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9 pm
Ms Oona King: May I welcome again the confirmation that the package will broadly represent 90 per cent of current income support? Will my right hon. Friend confirm that if it does not, he will make good that difference?
Mr. Straw: I express my good intentions, because this is a matter to discuss with colleagues as well, but, as I keep saying, it is no part of our purpose to leave the children of asylum seekers short, whether ultimately the application, which is never made by children, is well-founded or not. I hope that my hon. Friends recognise that we continue to examine the calculations and the level of support with great care.
To give further reassurance to my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington, may I say that provided that an individual applicant is still at his registered address, which need not be the accommodation provided but may be another address at which he has registered, he will continue to receive vouchers under the support arrangements.
My hon. Friend went on at length about jewellery and suggested that asylum seekers would be treated less favourably under the new arrangement than people under current the cash benefit arrangement. She went on at length about the fact that there is a £3,000 floor, below which someone's capital assets are not taken into account in assessing income support. That is true, except for asylum seekers, for whom there is no floor under the existing social security benefits regulations.
My last point concerns the time that we intend that family applications should take within the new system. My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow has made many points, both in the House and in other meetings, about the need for speed in getting family applications through. That point has been made by many other hon. Friends, including my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck)--[Interruption.] Was that right? Oh well, it is somewhere on the District line, anyway. [Laughter.] When I came into the House there was not a single posh place in the country that we represented, and now every posh station seems to be one of ours, not one of theirs.
We accept that one of the major problems in the system that we inherited is the inordinate delays. My hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North gave details of a case that had been outstanding since 1990. That is absolutely intolerable. That was supposed to have been dealt with by the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act 1993, but it was not. It was supposed to have been dealt with by the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996, but it was not. As my hon. Friend knows, we intend to deal with that.
We believe that speed is one part of the essence of an efficient and effective system. That is why we have set targets to be achieved by April 2001 for most asylum decisions to be made within two months of receipt and for asylum appeals to be dealt with within a further four months. We are determined to achieve those targets. Average waiting times for appeals are already less than four months.
It is important to put on record, too, the fact that when we came into office, and for the two years in which the spending plans were those left to us--[Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) laughs, but, for the first year, the spending plans were those not only left by her Government, but set by her Government because we had already entered the financial year before the election took place. Far from increasing investment in and the staffing of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, the previous Government were cutting it. No wonder the quality of decision making and administration went down.
We are investing an extra £120 million in the IND over the next three years, including £60 million on speeding up case work. Hundreds more staff are being deployed as case workers, including 200 who are being actively recruited now.
Asylum decisions are currently running at 900 a week and, as I have already said, I hope that that provides substantial reassurance to my hon. Friends. We are aiming to deliver initial decisions on new asylum applications from families with children in an average of two months.
Dr. Lynne Jones:
Can my right hon. Friend explain exactly what he means when he says that the target is that most initial applications should be dealt with within two months? Many of us on the Government Benches were hoping to have assurances from him that the Government would not introduce the voucher system for families until a very high proportion of asylum seekers were having their applications dealt with within two months. That would mean far more than 50 per cent.
Mr. Straw:
The undertaking I am giving is that there will be an average target of two months in which to process a claim. I should also say to my hon. Friend that that does not mean that 51 per cent. of the applications will therefore be accepted; it could easily be the case that 70 per cent. of the applications will be dealt with within that period. We are trying to get the straightforward cases through quickly--as we have been doing with those of Kosovans, for example. The harder cases, the processing of which may last for some time, will skew the average, but the formal undertaking is for the average target of two months to be met. However, I anticipate that many more than 51 per cent. of cases will be decided in that period.
Mr. Straw:
If I may, I want to answer directly the point that my hon. Friend has raised. I also want to deal with the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North, which is, how will I be satisfied, before we introduce that target, that it will be met and what will happen if I believe that we cannot introduce a target? I think that she asked for satisfaction of a 90 per cent. hit rate over three months, but I ask her to accept from me that I cannot offer a mathematical target of such precision.
I also ask my hon. Friend to accept that I will be responsible to the House, and to Members on each side of it, if the system fails to meet the target. I shall set the system running, so, before I press the start button, I shall take a very close and personal interest in whether that target will be met. It will be in nobody's interest, least of all mine, to press the start button to begin the process and then to discover that the applications are routinely not taking two months, but four. A great deal of work is going into that.
For that reason, I also give the subsidiary but very important undertaking that, if we cannot achieve those targets for families with children, and if I am not satisfied that they can be achieved, we will not introduce those applications into the new support arrangements in April 2000. The existing arrangements will continue until we are so satisfied.
I have spoken at considerable length in answering the questions and points that have been raised, with great seriousness, by my hon. Friends and by Liberal Democrat Members. I hope that I have satisfied or, at least, reassured them and assuaged many of their concerns.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time:--
The House divided: Ayes 331, Noes 161.
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