| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Howard: I dealt with precisely that point, as did the legislation. [Interruption.] The hon. Lady, who is muttering from a sedentary position, is entirely wrong. The legislation expressly provided for a change in the circumstances of the country concerned, such as a revolution. Obviously, such events occur, and the legislation recognised that and provided for that. The hon. Lady is right to make that point, and we dealt with it properly and justly in the legislation.
Fiona Mactaggart: The right hon. and learned Gentleman's thesis seems to be that it is obvious to him that people came to this country because money was a draw. If that had been the case, his draconian legislation would have caused the number of people applying in country to decline to zero, but there was only a very slight decrease in that number in the period before the appeal. In this case, just as in the case of his claims about the increasing number of asylum seekers in Dover, his figures are misleading--
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady's intervention is far too long. She will have to learn to make short interventions; then she will be able to get away with them.
Mr. Howard: The overall numbers declined by 40 per cent. in 1996, which was a greater decline than even I had expected. That was a tribute to the success of that legislation.
The Government have, belatedly, introduced their own legislation. As I have said before, I hope that it works, for the sake of my constituents, of genuine refugees and of the integrity of the asylum system, but I have no great confidence that it will do so. One of the curious provisions of the new arrangements, as I understand them--the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, and I may be wrong--is that if an asylum seeker applies for judicial review of an adverse decision under the Act, he loses all right to financial support.
Mr. Howard: Let me finish the point--then I shall be very interested in what the Minister says.
That sounds bold and draconian, but the Government have been obliged to make an exception. If the appeal is brought under section 65 of the 1999 Act, on the ground that a provision of the Human Rights Act 1998 has been infringed, financial support will continue to be available.
What is the logic of that? Why should a challenge based on the proposition that a provision of English law is being breached lead to a withdrawal of financial support, when a challenge based on the proposition that the European convention on human rights is being breached does not have the same consequence? How can the Government justify that inconsistency? I look forward to the Minister's explanation, now or in the course of her speech at the end of the debate.
That is not the only example of the trouble that the Government have stored up for themselves with the introduction of the so-called Human Rights Act 1998. However, it is an example that is likely to bring home the unforeseen consequences of that Act in a particularly conspicuous and unfortunate way.
I said earlier that I would return to the constructive suggestions that were put to me by my constituents and others last month. Some of them, which I have passed on to the Home Secretary, came from Superintendent Chris Eyre, the commander of the police district that includes both Folkestone and Dover. He put forward a number of ideas, including a proposal to improve the sharing of information about asylum seekers between other agencies and the police.
I wrote to the Home Secretary about that on 13 March, and he replied, undertaking to consider these matters. I should be grateful if the Minister told us when she winds up the debate whether any progress has been made.
More recently, I put to the Home Secretary some proposals made to me by hauliers in my constituency. They suggested that an area should be provided in Calais to which drivers could take their vehicles immediately before they embarked on the ferry, so that the vehicles could be checked there by immigration officers. They also suggested that the presence of immigration officers on board the ferries, particularly in the hold, would have a deterrent effect on the activities of asylum seekers who get into the lorries at that stage of the journey--in the hold of the ferry. I hope that the Home Secretary will give sympathetic consideration to those suggestions.
The problems that we have been debating this evening are the problems of the past three years. They are the problems, as I have demonstrated, for which the present Government are responsible. Their attempts to shuffle off the blame on to others have been wholly unconvincing. Their record deserves to be condemned.
9.32 pm
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney, North and Stoke Newington): I begin by reminding the House that this country has a legal responsibility under treaty to asylum seekers--all asylum seekers. Until each individual's case has been given proper consideration, it is not possible to know who is bogus and who is not.
I remind the House, too, that asylum seekers are people, with human fears, hopes and motivations. If politicians on both sides remembered that, we might in time arrive at a workable system of dealing with the challenge of the rising number of refugees and asylum seekers. Too often in the debate, on both sides, we speak about asylum seekers as though they were some sort of inanimate object--the burden, the problem, the flood or the swamp. However, they are people.
In communities like mine, asylum seekers live side by side with us and their children go to school with ours. Of course we cannot be expected to take in economic
migrants outside the law, and of course we cannot be expected to take in people whose asylum cases are proved to be unfounded, but it is no coincidence that of the three Back-Bench speakers in the debate, each is the child of economic migrants.The House would do well to remember the contribution of generations of economic migrants, whether from eastern Europe, Pakistan, the Caribbean, Somalia or Kosovo, who have contributed to making London the great international city that it is. We would have a better and more constructive debate if we put the issues in that context.
The occasion of the debate is the monumentally unscrupulous attempt by the Conservative party to use the issue of asylum to grub for votes in the forthcoming local elections. It is the tragedy of the Opposition that they have no other issue, and it is a tragedy for the parliamentary system that they form such a pathetic Opposition. It falls to a few Labour Back Benchers to do what we can to rectify the problems.
As I have said, the occasion for this debate is a monumentally unscrupulous attempt to exploit the issue of asylum. In the public mind and in political discourse, race, immigration and asylum are inextricably linked. It is totally dishonest to claim that it is possible to raise the issue of asylum, to use the big lie on asylum and to stir up people's fears on asylum, and yet not to be playing the race card. In the public mind and in public debate, the three issues are linked.
My constituency probably contains more asylum seekers per square mile than those of most Members who are present tonight. I do not claim to be naive about public fears and, in some instances, public antagonism towards asylum seekers; but, just once in a while, it falls to politicians not merely to look at the latest leader in the Daily Mail or the latest finding of a focus group, but to offer leadership on an issue.
Asylum is a difficult issue. I find it distressing when people who were themselves economic migrants come to my advice surgeries peddling the latest nonsense from the tabloid press about asylum. It is much easier to play that game--to play along with those fears and misapprehensions--but the right and responsible course is to discharge our responsibility as a Government as efficiently and fairly as we can, and to offer leadership in the public debate. The Conservative Opposition have failed dismally to offer the right leadership and, whether the general election takes place next summer or in the summer of 2002, they are proceeding inexorably to defeat. Trawling in the gutter for votes on the asylum issue will not help them in the long run, or even in the short run.
As I have said, this is a difficult issue, and there are practical questions to be considered. As Ministers know, I have raised those questions with them in season and out of season. I am taking a great interest in how their system of support unrolls, and in what steps they are taking to deal with the administration of the immigration and nationality directorate in Croydon.
My hon. Friends do not need to be reminded that the biggest incentive to the making of unfounded claims is delay. I fully accept that unfounded claims are a problem: indeed, I have probably seen more people who have made such claims than many other Members. Although my hon. Friends have devoted considerable energy to dealing with the problem of delay and have taken important steps in that regard, I believe that more can be done.
During the Committee stage of the Asylum and Immigration Act 1999, we were promised that the processing time for asylum claims would be reduced to two months, and that the time taken to process a claim and an appeal would be reduced to six months. I want an assurance that we are moving towards those targets. It helps no one if people must wait for years for their claims to be resolved, and it helps the communities in which they live least of all.
There are long-standing and systemic administration and management problems in Croydon. They date back to some time ago during the years of Tory government, but they still exist. The way in which Croydon is managed, the attitude of staff and some of the inefficiencies in the system repay close and continued attention. We can have the best legislation and the best intentions in the world, but the directorate in Croydon will defeat them.
Let me raise a minor point that people working in Croydon raised today. Despite all the effort that is being put into resolving cases, there is still a problem. When a case worker has made a decision on a case, that decision is passed to other staff to endorse and send out. However, because of staff shortages, there is a huge backlog of cases on which a decision has been taken, but not sent out. Colleagues will say, "How does that matter?" I will tell them: the delay in dispatching means that asylum seekers whose cases have been resolved positively cannot claim benefit, sort out their housing or whatever the need is.
I should like more detail on the staff who have been recruited in Croydon. How many specialist asylum case workers are there? How many clerical workers are there? Many of the problems in Croydon go back years and are to do with staffing, management and organisation.
As I say, I will watch with interest how the system of vouchers and forced dispersal unrolls, but I could not let the opportunity pass without expressing the concern of many people that asylum seekers who use vouchers will not receive change. That is why Oxfam is refusing to co-operate with the system. I could not let the opportunity pass without expressing the concern of many people that asylum seeker mothers will not be able to obtain toys for their children with those vouchers. I should be grateful for the Minister's reassurance on that point.
I do not doubt the good intentions of my colleagues, but forced dispersal has never worked. It did not work in relation to the Vietnamese or to the East African Asians. I wait with interest to see whether the system of forced dispersal will work in the coming months and years.
The asylum issue is emotive. In many ways, it is easy to get cheap applause in sections of the press and cheap support from members of the public on the issue. People ring my office every day to complain about their housing and what the Labour Government have not done. As the debate heightens among politicians, people are increasingly ringing my office to complain about asylum seekers. I put it to Members on both sides of the House that, when politicians take a lead in talking about asylum in a certain tone and manner, they let loose a type of debate that, in the end, is often impossible to control and is not conducive to good race relations in this country.
Many of the problems to do with the immigration and nationality directorate are quite complex and involve the organisation and management of the system. I give my
hon. Friends credit for their good intentions. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is not in the Chamber to hear it, but his speech was the best that I have heard him make on the asylum issue. It put the Conservative Opposition in their place, where they belong.The issue will not go away because it presents a challenge to many of our communities and because there are those of us in the House--the children and grandchildren of economic migrants--who will not allow a political debate to pass that takes a tone that seeks to denigrate people who are living in and contributing to our communities and who are helping to build a Britain in the 21st century that we can all be proud of.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |