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New Clause
Lords amendment: No. 1, after clause 3, to insert the following new clause--Accommodation for those temporarily admitted or released from detention--
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.--[Mr. Jamieson.]
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
With this, it will be convenient to take amendment (a) and Lords amendment No. 329.
Mr. Simon Hughes:
I support amendment (a), which relates to an amendment first introduced in the House of Lords. I ask the House to pay attention to the debate as this issue was never raised when the Bill was on the Floor of this House.
The issue was not raised during the Bill's passage through the House and was mentioned for the first time when the legislation was on Report in the other place. To put it bluntly, the issue is whether we should introduce a new power of house arrest specifically for people who come to this country seeking asylum. Such people would have no convictions for any offence. They would be detained through no actions of their own. They would have no record of absconding. They would do nothing more than arrive on our shores. Should people who come to Britain thinking that we are the home of liberty be told that they may stay, but only on the condition that their liberty is restricted immediately?
There are two hugely important interrelated issues surrounding this new clause and the amendment that my hon. Friend and I have tabled. First, how do we justify detaining people in this country and how will we add new powers of detention? Secondly, how do we treat people who come to this country as refugees? How do we treat those who have decided that this is the place where they will seek sanctuary? What signals should we send? What is Britain's reputation in this area?
It is no coincidence that I can commend to hon. Members an article that appears on page 19 of today's edition of The Guardian--I shall refer to it only briefly. The article, entitled "Welcome them", is written by the director of the King's Fund, Rabbi Julia Neuberger, and is about refugees. She begins the article by relating her family's experience, and states:
(". The Secretary of State may provide, or arrange for the provision of, facilities for the accommodation of persons--
(a) temporarily admitted to the United Kingdom under paragraph 21 of Schedule 2 to the 1971 Act;
(b) released from detention under that paragraph; or
(c) released on bail from detention under any provision of the Immigration Acts.")
"My mother, my uncle, one set of grandparents, and innumerable other relations, came to the UK as refugees from Hitler's Germany in the 1930s . . .
9 Nov 1999 : Column 1005
That childhood made me realise something of what it is to be a refugee, to be torn from your home, to feel grateful for asylum, to think of 'home' as more than one place, to yearn for one's country of birth, despite one's resentment and anger at it, as one grows old."
She continues:
9 Nov 1999 : Column 1006
"The devil is in the detail"--
of the Bill that we are debating tonight--
"but refugees and asylum seekers have not always been a popular group. That is why it is essential that parliament takes a very close look at this bill, and distinguishes between measures designed to deter false asylum seekers and those which will have a harmful effect on genuine refugees, who have surely suffered enough already."
Rabbi Neuberger concludes by making the point--which was mentioned across the House, in Committee and in another place--that Britain has gained hugely from people who have come here as refugees. Many of our great academic talents were refugees; many innovators in the field of science this century were refugees from Europe and from further afield. If we agree to the new clause introduced by the Government in the Lords without the amendment that my hon. Friend and I suggest, we risk putting off other refugees who may come to this country from the former Yugoslavia, the horn of Africa or elsewhere.
Current immigration laws are technical--and I hope that hon. Members will bear with me. In the other place, Ministers got into a terrible muddle describing what they were seeking to achieve. They introduced amendments on Report and agreed that it would be better to take amendment No. 1 first and to consider the consequential amendment to it in a later debate. Ministers then withdrew the second amendment and reintroduced it on Third Reading, pushing it through against the strong advice of a House of Lords Select Committee.
I turn now to what the Bill proposes. It adds to the existing powers in the Immigration Act 1971 which allow people to be detained. Paragraph 21 of schedule 2 of that Act says:
"A person liable to detention or detained under paragraph 16 above may, under the written authority of an immigration officer, be temporarily admitted to the United Kingdom without being detained or be released from detention; but this shall not prejudice a later exercise of the power to detain him."
However, the paragraph continues:
"So long as a person is at large in the United Kingdom by virtue of this paragraph, he shall be subject to such restrictions as to residence"--
and to employment or occupation--
"and as to reporting to the police or an immigration officer as may from time to time be notified to him in writing by an immigration officer."
There are, therefore, existing powers under the 1971 Act.
The Government advise us that all that the Act allows by way of detention is that which
"is necessary to maintain contact and prevent absconding".
However, that is never made clear in the Act or anywhere else. The Government have introduced a new clause in amendment No. 1, which says:
"The Secretary of State may provide, or arrange for the provision of, facilities for the--
this is rather disingenuously put--
"accommodation of persons . . . temporarily admitted to the United Kingdom under paragraph 21 . . . released from detention under that paragraph; or . . . released on bail from detention under any provision of the Immigration Acts."
-
That clause does not reveal what is behind the proposal. One must look to Lords amendment No. 329, which amends schedule 13 of the Bill. It says:
"The provisions that may be included in restrictions as to residence imposed under sub-paragraph (2) include provisions of such a description as may be prescribed by regulations made by the Secretary of State."
That points towards regulations to be laid in the future.
The amendment continues:
"The regulations may"--
it does not say that they must--
"among other things, provide for the inclusion of provisions".
That means that the regulations are not limited to those provisions, but they may include them. They may be provisions
"prohibiting residence in one or more particular areas",
or
"requiring the person concerned to reside in accommodation provided under"
the relevant section of the Bill, and
"prohibiting him from being absent from that accommodation except in accordance with the restrictions imposed on him."
Mr. Hughes: The Minister says that it seems reasonable, but if Ministers are saying that it is reasonable to put newly arrived asylum seekers under house arrest for no reason other than that they have arrived here, the Government stand condemned by their own definition of what is reasonable. We cannot argue that the provisions are reasonable, and the Government should not argue that they are reasonable. The Select Committee in the House of Lords which considered the Bill certainly did not believe that the provisions were reasonable. Why, then, are they before us? The Minister said that the aim of the provisions is
- "to prevent potential public order problems".
So we are going to lock up or put under house arrest asylum seekers to prevent public order problems. But who is likely to cause such problems? As I understand it, public order problems this summer have not, by and large, been caused by asylum seekers, but have stemmed from the reaction of others to asylum seekers. Public order problems are not often caused by people who arrive with their children from a country far away, with no money but with the hope that they will be received. They are caused by people who think that there may be an invasion behind asylum seekers. That is dangerous enough, but the Government say that the measure is necessary to allow full and rapid consideration of asylum seekers' claims and to enable rapid decisions to be taken, in days rather than weeks. For that, flexible provisions are needed.
10.45 pm
My colleagues and I have tabled a simple amendment. We do not like the original amendment. We simply tried to get the House to recognise that if we are to introduce the measure, there should be a limit on the time for which it applies. All we are asking is that while his application is looked into, an asylum seeker with no previous record of offending and no previous visits to the United Kingdom
should not be required, by regulations that we have not seen, to be under house arrest for more than 10 days. That should be long enough for someone to decide his status and how to deal with him.
Ministers were put on the defensive by peers in many corners of their lordships' House. I pay tribute to those from the Liberal Democrat Benches, including the Baroness Williams, the Lords Avebury and Goodhart--Lord Goodhart particularly, with his legal experience--and the Earl Russell. The Government said that the asylum seekers would be free to come and go, but on further exploration it turns out that that means free to come and go only during the day. At night they will be back at base, wherever base is, and in whatever form of detention will be decided for them.
Not only could asylum seekers be under detention at night, but--this is the real criticism--the power can continue indefinitely. The contributions of the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) and others in the previous debate are relevant. If we pass the amendment unaltered by our amendment, we shall give a power allowing people to be detained indefinitely, placed under house arrest indefinitely and restricted indefinitely, while their claims are processed. The hon. Lady knows, as do I and anyone who deals every day with immigration cases, that the promise that a claim will be dealt with quickly, even if the promise is made in a letter or a telephone call and sometimes even if it is made by a Minister, does not necessarily mean that the claim is dealt with quickly.
Colleagues in the other place tried to explore ways in which the amendment might be restricted. The Select Committee on Delegated Powers and Deregulation, which considered the proposal, said that it was a form of house arrest. That is the Select Committee's phrase; it is not a party political phrase. The Select Committee suggested that various amendments should be made by the Government. First, it suggested that the purpose of the restriction should be specified in the Bill--for example, that it is in the interests of public order. No purpose is specified in the Bill, which makes it a dangerously wide provision. Secondly, the Select Committee suggested that if the amendment is justified, it should be for a single purpose. There is no such restriction in the Bill. Thirdly, the Select Committee argued that the restrictions must be reasonable, and that that should be specifically stated. Nothing in the Bill provides that natural justice qualification.
The Government did make two concessions. They conceded that the measure would have to be compatible with article 3 of the European convention on human rights, and that a Minister would have to certify that it was compatible. However, imagine if someone is placed, we know not where, and told that he cannot go out at night and that he must stay there. Even after next autumn, when the European convention on human rights is part of English law, as my colleagues and I have wanted for many years, is it reasonable that it should be up to an asylum seeker to apply to the courts to rule whether he should be held?
Should that be the way in which we conduct our business? Should the assumption be that a newly arrived refugee should have to go to court to establish his rights? My colleagues and I think not. Although the Government
have made concessions, enforcing the provision's human rights compatibility may be much more difficult than envisaged. It is sometimes difficult enough for hon. Members to enforce their rights. If we think that that will be easy for people arriving with no English, no money and no knowledge of British systems, we are deceiving ourselves.
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