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Mr. Alton: The Secretary of State has made a great deal over the months about the costs involved, and all of us are conscious of that. But will he confirm that, if every person who came to this country--not as an immigrant, but as an asylum seeker or refugee--was fraudulent, we would still be talking about one third of 1 per cent. of his entire departmental budget? The parliamentary time that we have taken on the issue leads me to wonder what motives were behind the introduction of the measure in the first place.
Mr. Lilley: The cost would be some £400 million. If that has to be met within the social security budget--as the hon. Gentleman suggests--that is equivalent to cutting the basic state pension by 1 per cent. Is that what the Liberal Democrat party proposes? Is that what the Opposition are proposing? The Opposition have told us that they will restore the benefits, and have also said that they will not allow any net increase in the social security budget. That must mean that they are proposing to reduce benefits going to British citizens to finance the extension of benefits to largely bogus asylum seekers.
Mr. Lilley: This will be the last intervention that I take, as I want to leave time for other hon. Members to speak.
Ms Jackson: I am most grateful to the Secretary of State. I should like some clarification of the figure of £400 million that he has given. When the changes to the
benefit system were introduced, we were told that the savings to the taxpayer would be some £200 million. Last week, the Secretary of State inflated that figure to £300 million. Given that we have heard about the savings that have been made, how can we now be looking at the possibility of £400 million being saved? Does the Secretary of State know either the costs or the numbers?
Mr. Lilley: I can explain to the hon. Lady. When we made the assessment, we assumed that there would be no reduction in the number of claims. On that basis, the figure was about £200 million in a full year. There has been a sharp reduction in the number of claims, and that has enhanced the likely savings to something like £274 million. But that means that we are continuing to pay out some £140 million to people who were in-port applicants, making a total of about £400 million--the figure that I gave to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Mossley Hill (Mr. Alton). I hope that that satisfies the hon. Lady.
It is important to make savings, and the Opposition suggest that that can be done purely by speeding up the administrative process. They are mistaken. As long as we have a benefit enticement to people to come here, ever-increasing numbers will do so and will clog up the system, and it will not be possible for us to speed up the assessment of claims.
As a result of the changes we made, the overall number of claims fell by more than half since January 1995, and by two thirds as far as in-country claims were concerned. As the asylum system is relieved from a flood of bogus claims, so it is easier to process those remaining, which is of great benefit to genuine claimants.
Last month, 75 per cent. of all new in-country claims were cleared through the short decision procedure in, on average, one month. But we believe that it is important to do better, and we remain committed to further improvements. We are investing an extra £37 million to speed up asylum decisions and appeals, and the Home Office is introducing a major computerisation scheme, and is further extending the short procedure.
Above all, the measures in the Bill as a whole will further speed up the process, and will tackle claims from safe third countries and from white list countries. Yet the Opposition--while saying that instead of curbing entitlements, they would make savings by improving the efficiency with which claims are dealt--are opposing almost all the changes contained in the Bill.
The Opposition cannot have it both ways. If they leave in existence a benefit lure, they will make it more difficult to give a speedy assessment to genuine benefit claimants. That is what those who have expressed concern about the issue in the press and the media recently want. We share their desire to see a speedy assessment of genuine claimants, but we believe that that will be possible only if we make the amendments that we moved in another place, and do not accept the specific amendment that will effectively drive a coach and horses through the Bill.
I believe that much of the concern expressed about the issue has been based on inaccuracies. A large majority of those seeking asylum do abuse the system. There is no question of taking away benefit just because people do not understand the procedures of claiming asylum. We are taking away benefit only from illegal immigrants, from people who change their story after they have arrived in
Britain claiming to be something other than asylum seekers, and from people found not to be genuine refugees.
The genuine refugee has nothing to fear from this change. This country has always been a safe haven for genuine refugees, and will remain so. I ask the House to reject the clause as it now stands, and to amend it to restore the Government's original intention, which was agreed by this House in January.
Mr. Chris Smith:
I want to refer first to the issue of the three days, which the House of Lords put into the Bill and which the Government are seeking to delete. I want to tackle the fundamental assumption that underlies everything that the Government have said and done on that issue--if someone does not apply for asylum the moment that he sets foot in this country at port, his claim is somehow inevitably bogus. That is what the Government believe, because it is the logic that underlies everything that the Secretary of State has said. Yet the figures disprove that thesis. Of the 775 people granted refugee status in the first four months of this year, 610 were in-country applicants.
In a rather dismissive response to my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr. Hill) on that question, the Secretary of State said that the figures vary from year to year. For every one of the past four years, the approval rate for in-country applicants has been higher than that for port-of-entry applicants. So the Government's assumption that, simply because one does not apply at the port of entry, one is more likely to be a bogus applicant, is false.
The Secretary of State has been parading himself around the radio and television studios in the past few days, talking about people who come in as students, business men and tourists. He says that such people cannot be genuine refugees. He clearly has no idea of the circumstances of someone who is genuinely fleeing from oppression, who has to adopt such guises to seek a safe haven here.
Mr. Lilley:
Would the hon. Gentleman care to explain why the change in the benefit rules that took away entitlement to benefit from those who claim in country has led to a two-thirds reduction in people making claims in country?
Mr. Smith:
The Government are trying to starve genuine refugees out of this country. Of course, that change may well have an effect, but my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden) said that there are ebbs and flows in applications, which is a valid point.
The Secretary of State clearly does not understand what drives people to flee from oppression in their own country. They might well be frightened of any figure in authority and, when confronted with such a figure at the port of entry, they will not be confident about immediately telling that person their life story. They might well have been given bad advice before they left, but that does not mean that they are not genuine asylum seekers. They might well not be questioned intensively at the port, depending on the port of entry. They may well have had to flee with false papers because that was the only way in which they could get out of their country. Their one anxiety may be to get in and be safe in this country.
Those are all circumstances in which people who are genuinely fleeing from oppression and are in fear of their life--often people have been subjected to torture--arrive at the initial point of entry. To assume that, simply because they come in with other papers or in another guise, they are not legitimate refugees, is a false assumption.
Mr. Robert G. Hughes (Harrow, West)
rose--
Mr. Smith:
I will not give way at the moment because many hon. Members want to speak.
Mr. Smith:
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman in due course. I want to make some progress.
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