Examination of Witnesses (Questions (40-59)
RT HON
DAVID BLUNKETT
AND BEVERLEY
HUGHES
WEDNESDAY 18 SEPTEMBER 2002
40. Thank you. We now turn to asylum and immigration.
Mr Cameron is going to start the ball rolling.
(Mr Blunkett) If it is okay, before Mr Cameron starts,
I will share some of this—purely in terms of breath—with
the Minister of State.
Chairman: We hope so, yes.
Mr Cameron
41. Home Secretary, it is clearly very important
in this debate, in order to get the right answers, to start with
the right figures and statistics for both asylum and for migration
flows. Are you happy that the Home Office publishes sufficient
and accurate figures and forecasts?
(Mr Blunkett) I promised in the Queen's Speech debate
a year last June that we would publish more transparent figures,
more properly collated, and we have been doing that, and the three-monthly—quarterly—figures
that are now published are more extensive. They include dependents
rather than just heads of families who have made the application.
I do not believe there is any point in hiding information because
it merely deludes ourselves when we need to find solutions to
a very, very big problem.
42. We had a group in front of us yesterday,
Migrationwatch, who produced this figure for net non-EU immigration
into the UK of around 240,000 a year. I would like you to comment
on it but perhaps in two parts. The biggest number they come up
with is 180,000 which is from the international passenger survey,
which I understand is a Home Office figure. The other two elements,
to get from 180,000 to 240,000, are estimates for undetected asylum
seekers coming into the country and, also, then a figure for over-stayers.
What is your comment on those figures?
(Mr Blunkett) Firstly, I would not criticise those
who indicate that the figure is larger than the 180,000 but what
I would ask them to do is to be circumspect because their information
and mine is subject to enormous error. I believe that until we
have entitlement cards and we have a much better picture of who
is in our country, who is accessing work and services, we will
not know fully who is here illegally; by the very definition of
having entered clandestinely, working illegally and avoiding detection
it is very difficult to make a snapshot decision. So I do believe
that it would be helpful if we had a clearer picture in order
that we can have a balanced approach to migration which matches
the expansion of the legitimate entry into this country through
work permits with a much tougher approach on clandestine entry
and those who seek either to work illegally or to claim asylum
when they are not in danger of life and limb.
43. You accept that the 180,000 figure should
be taken as a basis?
(Mr Blunkett) I think it is a reasonable estimate
of the situation.
44. Does the Home Office produce figures or
estimates for those that over-stay—who might be visiting
students—and for undetected asylum seekers who come in on
lorries—for want of a better expression—but have not
been found by the police? Do you make any estimates or publish
any estimates?
(Mr Blunkett) We have a longer term piece of work
in train at the moment between the Home Office and the Strategy
Unit, as it is now known, in order to look at both migration trends
and the position in the country. I think this is essential in
terms of getting the picture right, both in terms of action to
be taken but, also, reassurance that we are not being flooded
by people, but we do have a challenge in making sure that we get
it right. Other countries have a worse situation because they
often just countenance illegal presence. We do not countenance
illegal presence, we do not do enough about putting it right when
we know it exists.
45. On the question of over-stayers, the point
that was put to us yesterday is that we have a problem in this
country because we do not check people when they leave, so figures
have to be estimated for how many people come in as tourists or
students, or whatever. This is non-EU. Why do we not check, at
least, who has left?
(Mr Blunkett) Of course, we used to have a system
many years ago which was abandoned (I am not sure how many years
ago, maybe ten years ago) in terms of embarkation. The reason
it was abandoned, firstly, was because it was not robust; it was
non-existent in terms of actually being able to follow through
and check those who had not presented themselves—for the
reasons I was talking to the Attorney General in the United States,
and here even when they are looking to secure this in the United
States on anti-terrorism grounds, to be able to follow through—even
on those who carry visas and, therefore, have got a timescale
to check on—is very difficult. I am not complacent about
this. I think there is a real issue as to whether we should examine
again embarkation, but it would need to be linked to a method
of the individual carrying identity and of a recognition of being
prepared to follow through and collect that individual from wherever
they were. We have enough problems at the moment with removals
of those who are not in accommodation, as we know, and the absconding
rate. I think we need to examine logically and carefully how that
might be achieved.
46. I am sure we will come on to that issue
of removals. One last thing: would it not make sense in the meantime,
before all these investigations and decisions have been made,
for the Home Office to make some estimates about undetected asylum
seekers and over-stayers, so that at least the debate about numbers
can have a clearer picture?
(Mr Blunkett) I am happy to hear from people as to
their commitment and input into that work, including Migrationwatch.
47. Surely, you are the experts. You are the
Home Office, you are responsible for our borders and have more
chance than anyone else of having a good stab at it.
(Mr Blunkett) Yes, we are, which is why we have established,
since last June, the working group set up to look at illegal working—cross-departmental
work—and why I have published the paper on entitlement cards
in July, because without this you can estimate whatever you like,
but it is completely meaningless in terms of doing anything about
it.
Bob Russell
48. Home Secretary, you are planning to build
four large centres, each of 750 places in rural areas. The Refugee
Council has suggested smaller centres—100 to 200 places—in
urban centres. Why have you decided to go on the path you are
going with huge ones in rural areas?
(Mr Blunkett) I will ask Beverley Hughes to comment
on the position at the moment. It was never my intention that
we simply say: "We will have accommodation centres in rural
areas only". We are in a pilot phase to ascertain whether
we can develop accommodation centres which can fast-track cases,
which can develop a system which is robust in avoiding the duplication
of payments or the exploitation of our system, the ability to
be able to undertake fast-track processing including, as has been
debated in Parliament (and I accepted), the adjudication system
on site, and the ability to be able to remove people immediately
they fail in their claim to removal centres and get them out of
the country—for the reasons I was alluding to a moment ago
in terms of absconders. We are in discussions with the Refugee
Council about how we might experiment with a smaller and slightly
re-shaped centre that would give us an ability to evaluate alternatives
but not on the scale of 200 only—firstly because of economies
of scale in terms of provision of facilities and back-up that
is needed but, secondly, because some of us do have centres of
the sort that the Refugee Council are describing in our constituencies.
I have a NASS dispersal centre in and around 130 properties clustered
together in my constituency. The local schools and GP practices
service that centre, as I do in my surgery all the time. The difference
is that there is not a coherent provision of those services. They
impinge, as I described in slightly graphic language earlier in
the year, although I did not realise I was upsetting people at
the time, in terms of the pressures it brings to bear. I do not
see why it should be the most disadvantaged areas of the country—where
there is accommodation available by the very nature of the accommodation
being empty and where there are school places because they are
not oversubscribed and where GP practices have registration available—that
should take asylum seekers. I do not see any reason whatsoever
why it should be the most disadvantaged areas of the country that
have to take that additional pressure, which is why accommodation
centres properly placed in a variety of areas would, in my view,
provide both for the needs of asylum seekers, and meet the requirements
of a robustly managed asylum policy and good community and race
relations, as it reduces the pressures which allow others to foster
and fester racism.
49. Home Secretary, the position at the moment,
though, is that only four sites, as I understand it, have been
identified, all of them for 750 people. The Refugee Council has
suggested smaller sites in urban areas and although your lengthy
answer went all round the houses, you have not explained what
research the Home Office has conducted on the experience of other
EU countries where I am advised such centres of a small size are
located.
(Mr Blunkett) I will ask Bev Hughes to comment. Centres
in certain parts of Europe are designed for entirely different
purposes. We are very specific about what we want these centres
to do.
(Beverley Hughes) I am looking at this actively in
relation to the two sites that at the moment are about to go into
planning inquiries. I am looking much more widely at a range of
locations and options because, as the Home Secretary said, this
is a trial and, subject to some non-negotiable principles, I think
we are willing to look at the ideas of the Refugee Council and
indeed any other variants on the criteria that have been talked
about hitherto. I think the non-negotiable criteria are that we
really do not want centres in areas that have a significant number
of dispersed asylum seekers at the moment. I had another MP come
to speak to me yesterday about his concerns about the combined
impact in his area of the numbers of dispersed asylum seekers
together with asylum seekers that we have had to accommodate in
emergency accommodation because of large numbers of large families
coming into the country for whom we had to find special accommodation.
Of course it is in those places where those people who are granted
refugee status tend to settle as well. So there are some areas
of the country which are already providing a great deal of support
to significant numbers of asylum seekers. I think it is right
that other areas of the country that have not been doing that
hitherto start to do so. I think the second non-negotiable point
for me is that the services provided on site should cater for
the needs of those asylum seekers and they should not be dependent
on mainstream services within the community. That links to size
in so far as we need a critical mass in terms of the size in order
to make that equation work, not only from a cost point of view
but in terms of the level of service compared to need in order
to provide for a reasonable size of population. The 750 is not
written in tablets of stone and certainly I am looking both at
other locations and other variants on size, provided we can meet
those two criteria.
50. Have the Refugee Council got it wrong?
(Beverley Hughes) I think the Refugee Council are
coming to this from a point of principle, particularly around
the provision of services and particularly around the provision
of education services to children, and they simply do not agree.
Their bottom line is that children should be educated in mainstream
schools. There is a different position, for the reasons I have
outlined, that we take, and therefore there is a crunch difference,
but I do not think that is an unresolvable difference in that
I think that we can consider a variant on the Refugee Council
model that will come substantially to where they would want to
be, whilst preserving our two (at least) non-negotiable criteria.
51. Minister, in an earlier reply you said that
two of these sites are now going out to planning appeal, so none
has been built yet. Assuming the planning appeals are granted,
and it must be your assumption that they will be granted the permission,
they still will not be built until the end of next year, perhaps
into 2004, so why not in the meantime take the advice of the Refugee
Council and start providing small units along the lines they have
suggested?
(Beverley Hughes) I think I have answered that question
in the sense that I have certainly not got my mind or ears closed
to what the Refugee Council are saying. Officials are working
actively with the Refugee Council. I myself have met Nick Hardwick
and some of his colleagues and we have talked about this, and
we will continue to talk further. I think that there is a position
probably, if we can find the right location, in which we can move
in the direction that they are suggesting, subject to the issues
about services and size and efficiency and economy that I have
outlined.
52. But your best case scenario is that the
first of these mega centres will not be opened for at least 15
months, if not longer. Is that correct?
(Beverley Hughes) I am sorry, I did not say that.
53. I am putting it to you that if planning
applications are yet to be determined then there is a planning
appeal process to go through, which you assume and hope goes the
right way, and you have then got to build these centres.
(Beverley Hughes) I am not waiting for the outcome
of these planning inquiries on two sites before we look at what
alternatives and additions there might be. We are looking actively
at other sites. We are working with the Refugee Council and their
ideas to see if in other locations we can meet their aspirations,
at least in part, and have a different variant within the range
on which there will be a trial. We want a range because this is
a trial. We want to look at how different ways of providing this
facility work best and therefore obviously we do not want all
the sites we have necessarily to be exactly the same. We want
to look at variables and which variables we might want to replicate
in the future because they might work better.
Bob Russell: Thank you for that last
response, which I thought was very encouraging.
Bridget Prentice
54. Given that these accommodation centres may
not be ready in a year or so's time and that you have apparently
done away with the dispersal policy, is the dispersal policy going
to operate in the interim or have you something else in mind at
that point?
(Mr Blunkett) The dispersal policy continues. When
I published last autumn the immediate review of dispersal, which
I had initiated the previous June, I indicated that we firstly
wanted to decentralise and regionalise a lot more so there was
greater sensitivity and flexibility at regional and local level.
Secondly, the dispersal centre would run alongside the trial for
any accommodation centres. We are talking about years ahead if
we are to move to accommodation centres. Our immigration and asylum
policy does not rest on trials for accommodation centres but on
preventing people entering the country illegally primarily and
also dealing with them much more effectively, speedily and efficiently
when they are here. So the new induction centres, the reporting
regime that we are putting in place, the new ARC cards that identify
who is entitled to what in a way that was not present before,
the ability to be able to use that decentralised support system
in a way that allows us to check whether people are being taken
off support at the right time, all of these things must continue
and are continuing alongside any trials.
55. That is quite reassuring, Home Secretary,
because for a constituency like mine in London the pressures are
enormous and so I hope that you would maybe expand a little bit
more on what you want to do in terms of setting up or improving
the National Asylum Support Service regionally so, for example,
some parts of London and the South East do not have the pressures,
particularly within schools that are failing schools or potentially
failing schools that will be made worse by a system that goes
on as it presently is.
(Mr Blunkett) The Nationality, Immigration and Asylum
Bill which will, as you know, continue its passage through the
Lords shortly, actually includes measures that will help us strengthen
our hand. There are controversial measures, in that, of course,
where we do not have dispersal control is where people seek cash
only as opposed to accommodation because then they will choose
to go wherever they wish. We are trying to balance the desire
not to be prescriptive and the worries that people have about
the question of the withdrawal of cash only with the ability to
be able to direct people away from areas of great pressure, for
all the reasons you have annunciated, which are crucial to not
only good community relations but also actually being able to
physically cope with the number of people, often with English
as an additional language or no English at all, coming into the
area.
56. Absolutely, and of course probably to the
benefit of the children of asylum seekers in the end, I would
hope?
(Mr Blunkett) Being able to deal with their cases
speedily and effectively, being able to find suitable accommodation
and a school place quickly, which is not always the situation
despite the rosy glow that comes over people when they are against
accommodation centres, would be better fulfilled by an improvement
in the current dispersal and reporting system, so that with reporting
we know where people are and we can be more careful about where
they are placed, and we can reduce the pressures that we have
talked about.
57. Can I just ask you why the concession on
allowing asylum seekers to take up employment if they have been
waiting six months has been withdrawn?
(Mr Blunkett) Firstly, it was an incentive for people
not to want an early decision. Secondly, it sent all the wrong
signals apropos what happens in other European countries.
I do not think we should under-estimate the critical importance
of signals that are sent. With countries now evaluating their
own policies, we can see and we can track the change in direction
of particular nationalities dependent on what they think is available
to them. We want to say to people, "If you want to claim
asylum, then you should use the legitimate asylum route. If you
want to work you should use the economic migration work permit
route." That is why, contrary to those who are against any
form of inward migration—and there are people now promoting
this quite heavily and we will see more of it in the media through
the months ahead—I believe that we need a managed economic
migration policy in order to welcome people in the country. It
has to be robust and managed. At the moment a very large number
of people seek asylum as a route to migration and we should discourage
that. Do you want to add to that?
(Beverley Hughes) Except to say that I think this
concept of managed migration is a really important one about which
we have got to talk more. For me that does have three important
strands. One is to make sure that we have a system in which we
can identify quickly people who are fleeing persecution who do
qualify internationally for refugee status, and to integrate those
people better and more effectively than we do at the moment. Secondly,
we have got to be very robust about illegal entry and working
because that creates a chaos and an irrationality in the system
which means that it is not credible, either to refugees or to
the British public. Thirdly, alongside that, I support very strongly
what the Home Secretary has said, that, if we can, we ought to
extend the current routes we have for people to come in and get
work and experience here and then go home, providing we can do
so robustly. For me those are the three essential strands for
trying to develop a coherent approach to immigration which has
rationality, which has fairness and which has integrity.
58. That, of course, would mean having the records
and figures as accurate and as up-to-date as possible obviously?
(Beverley Hughes) It would also, as the Home Secretary
has mentioned twice now, depend on being able to identify people
and being able to use that identification to deal much more robustly
both with people who are working illegally because they come in
illegally and also the employers that are sometimes employing
them.
59. You mentioned the European Union. Are you
satisfied with the progress that is being made within the Union
on asylum and immigration?
(Mr Blunkett) I am very happy with the bilateral work
that we are doing. If you think of this time last year, virtually
every night on television and in very many of our national newspapers
pictures of what was described as the "floods" coming
through the Channel Tunnel. With the co-operation of the French,
we have not only secured the depot at Coquelles where there is
less than one a month coming through, but we have now got the
agreement on the securing of Fréthun—the double security
fencing, internal lighting and trailing is now in place. There
is agreement at Calais with milimetric and heartbeat equipment
that we are supporting and supplying. The ability to put in what
are called juxtaposed controls, which is border, passport, immigration
and Customs controls, is now under discussion with the French
and, of course, there is the work we have been doing with the
French on the closure of Sangatte. I shall be going next week
to talk to the French and Belgians about the wider issue of securing
the longer coastal border and going to Fréthun with the
Interior Minister in France to see just how much progress we have
made. I think in a few months we have made enormous progress.
There is a different issue in terms of Europe-wide. There is a
new spirit in terms of recognising that we must work together
on this—I was discussing this with the Justice and Home
Affairs Council only this last weekend—and a commitment
to people building on what is called Eurodac, the finger-printing
and biometric system which within the Schengen area and in co-operation
with us will help us to be able to do a much better job Europe-wide.
I am not waiting for European-wide agreement on anything. Waiting
for Dublin II is a bit like "waiting for Godot", so
we have to make what progress we can as quicky as we can bilaterally
and trilaterally based on what we are anticipating on a Europe-wide
basis.
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