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Mr. Straw: First, the figures were not drawn up by me--although I do take an interest in statistics, as is famously known--but by officials. Secondly, although I understand that, on the whole, the Liberals are not in the least bothered about the cost of their promises, because they will never be in government, the Conservatives--at least in the past--were concerned about costs. One of the main reasons that the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) argued for the removal of the entitlement to cash benefits for half of asylum seekers is the simple and straightforward fact that, if cash benefits are available to asylum seekers, they act as a pull factor and an encouragement to those asylum seekers who want to abuse the system. There is a significantly higher rate of take-up of cash benefits--including by many people who make fraudulent claims--than there is of benefits provided in kind.
I point out to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan) and to Conservative Members--whose spokesperson, the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald, actively supported the Lords amendment, as she made clear to the House on 26 October--that a consequence of a measure to restore cash benefits to in-country applicants could be to provide an inducement not just for many fraudulent asylum seekers to come to this country, but for some people already in this country, who hold British passports or rights of residence, to invent new identities in order to claim social security benefits. The amendment drives a coach and horses through the arrangements that we are establishing; it is an open encouragement to fraud, and there is no question that the costs would run to £400 million or £500 million. However, we shall not find out for certain whether that will be so, because we invite the House to reject the amendment.
Amendment No. 135 would overturn all the arrangements that we are setting up in the Bill, including one of the key arrangements made by the previous Administration--to remove cash benefits. When the Conservative Government proposed changes to the previous system of support, they did only half a job. They decided to continue cash benefits for those who applied at port; they took away the right to receive cash benefits for those who applied in-country, but they failed to provide any alternative safety net. That was a profound defect in the legislation. Instead of making alternative arrangements, the Conservative Government appeared to believe that in-country applicants would be able to rely on friends and their own community for support. Only a later decision of the courts--to the effect that asylum seekers should not be left wholly destitute while they were pursuing a legitimate claim for asylum--resulted in asylum seekers gaining access to assistance from local authorities under social services legislation. That legislation was never intended for such purposes, and reliance on it has led to huge problems for the local authorities concerned, especially those in inner-London boroughs, and several in Kent--including those in Dover, Folkestone and throughout the southern part of Kent.
The pressure on housing and other social services both from asylum seekers and those housed by local authorities in those areas is intense and unsustainable. It results in problems for London local authorities, and indeed for Kent local authorities, in discharging their duties towards local homeless households under homelessness legislation. Asylum seekers themselves often end up in extremely poor conditions. No one--including some of those who oppose other aspects of the Bill--believes that such concentration of asylum seekers in one part of the country is sensible or defensible.
Mr. Simon Hughes:
The Home Secretary will know well that a borough such as mine is confronted daily--as are those represented by inner-London colleagues--by the pressures that he describes. One way of dealing with those matters, to take the pressure off local government, would be for the Government to take the view that, until a decision has been taken on those asylum seekers who want to stay here, responsibility for them could, and should, be taken by the Government. The Government could fund the asylum seekers and ensure the repayment to local authorities of any funding that they have to disburse in advance, while the decisions are made. Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that?
Mr. Straw:
I agree with the hon. Gentleman's proposition, and that is exactly what the Bill would achieve. I hope that he will perform the same U-turn as the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald, appreciate the error of his ways and of the course adopted by his noble Friends in another place and support our motion to reject Lords amendment No. 135. Our measures are designed to remove responsibility from local authorities, relieve pressure on the hon. Gentleman's borough and many others, and establish a national system of dispersal in which the Government take responsibility.
Implicit in amendment No. 135 is an assumption that the new support arrangements will be in some way inferior to the current arrangements; I do not accept that. Under the new arrangements, asylum seekers who are destitute will receive good-quality accommodation appropriate to their needs. That may take the form of full board and lodging, or self-contained and self-catering accommodation suitable for families and others who are able to look after themselves. In the latter case, the support will include vouchers, in addition to a cash allowance of £10 per person per week, to meet the asylum seeker's and his dependants' living needs. Asylum seekers will have access to a wide range of outlets throughout the country in which to redeem the vouchers.
Dr. Godman:
My question about vouchers is prompted by a letter I received from Dr. Alison Elliot, who is the convener of the Committee on Church and Nation of the Church of Scotland. She argues that such a system will be
Mr. Straw:
I was going to deal later with one matter of speculation about the voucher system: the interim
In a consultation paper issued in August, the Government proposed that the amount of cash support that local authorities are able to pay under existing arrangements for in-country applicants be limited to £10 per person per week in all cases. Many of the responses to the consultation paper objected to changing the arrangements currently applied by local authorities for a period of only four or five months. Those responses included representations from the Child Poverty Action Group and many other bodies.
After heeding the consultation, the Government concluded that, during the interim period before the new national system comes into force on 1 April, local authorities should be able to continue to give all support to families in cash for their living needs, as they choose. Some local authorities operate in that way under the current arrangements, whereas others do not. The £10 cash limit would continue to apply in the case of the single asylum seeker. I should make it clear that, under the arrangements established by the National Assistance Act 1948, local authorities are not allowed to provide any cash at all; therefore, our proposals for the interim period provide additional flexibility.
As for the question raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (Dr. Godman) about whether the new full arrangements to be rolled out from 1 April would apply to the whole of the United Kingdom, or whether the use of vouchers would be abandoned in Scotland, the answer is that they will apply to the whole of the United Kingdom.
Mr. Allan:
The Home Secretary mentions families held under the current arrangements until April 2000. Does he mean until a fixed date of April 2000, or until the point at which the time limit is down to six months, which is what we previously understood would be the time that families would come under the new system?
Mr. Straw:
If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, I shall answer that point in a minute.
Mrs. Maria Fyfe (Glasgow, Maryhill):
I am puzzled by the news my right hon. Friend has just imparted, because local government is one of the responsibilities of the Scottish Parliament and separate arrangements have always been made for Scotland. If the legislation is to apply UK-wide, it should have been discussed in the Scottish Parliament and there should have been discussions between UK Ministers and Scottish Ministers; yet, as far as I am aware, no such discussions have taken place.
Mr. Straw:
With great respect to my hon. Friend, she and my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde dealt with this matter at some length in interventions in the debate on the timetable motion. I believe that no one--not even the Scottish National party--could argue with the fact that if we have a Union, questions of immigration and asylum must be a reserved matter, not a devolved matter. However, the issue does have an impact on local authorities, so we have held detailed discussions with the Scottish Executive.
In response to a point raised earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde, we propose that there should be a concordat to inform and govern the relations between ourselves, the Scottish Executive and Scottish local authorities. We recognise the local sensitivities. We are grateful for the co-operation that we have received from those bodies as well as from the relevant bodies in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
In setting up the new support arrangements, we are providing a level of support that is broadly equivalent to that which asylum seekers could expect to get, were social security benefits still available to them. Under those plans, support for children will be equivalent to 100 per cent. of child benefit levels.
We have amended the Bill to place a Secretary of State under a duty to meet the accommodation and essential living needs of families with children under the age of 18. Members on both sides of the House will recall that that was a matter of concern; we have ensured that we have met it. The assistance that families receive will be comparable to that provided under section 17 of the Children Act 1989. All the other safeguards for children contained in that Act will continue to apply. New arrangements will ensure 24-hour cover so that families always have somewhere to turn in an emergency.
The House knows that we propose to disperse most asylum seekers away from London and the south-east, to relieve the pressure on those areas. In doing so, our aim is to make better use of spare and underused housing in less pressured parts of the country. I believe that that is sensible, and I do not believe that the genuine asylum seeker who is fleeing persecution will mind where in the country he is properly accommodated for the period while his claim is processed.
We shall neither disperse asylum seekers at random nor leave them in isolation. Rather, we shall seek to house people from similar backgrounds in the same general locality, wherever possible, in sufficient numbers for them to rely on a degree of mutual support and help. We shall also form partnerships with the voluntary sector to establish one-stop shops that will assist asylum seekers in navigating their way around their new surroundings and accessing local health and welfare facilities as necessary. We are providing funding for those centres.
As we said in the White Paper, we are determined to achieve faster processing targets for asylum applications. As is plain from the text of the White Paper that I published in July 1998, we never said that the new support arrangements would be introduced only when the two and four-month targets had been achieved. New support arrangements have always been due to come into force in April 2000. We said that we would aim to beat the two and four-month targets for most--but not all--applicants by April 2001. Early introduction of the new support arrangements is a key part of the wider strategy for reforming the system, achieving the targets, and bearing down on the so-called pull factors in the present system which, unquestionably, have attracted many asylum seekers with unfounded claims to this country, as they have to many other European countries.
We recognise that, especially in the early stages, there may be cases in which support under the new system lasts longer than six-months. Similarly, for in-country applicants, support through local authority vouchers may last longer than six months. For families, support through
vouchers is the arrangement provided by many, but not all, local authorities, whereas for single asylum seekers it is the universal system of support provided by local authorities.
For that reason I agreed, earlier in the summer, following representations from colleagues, that families with children would not be brought into the new support system until the process targets for those cases could be achieved. We aim to achieve those by April 2000.
9 pm
"costly and cumbersome, and . . . demeaning."
There is speculation in Scotland that the voucher system will not be implemented north of the border. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that, or is that speculation without foundation?
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