House of Commons Hansard Debates for 15 Jul 1996 (pt 29)

Mr. Alton: In areas such as the hon. Gentleman's and in cities such as mine, people will live on the streets and we shall end up with shanty towns like those in the United States.

Mr. Banks: That is a strong possibility. The Minister of State has visited my borough. I should like to take her to the areas where immigrants and those waiting for the Department to process their applications live. The hon. Lady smiles, but she would not like to live like that--I certainly would not. As I do not want to live like that, I am not prepared to condone the conditions that those people must endure.

If the Secretary of State manages to smash the amendments through the House tonight, what will he then do to assist the hard-pressed borough of Newham where the problem is concentrated? We welcome refugees to the east end, but we need Government support. Today the Government are showing two fingers to us, two fingers to those who turn up in this country seeking asylum and two fingers to those who must look after them on their arrival. It is disgraceful that the Secretary of State should turn down the Lords amendment, and I hope that he will be defeated.

Sir Ivan Lawrence: I hope that I can lower the temperature following that rant by the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks). Many of those who are listening to the debate will think that we have taken leave of our senses shortly after giving ourselves a substantial pay rise. I shall examine some of the points that have been made. The hon. Gentleman suggested that we are being racist in questioning the abuse of public money. That idea is too preposterous for words. Most--if not all--Conservative Members would not tolerate any action that our Government took that was racist in any sense, and I think that the House showed how united it was against racism in a series of debates that we had before.

My former hon. Friend--still the hon. Member for Torridge and West Devon (Miss Nicholson)--talked about Iraqis. It may well be the case that people from

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Iraq and from other terrible regimes want to leave their countries and cannot expect to come without forged passports, exit visas or whatever. But all they have to say when they arrive is, "Asylum." They do not have to say any more before we give them asylum, and with it they get social security benefits, housing benefits, health benefits, education benefits. All they have to do is say, "Asylum," and if they cannot "speaka da English"--[Interruption.] All they have to do is indicate that they cannot speak English, and the immigration authorities will provide them with somebody who will translate for them. All that person has to do is to say, "If you are a genuine asylum seeker, because you're in a state, you've obviously been beaten up, you've got burns all over your body, you can claim asylum." That is what the immigration service provides. It provides translators, people who will help them. It is nonsense to say that that does not happen.

8.30 pm

Ms Abbott: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Sir Ivan Lawrence: I am sure that the hon. Lady will want to make her own contribution in a moment.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack), for whom I have much respect, showed some confusion. The people who are here and make a claim for asylum in country may still be able to get asylum or to get extended right to remain. All we are saying is that those people will not get benefits. All the people to whom he referred in the letter from the academic in The Times today were those who got asylum but who did not get benefits.

Miss Emma Nicholson: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Sir Ivan Lawrence: No, please, I have a short time in which to speak, and most hon. Members will make their contributions, or will have already made them.

The hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) spoke about the need to speed up. Of course there is such a need. Everybody agrees that there is a need to speed up asylum applications, but one of the best ways to do so is by reducing the number who make asylum applications, 95 per cent. of which are bogus. If that number is reduced, the legal, justified and genuine applications that are made by asylum seekers will be processed that much more quickly.

The background for this legislation is that, nine years ago, 5,700 people applied for asylum in this country, and now the number has risen to 50,000. It is rising in this country, whereas it is falling in all the countries in Europe that have tightened their asylum-seeking requirements. Italy does not even provide benefits for asylum seekers. That is why people want to come to Britain. For too long we have said, "We have this very proud tradition. We will not question too deeply, and of course you will have benefits."

I think that people outside think that we are mad having a debate on this not about the people who come to this country who genuinely seek asylum, who say at the port

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of entry, "Asylum," or get a translator to help them, but about people who are not inarticulate, who are not quivering with fear or are too humiliated to speak. Seventy per cent. of them enter the country, saying, "I want to visit." They have with them their sponsor and have filled in applications and forms that set out clearly how much money they have so that they will not be a burden on the state. They come in with their return tickets, saying, "I have business to do. I am a business man. These are the men I am doing business with. These are the men who will guarantee that I will be not one penny burden on the taxpayer." They come into the country and say, "I am a student. I have a place at this college. I will not be a burden on the state because the following people and organisations are helping me." They are the people who, when they turn round later and say, "I am an asylum seeker, please let me come in," have lied and cheated their way here.

Sir David Steel (Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale): Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Sir Ivan Lawrence: I am sorry, but I shall not give way, as too many hon. Members want to speak in what is a short debate.

The people outside--

Mr. Madden: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Can we have your advice? When we are confronted by an hon. Member who refuses to give way, while listing a catalogue, a tissue of lies and untruths--

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will want to withdraw the word, "lies".

Mr. Madden: I certainly withdraw the word, "lies," but substitute the term "deliberate falsehoods".

What can we do when the hon. and learned Gentleman refuses to give way to Opposition Members?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman can do nothing. The hon. and learned Gentleman is responsible for his own speech and whether he gives way.

Sir Ivan Lawrence: The only reason why I shall not give way is that it would prolong my speech and many other hon. Members want to speak. I notice that the hon. Gentleman's colleague on the Front Bench gave way only once, and my right hon. Friend gave way so many times that his speech went on for much longer than he intended.

I accept the hon. Gentleman's apology, but he has just shown that he is so carried away that he is capable of misjudgment, and that is what I am afraid is dictating so much of the debate. We are losing control of ourselves. I was merely making the point that our constituents simply do not expect us to provide social security benefits all the way down the line for illegal immigrants. I do not think that people outside want to provide social security benefits for people who come into this country, promising that they can afford to be here without being any burden on the state, pretending, or perhaps changing their minds later, that they are students when they are not, that they are business men when they are not, that they are genuine visitors with genuine sponsors when they are not--all of

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whom have to be interviewed; all of whom have to be articulate; all of whom have to satisfy the immigration authorities that their application sounds genuine.

To say that those people are petrified, that they cannot explain themselves or that they are so humiliated, is to paint a completely false picture about what happens with 70 per cent. of applicants who are in-house applicants, having changed their minds as to the reasons why they are here.

We must take a sensible grip of ourselves. Ordinary, genuine asylum seekers will nearly always claim asylum when they arrive. They will get asylum and continue to get benefit. Those who are here and who have changed their minds can still satisfy the authorities that they are genuine asylum seekers and they will be given asylum or extended right to remain, but they will not get benefits. For the illegals and everybody else, I am afraid that the public are against Opposition Members who think that what is needed is a bigger handout and that we should be a bigger soft touch than all the other countries of Europe that do not operate such an absurd system of welfare payments in the circumstances that we are discussing.

Mr. Dalyell: The less said about the speech by the hon. and learned Member for Burton (Sir I. Lawrence) the better.

Hon. Members who intervene at this point had better have a very good reason for doing so. My good reason is personal experience of having seen--like, I hope, other hon. Members--what happens in the first day when an asylum seeker arrives. I repeat the question that I put to the Leader of the House last Thursday, which was meant not offensively but factually: how many members of the Cabinet and Home Office Ministers have seen what happens in the crucial first three days? The Leader of the House said that he would

"draw it to the attention of those who reply to the debate."--[Official Report, 11 July 1996; Vol. 281, c. 582.]

Could we have some kind of factual answer?

On 18 November 1992, at the request of the then Home Secretary--now Chancellor of the Exchequer--I went, along with Dr. Perutz, who wrote to The Times, and Dr. Pirouet of Charter '87, also known as A Charter for Refugees, to see those who were framing the previous Bill. As Home Office records will show, we were allowed an hour and three quarters with a most courteous Mr. Peter Wrench. My interest in the matter is not sudden, and I therefore ask the following questions.

How can the asylum procedures be shaped to allow for the exhaustion, trauma and confusion that many asylum seekers experience on their initial arrival--sometimes so severely that they are unable to give an adequate account of their reasons for seeking asylum? If they later have to change and amplify their stories, they are liable to be accused of lying. In fact, they often are accused of lying, precisely because they have had to amplify and change the stories that they gave in their original traumatic condition. What the Secretary of State said about lying is open to considerable question.

Moreover, both male and female rape are all too frequent among those who have suffered imprisonment and torture in a number of countries from which genuine asylum seekers come. The United Kingdom police now know that rape victims often need time and reassurance before they are able to reveal what has happened to them.