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Mr. Corbyn: In such a debate it is hard to add anything new to what has already been said, so I will be brief.
I put on record my appreciation and support for the cause of my hon. Friends the Members for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) and for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), and for the good contributions of my hon. Friends the Members for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. McDonnell) and for Nottingham, South (Mr. Simpson). They are right: many Members have been deeply disturbed by many of the contents of the Bill.
I am pleased to say that the Home Secretary and Minister have been prepared to meet people, to listen, to engage in debate and to discuss--that is obviously welcome. Unfortunately, we are still faced with a fundamental problem: the principle behind the provision on the way in which children are treated.
I have been a Member of Parliament since 1983. I was on the Standing Committee that dealt with the 1986 Social Security Bill. The former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), was then a junior social security Minister. I recall as plainly as yesterday asking him on what basis asylum-seeking families were entitled to only 90 per cent. of income support. I think that that was where the whole notion of an incentive came in--the belief was that, if we gave 90 per cent., there would be a disincentive for asylum seekers to come to this country. Frankly, it was a punishment for asylum seekers and on their children. That punishment has continued.
I took an active part in the debates surrounding the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996. The Labour Opposition were rightly appalled at the way in which the then Government sought to remove all benefits from asylum seekers. It was disgusting; it was outrageous. When that happened, an informal network of support grew up. Churches took to sponsoring individuals. Families who had gained settlement here shared their income support, which was only 90 per cent. of what other people received, and sought to look after other children.
Children growing up in families on income support do not do very well, and the Prime Minister has been quite right to draw attention to the fact that about one third of all children--perhaps more--grow up in households living only on income support. Those children do badly at school, and in many other ways, because there is not enough money to go around. They have more illness and poverty, and less joy than children in wealthier households.
What on earth is the justification for expecting an asylum-seeking family with two children to exist on about £45 per week less than their counterparts who are receiving full income support? Such an arrangement would be an absolute punishment of the poorest children in the United Kingdom.
Ms Abbott:
Ministers have argued that, contrary to what they say in print, the proposals are not meant to serve as a disincentive. They also argue that they are only relieving local authorities of their duties under the National Assistance Act 1948, as local authorities have begged them to do. Clause 103, however, states that the Bill will also remove from local authorities their discretion to provide help--under the Health Services and Public Health Act 1968 and the National Health Service Act 1977--to elderly asylum seekers, so as to prevent illness.
The point about clause 103 is that, whereas Ministers claim that they are removing local authorities' national assistance obligations--because local authorities have asked them to do so--they are not even allowing local authorities to provide discretionary help to elderly asylum seekers or to prevent illness. Providing that help is entirely optional for local authorities.
Mr. Corbyn:
My hon. Friend makes an important point, but I do want to stray too far in dealing with it, as that would take us away from the substance of new clause 6. However, the provision would remove the principle of local authorities' right to some discretion. Although I should not mind removal of that right of discretion if it were replaced by a system providing full support for asylum seekers; the only way in which that objective could be achieved would be by allowing asylum seekers the same access to the social security system as they had before implementation of the 1996 Act. If that access were restored, we would resolve the issues raised by discrimination and the incredible cost spent in administering an ineffective and inefficient system.
We inherited from the Conservative Government an expensive, inefficient and nasty system; now, we shall establish a directorate to continue in much the same way. Although I realise that the Government have made some concessions on the amount of cash to be made available, I cannot understand why we are introducing a voucher system.
Every teacher in a classroom knows that it is his or her job to try to educate and bring up that group of children in the best way he or she knows, providing them with security for the future. Every teacher knows that if children come from a very poor background, they might bring with them particular problems.
Often, however, the children of asylum-seeking families have experienced all sorts of other distress. They may have witnessed violence, or have had violence meted out to them. They have may have witnessed great upheaval, and have a sense of insecurity. If those children also know--as my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) said--that their parents cannot afford the small but so important things in life, such as sweets or a school trip to the fairground, they will have been very cruelly discriminated against.
Children can be very cruel to one another. The system that we are being asked to support today will not only continue that cruelty, but exacerbate it.
In approving the proposals, we shall also be feeding xenophobia directed against asylum seekers. We shall introduce a system that stigmatises people, impoverishes children and costs us all a great deal of money to administer. Nor will it solve the problems that it is intended to solve.
I am with my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington on the issue. It is wrong of the Labour party, which has always campaigned for the principle of universal benefits and a universal welfare state, to be involved in introducing a system that is the antithesis of a universal welfare state--a state in which the community as a whole provides for the needs of everyone, in the expectation that the community as a whole will participate for the greater good. That is what the welfare state is about; today we are walking away from it. What we are doing is wrong.
I hope that the Home Secretary will realise the depth and strength of feeling on the issue, not only among Labour Members but among the community that we represent. I hope that he will also appreciate what is being said by those who attend churches and who work in local government, by teachers and social workers, and by ordinary people who see impoverished children in our city.
There are 47,000 asylum-seeking families in London, which is far more than in any other part of the United Kingdom. Local authorities have done a great deal to do their very best to support those families, just as they supported them after implementation of the 1996 legislation.
All the groups that have been lobbying us on the issue--the Refugee Council, the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, the Children's Society, Oxfam, citizens advice bureaux, and so many others--have also lobbied us before. I do not think that, after the 1997 general election, any of them expected to have to write the same type of letter to Labour Members, offering the same type of advice.
I ask the Home Secretary to reflect on what the Bill is about and on what he is doing, and to give us some encouragement that that system will not continue, and we shall return to a system of universal benefits.
Mr. Coleman:
I should like to begin as many of my hon. Friends have done, by warmly welcoming many of the Government amendments. I am especially pleased that the Government have significantly increased the cash element in the support package for asylum seekers.
I should like also to join almost every other Labour Member who has spoken by paying tribute to the sensitive way in which my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and my hon. Friend the junior Minister have recognised the very real concerns of Labour Members, listened carefully and taken on board many of those concerns. Nevertheless, major concerns remain.
I should like briefly to highlight three reasons--some of which have already been mentioned, but I do not apologise for that--why I support amendment No. 1, which would exempt families with dependent children from the proposed support package. First, however, I pay
tribute to the work done on the Bill by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard), both in Committee and with various agencies.
I represent an inner London constituency with a very large number of asylum seekers, many of whom have children, and a significant number of whom have waited for years for their applications to be processed.
My first reason for supporting amendment No. 1 is based on doubts and concerns--which I hope the Home Secretary will deal with today--about the Government's claim that the current support package is equivalent to 90 per cent. of income support. It is a very important point, because the Government have advised us that, added together, the voucher and cash support elements will equal 70 per cent. of income support. Ministers also say that the other elements of the support package will definitely make up the 20 per cent. difference, as the bulk of that is composed of utilities costs.
Last week, I asked the Library to research what percentage of income support a typical family, comprising two adults and two children, would spend on utilities--electricity, gas and water. Although it is not possible to calculate a precise figure, as costs vary between different parts of the country, the Library has told me that no more than 10 per cent. of income support entitlement should be spent on utilities. There is, therefore, a significant discrepancy between that percentage and the one provided by the Government.
One suggestion made to me by Government sources is that an element of the package is the cost of accommodation furnished with items such as saucepans and cutlery. That explanation does not hold water, and I hope that it is not the one that we shall hear later from my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. Anyone acquainted with the private rented sector in inner London will be well aware that almost no available unfurnished accommodation is remotely affordable for families living on income support and housing benefit. So the reality is that British families living in private sector rented accommodation will inevitably live in furnished accommodation. In other words, UK citizens do not have their income support reduced in any way as a consequence of living in furnished accommodation, and to penalise asylum seekers for providing them with furnished accommodation would be invidious, wrong and certainly open to legal challenge.
We should also not lose sight of the fact that the package already contains an in-built cut in benefit for asylum seekers with children, even if we accept that the Government's figures add up to 90 per cent. of income support entitlement, which I do not believe. Although it is true that asylum seekers have historically received 90 per cent. of income support, asylum seekers' children have always received 100 per cent. of income support. For that reason, I believe that, if the Government refuse to accept the extremely modest amendment No. 1, they should at least be prepared to agree to the demand--made by, among others, the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, Oxfam, the Refugee Council of Great Britain and the Children's Society--that the income support entitlement set for the support package must be a minimum of 85 per cent.
The second principle behind my support for the amendment relates to the use of vouchers. Their use is offensive in principle, but I believe that there are special
and particular problems attached to their use by families with children. There is a range of practical reasons why the use of vouchers is inefficient and expensive, some of which have already been mentioned by my hon. Friends. Anyone who has shopped for food will know that there is an inevitable reduction in street spending power entailed by the use of vouchers. I live two streets away from Shepherds Bush market, where it is possible six days a week to buy vegetables, fruit, chicken and other staple dietary requirements at a fraction of the cost at which they can be purchased at the only supermarket in my constituency where vouchers are currently redeemable.
It is true that a £1.10 bus ride away in south Fulham, where vouchers are currently not redeemable, there are cheaper supermarkets where it might be possible, under the new arrangements, to buy such items at prices similar to those offered on the street market--I doubt it, but it might be possible. However, the bus rides to and from those supermarkets will probably cost most of the asylum seekers who live in accommodation on the Shepherds Bush road, where all the bed-and-breakfast hotels are, at least one day's worth of their meagre cash allowance. We are told that the Home Office currently intends that the lowest denomination voucher will be worth 50p, thus obliging the asylum seeker either to spend in multiples of 50p, or to dip into the minimal cash allowance which, even at the increased level, is set at the huge figure of £1.43 per day.
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