a system of government in which basic human rights are not deemed worthy of special protection in law; in which power is concentrated in the hands of the Executive; in which Parliament has become little more than a sideshow; in which checks and balances against the abuse of public power are entirely dependent on the good will of the ruling party of the day; and in which outdated notions of national sovereignty automatically take precedence over our wider obligations to the international community.
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North):
The Bill is a deeply obnoxious piece of legislation and yet another nail in the coffin of any reputation that this country has ever had for being a haven for the civil liberties or safety of people fleeing from oppression and danger. It is rooted in xenophobia and the sort of populist jargon that successive Home Secretaries have thought necessary to use at successive Tory party conferences.
The Bill is based on a deliberate misuse of the figures for people seeking asylum. Europe has far fewer asylum seekers than any other continent in the world. This country has the fewest asylum application acceptances per head of population of any country in Europe. The problem is the creation of the Home Secretary and his cohorts in the Daily Mail and other newspapers. The Bill is yet another example of the Tory Government blaming the victim rather than looking at the causes of people seeking asylum. It represents a refusal to look at the destruction of democracy in so many places. Indeed, it involves taking part in a hunt against individuals such asDr. al-Masari, who will be disgracefully thrown out of this country if the Home Secretary has his way.
We are coming up, by the way, to the first anniversary of the incarceration of Ademole Onibiyo in Campshill detention centre. He is there because he is unwilling to join his father--who has been missing for more than four months--in Nigeria for an unknown fate. So much for the Government's concern for the safety of individuals--either while they are in this country or when they are evicted.
"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."
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |