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Mr. Kaufman: I simply want my hon. Friend to accept my congratulations on the 25th anniversary of his election to Parliament, which is next Sunday.
Mr. Snape: That is very kind. This is one of the few occasions when I have given way in the House without regretting it. I thank my right hon. Friend for his remarks.
Returning to a more serious and important matter, all too often it appears to me--and, I suspect, to some of my hon. Friends, in their hearts--that the political asylum application is regarded, in cricketing parlance, as the long stop when all else has failed. I am sorry that I have used cricketing parlance, because I cannot remember who stands behind the long stop.
Mr. Snape:
No, I am afraid that there is someone before the boundary.
Another fallback position is used all too often--the judicial review. Many of the cases with which I am dealing at present--hon. Members on both sides of the House must also deal with such cases--are based on largely spurious grounds for political asylum and equally spurious grounds for judicial review. I do not blame the applicants themselves. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Gorton said, I do not think that many of them would go down that particular road if they were not so advised. He mentioned certain organisations in the United Kingdom that have established a well deserved reputation for avarice and incompetence in respect of dealing with these human problems.
I was interested to hear my right hon. Friend mention the welfare centre in Manchester, because one of my constituents from West Bromwich ended up there. I am glad that, by and large, such organisations do not flourish in Birmingham and the west midlands area, so that those who go to the less reputable organisations use places such as the welfare centre. My constituent entered the country illegally, in the back of a lorry, in December 1994; was interviewed in May 1995; was informed of his liability to detention and summary removal; made an application for political asylum subsequently, which was refused; married in November 1995; applied for judicial review in October 1997; and disappeared from my constituency books shortly after that.
I am not sure what was the outcome of that case, but in June 1997, I received a letter from the welfare centre in Manchester, signed by Mr. Azad, the director. The letter says that a member of my constituent's family forwarded a copy of a letter from the new immigration Minister, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, dated 9 June 1997. Mr. Azad said that he was both surprised and disappointed, because he had been receiving that kind of letter from the outgoing Tory Administration, who had been increasingly xenophobic during the past few years, when the righthon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe(Mr. Howard) was Home Secretary.
I do not know how much my constituent was charged for that letter, but I would not describe its value as being particularly great. However, I understand that, until comparatively recently, that organisation was dealing--if that is the right term--with many immigration judicial review cases, as well as political asylum cases, on behalf of constituents all over the country.
It is not only the amateurs about whom I complain and whose activities I hope the Bill will do a great deal to curb. About 76 firms of solicitors are currently under investigation by the Legal Aid Board because of the way in which they handle, mishandle or bungle--hon. Members can describe it any way they like--these cases. Under the heading
The report continues:
Mr. Snape:
I have no intention of allowing those not-so-amusing tales to prevent this country from, quite rightly, welcoming genuine refugees, from whom we have benefited enormously over the years. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Gorton said, the problem with those scams is that genuine refugees are all too often turned away because Ministers, advisers and the Home Office generally are bogged down in the sort of cases that I have outlined.
Although I confess that The Lawyer is not habitual reading in the Snape household, I must say to my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) that Richard Dunstan, the former Law Society immigration law sub-committee secretary, said:
When I read the Tory amendment, I could not believe the nerve of the modern-day Conservative party. Someone described the Tory party as an organised hypocrisy; I have forgotten who it was, but it was an accurate description. [Interruption.] It was Disraeli; I knew that my hon. Friends would come to my rescue. That description is accurate in terms of the speech that we heard from the Tory Front-Bench spokesman and the so-called reasoned amendment.
Mr. Corbyn:
The Tory party is a disorganised hypocrisy.
Mr. Snape:
Yes, it is a disorganised hypocrisy in this case.
The amendment declines to give the Bill a Second Reading because
Mr. Gale:
The hon. Gentleman voted against the two previous asylum Bills.
Mr. Snape:
Those three Acts were opposed, because it was clear that they would not work. The situation that we are in today shows better than anything else that they do not work. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) wants to defend the Conservative legislation, he should catch Mr. Deputy Speaker's eye, instead of bawling from a sedentary position. If he wants to make a fool of himself, he is better doing it on his feet rather than on the other bit of his anatomy.
I did not congratulate the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien), when he got this job: I commiserated with him. I said that he had the worst job in government.
Mr. David Ruffley (Bury St. Edmunds):
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Snape:
No, I have only 60 seconds to go.
Mr. Humfrey Malins (Woking):
First, I decare an interest as a solicitor and as the founder and first chairman of trustees of the Immigration Advisory Service, which, as the House may know, was set up some five years ago to provide free legal help and advice to those with rights of appeal under immigration law. The IAS--which some hon. Members use for their case work and for advice--has eight offices scattered around the United Kingdom, about 100 staff, and each year sees more than 30,000 people with problems.
Having declared that interest, and thanking the Minister for the kind words he has said about the IAS in the past, may I also tell the House that the constituency of Woking, which I now represent, has a large, settled, ethnic population who contribute greatly to the community. They are mainly from a Pakistani background. Previously, I represented the constituency of Croydon, North-West, which also had a large, settled ethnic community.
The Bill has some good provisions, but I join the hon. Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Snape) in welcoming especially the restoration of the appeal right for those who are refused entry clearance as visitors, although it is restricted to those visiting family members. All hon. Members know this problem only too well. Someone may come to our constituency to attend a wedding, a funeral or another important family function. There is often documentary evidence in support of the visit, but the visitor, whom we know to be genuine, is refused entrance and has no right of appeal. I am very pleased that this right of appeal has been introduced.
I am concerned that there is no provision in the Bill for defining what is meant by "family visitor". I hope that the Minister will give attention to that point, because it is capable of a variety of definitions and requires consideration.
I think that it is wrong that a refused visitor will have to pay a fee towards the cost of the appeal. We must look into this matter carefully. It is all very well to say that such people will have the fee back if they are successful on appeal, but I advise the Minister to consider this provision carefully. The amount of the fee is not
mentioned in the Bill. Can the Minister tell us what the fee is? Does he agree that, if the fee is too high, it may discriminate against the poorer appellant, who, even though he has a good case, may not be able to afford the appeal fee? There is a danger that there will be justice for the rich, but no justice for the poor, unless the Minister handles that issue with great sensitivity.
I also extend a more than qualified welcome to clause 7, which introduces the principle of giving financial security for entry clearance or extension of leave, in the form either of a deposit or of a guarantee. I have no quarrel with the security being in the form of a guarantee. However, it is clear from the Bill that the security could be the deposit of a sum of money. Again, I ask the Minister how much. Will it be on a sliding scale depending on the means of the parties? Does the Minister accept that a high cash deposit could discriminate against a poor person who may otherwise have an excellent claim, and work in favour of a rich person, whose claim may otherwise lack merit?
Does the Minister agree that the issue of the deposit must be approached with great sensitivity? Otherwise, he will face two charges: first, that the measure directly damages and discriminates against the poorly off; and secondly, that the move provides a relatively cheap way for the rich but dishonest to circumvent and break the rules, and buy their way into the country.
"OSS ignores legal aid asylum scam revelations",
Diane Taylor wrote in the 8 February 1999 edition of The Lawyer, the legal profession's own magazine:
"The Office for the Supervision of Solicitors failed to pass on a report to the Legal Aid Board outlining a legal aid scam that cost the taxpayer millions of pounds.
That is not my phrase; it was used in the lawyers' own magazine.
Former Law Society immigration law sub-committee secretary Richard Dunstan gave the report to the OSS last October.
The report claims firms approached refugees at the offices of the Government's Asylum Screening Unit in London.
They used interpreters to get asylum seekers to sign Green Form billing forms--often in the ASU's toilets.
The report outlines how solicitors offered shoddy legal advice and milked the system."
"The average claim for asylum seeker legal advice was up to £1,100, with one law firm alone netting more than £500,000 in legal aid money last year."
Ms Abbott:
We can all tell stories of solicitors and racketeers and abuse, but my hon. Friend will, I hope, agree that abuse and poor advice from lawyers and
"The great majority of those now operating in the asylum field, both lawyers and non-lawyers, are either insufficiently competent, dishonest, or both."
That is a shattering indictment of certain shady members of the legal profession and an indication of how much we need the Bill if we are to clear up this situation.
"the Bill fails to create a situation whereby only genuine asylum applicants will be given permission to settle in this country."
Many of the applicants being dealt with entered the country under the three pieces of asylum legislation that the Conservatives introduced in just over a decade. [Interruption.] Conservative Members say that they were bogus applications.
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