| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Roger Gale (North Thanet): Before he leaves that point, does my hon. Friend recognise that the people of Kent feel very let down by the Government, who have failed to meet their financial commitment to Kent county council in the past financial year by £1.7 million, and who have failed and are failing to implement their programme of dispersal? Is the figure of 20,000 economic migrants whom the Government have failed to deport following decisions that they should not remain in this country remotely satisfactory?
Mr. Lidington: The Government's record in defending the interests of the people of Kent and in upholding a reputable system for handling asylum cases has been deplorable throughout their three years in office.
Mr. Neil Gerrard (Walthamstow): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Lidington: No. Secondly, a report from Sir Geoffrey Bowman to the Lord Chancellor was published in summary on the internet just this afternoon. It makes a number of disturbing claims about the likely future trend of judicial review applications in asylum cases. It is a serious review team. It is chaired by Sir Geoffrey Bowman and includes Lord Justice Simon Brown, Ms Anne Owers, director of Justice, and senior legal academics.
The summary of the conclusions of the report reads:
- The new asylum support provisions, and the limitations of the appellate system set up to deal with them, are likely to increase substantially the number of applications for judicial review.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Lidington: No. I hope that the Government will take urgent action to set that right. If the Press Association
report of the review is accurate, the judge warns of an extra work load, which is likely to be somewhere between "substantial and a flood," and calls for urgent action to clear up the backlog before the autumn. If he is correct in his predictions, the time available to the Government to take corrective action is very limited.I turn to the measures that we have proposed and which we urge the Government to accept. First, we need an increased use of detention. It is not some draconian or inhumane policy, but a system that is widely used by other European countries whose asylum problems are comparable with our own. Such a system, making greater use of reception centres, would deter bogus applicants and ensure that, when an application has been refused, the authorities know where the person is and can ensure his removal quickly from this country.
Mr. Robert Marshall-Andrews (Medway): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Secondly, we urge the Government to establish a removals agency with power to arrest and to detain people--
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Clearly, the hon. Gentleman who is addressing the House will not give way. That being so, Members should resume their seats.
Mr. Lidington: We wish the Government to establish a removals agency with power to arrest and detain people who have no right to remain here. We must ensure that many more asylum seekers whose claim is rejected actually leave the United Kingdom. The Home Office admits that at least 20,000 failed asylum seekers have simply disappeared. Other estimates put that figure much higher. Allowing thousands of failed applicants to disappear sends out entirely the wrong message, as does taking no action against those who employ them illegally.
Mr. Jonathan Shaw (Chatham and Aylesford): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
In opposition, the Labour party denounced the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 as racist.
Mr. Marshall-Andrews: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Lidington: No. Labour said then that it would not implement our checks against illegal working because they, too, were racist. Two years on, they had an apparent change of heart. The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien), announced to the House:
- Illegal working is a growing global problem.
The Minister advocated a much stronger and tougher message, but he had to confess at that time that there had been
- only one prosecution, which was very recent . . . The reason that we have not prosecuted more is that we were considering the issue carefully.--[Official Report, 16 June 1999; Vol. 333, c. 490-91.]
Mrs. Roche: The hon. Gentleman is right to say that there has been only one prosecution under the present Government, but will he confirm that, under the last Conservative Government, there were no prosecutions at all?
Mr. Lidington: I must point out that the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 had been in force for a couple of months before we lost office at the general election. The Minister and her colleagues have had three years to get their act together and to use those powers. She gave the game away, however. She told me in a written answer--she will probably recall it:
- One prosecution has been brought thus far, in 1999.--[Official Report, 23 March 2000; Vol. 346, c. 676W.]
Mr. James Clappison (Hertsmere): Does my hon. Friend find it absolutely unbelievable that the Minister of State should, of all people, complain about that? When she was the shadow Opposition spokesman for the Labour party, she wrote to The Daily Telegraph and said that a Labour Government would under no circumstances operate those provisions.
Mr. Lidington: My hon. Friend may have given the House the explanation of why, despite all the slogans from Ministers, the powers are not in practice being used, but it is not the only occasion when the Minister of State has eaten her words. If she looks back at the record of the debates in 1992 on the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Bill, she will see that, on Second Reading, she denounced in the most vehement terms any provision for taking fingerprints from asylum seekers; yet she now not only has charge of the compulsory taking of fingerprints from asylum seekers, but is trying to pilot through a pan-European fingerprinting system and fingerprinting database for asylum seekers. She will have the opportunity later to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am sure that she will be able to give the House a full and apologetic account of the contradiction between her words then and her words now.
This country has for centuries been a haven from persecution for refugees, and that is a tradition that and I and the Conservative party believe that we in Britain must continue to uphold. However, that tradition of hospitality is undermined by large-scale, systematic abuse of our asylum law. The Government--by their negligence, complacency and incompetence--have undermined public
confidence in the law and betrayed the interests not only of the British people, but of the genuine refugees whom our law and international law have been developed to protect. The Government's record is dismal. I commend the motion to the House.8 pm
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Jack Straw): I beg to move, To leave out from 'House' to end and add
- 'approves the Government's comprehensive, integrated strategy to modernise the immigration and asylum system to make it fairer, faster and firmer; welcomes the provisions of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 which will overhaul the inadequate legislative framework created by the previous Government and will replace the chaotic asylum support arrangements introduced in 1996 which have imposed an intolerable burden on local authorities; is astonished that the Official Opposition voted in the other place to restore cash benefits to asylum seekers at a cost of £500 million per year; approves the measures being taken to tackle the smugglers and traffickers who profit from illegal immigration; approves the new civil penalty for drivers and others who bring illegal immigrants to this country concealed in their vehicles; welcomes the substantial additional investment that the Government is making to increase the volume and speed of asylum decisions; congratulates the staff of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate on achieving record numbers of asylum decisions; and supports the Government's commitment to protecting genuine refugees while dealing firmly with those who seek to evade the control.'.
As the House will know, few issues excite more controversy, or pose more acute dilemmas of principle and practice, than asylum. By the end of 1997, it was plain that the basic structures established by the previous Administration were unlikely to withstand the test of time. Therefore, in a White Paper in July 1998 I proposed a clear strategy for reform. That strategy was translated into law in the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, which is the largest and most comprehensive reform of the system ever introduced in the United Kingdom.
Those reforms will ensure that this country honours our moral and international obligations to those who are genuinely fleeing persecution. However, they will also ensure that we deal firmly with those who seek to use asylum as a means of evading normal immigration control. Our strategy is aimed at preventing and deterring unfounded applicants from entering the United Kingdom; speeding up the process once people are here; and dealing fairly and effectively with those who are accepted as refugees and those who are not.
First, let me deal with some of the points made by the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington). In all his criticisms of the system--the unacceptable delays, the burden on local authorities, the increased numbers of unfounded applications, the lack of powers to track down organised criminals and racketeers--there is one common theme. As we all appreciate, Conservative Members do not like us to remind them of that common theme--which is that all those problems are the direct result of a legal and administrative framework established and implemented by the previous, Conservative Government.
Every single aspect of the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996--including the so-called "white list", which the hon. Member for Aylesbury did not mention once--has been operated by the current Government in advance of the radical changes that we are introducing in our 1999 Act.
Who was responsible for the 1996 Act, which created the system that the Opposition--in what I consider to be wholly ill-judged and inappropriate language--claim has made Britain "a soft touch"?
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |