Examination of Witnesses (Questions 640-659)
BEVERLEY HUGHES
MP, MR BILL
JEFFREY AND
MS ANGELA
RAMLAGAN-SINGH
TUESDAY 4 MARCH 2003
640. There is bound to be unease, certainly
amongst Labour Members if not elsewhere in the House, that there
is a sort of inflexibility about this. One would hope that it
will be possible for the matter to be looked at again.
(Beverley Hughes) Let me say again, that somebody
who claims at the port will get support automatically. Somebody
who claims in-country and can give an account that verifies that
they have only a very recently come in will also get support.
What the law does is to create a presumption that people will
not get support unless they can do that. There comes a point at
which I think people's decisions and their behaviour, often on
the basis of advice from the criminals that bring them in here,
mean they have to take the consequences of those decisions.
641. If they have no case to stay in the United
Kingdom the responsibility then comes back to the Home Office
that they should be removed, not denied all benefits and be in
a position where they have no means of support whatsoever because
the Home Office have not been efficient enough to take action
for them to be removed?
(Beverley Hughes) If people have been in the country
for some time on some other basis, or perhaps illegally, and then
try to use the asylum system as a means of prolonging their stay
and getting support at the same time, it seems to me reasonable
that we say to people, "We are bound internationally to assess
that claim, however unfounded we might think it is, but it is
not reasonable that we pay to support you while that claim is
processed, given that we believe that you have already been here
for some time, presumably with some means of support".
Mr Cameron
642. The Immigration Law Practitioners' Association
in their evidence brought to us a particular group of people they
thought had a particular problem, which is those that may be left
without any status at all, in particular the Iraqi Kurds, where
they may have had their asylum claims refused but they cannot
return to Iraq but they are not being given exceptional leave
to remain. Is that the situation?
(Beverley Hughes) Certainly it will be the case with
some people in that group, that they are not given exceptional
leave to remain, and others have been; it depends on their own
individual circumstances and the case that they have presented.
643. Is there not a danger that those who are
left without any status, so they have just had their asylum rejected
but they do not get ELR, that they could become destitute because
they have no status under the law? How many are there of those
people; and what are you going to do about it?
(Beverley Hughes) I would need to confirm that figure.
I think notionally it is several hundred—the low hundreds.
There is provision within NAS arrangements for people in that
position to have what is called, under the previous legislation,
section 4 support. There are difficulties in that that support
is simply accommodation. Whilst people are offered that, because
we are contracted to provide that accommodation largely through
the YMCA, we have not got that accommodation in every city in
the country. People might have been living in one town but actually,
if they qualify for that support, would be directed to live somewhere
else, and quite often they just will not go. They are offered
accommodation, and obviously food and so on within the accommodation,
under the section 4 support.
644. It might be useful perhaps to have a little
note on the numbers. These would seem to me to be a deserving
group of people who have had their asylum claim rejected but they
really cannot leave because they cannot go back to where they
have come from, yet they do not have ELR. In the case Mr Winnick
talked about they could go back to where they came from but these
ones cannot. It might be helpful to know numbers.
(Mr Jeffrey) I am not sure that we would readily accept
that they cannot go back. If they have been refused asylum and
have not been granted exception leave to remain under essentially
compassionate grounds then, although in principle it would be
hard for us to remove them in practice, there is nothing to prevent
them returning. We know there are routes back to Kurdish controlled
Northern Iraq which people often with status here do take. I do
not think it is inconceivable that they should actually return
from where they have come from.
645. Could you explain the difference between
the exceptional leave to remain and the new status of humanitarian
protection? What is the change meant to achieve? Is it a real
change, or is it a labelling change?
(Beverley Hughes) No, it is not a labelling change
and it is intended to achieve a shift, in the sense that exceptional
leave to remain has a very wide set of criteria, which includes
a wide range of possible compassionate circumstances. Humanitarian
protection will really now be in reserve for people who fail the
test of persecution as defined in the Convention on the basis
of race relations and so on, but nonetheless for other reasons
would face risk to life and limb and torture were they to be returned.
646. Non-state persecution, something like that?
(Beverley Hughes) Yes.
647. The Mafia?
(Beverley Hughes) Criminality is a more difficult
issue, because the test will include whether or not a particular
country has the mechanisms that one would expect to be able to
protect people from criminality, and has the human rights and
criminal justice systems in place to be able to provide that protection.
It will also include the test that exists at the moment under
the Convention as to whether or not somebody could nonetheless
return to a safe area of that country where the particular circumstances
of their case did not pertain and they would be safe if in-country
flight would be possible. It will reduce the numbers of people
being given ELR at the moment once the system comes in on 1 April.
648. One other question about an unrelated topic,
something related to our visit to Harmondsworth included in one
of the bits of briefings we received. As I understand it, single
mothers on benefit in this country can get tokens for infant formula
milk but asylum seekers with young infants are not able to get
those tokens. Why not?
(Beverley Hughes) I will check this but I am sure
the Home Secretary changed that provision.
649. He did not. I asked a parliamentary question
about it and got the answer back that, unless it has changed since
then, mothers who were asylum seekers with young children are
not eligible to get tokens for infant formula milk. It seems odd
to me, because a small number may be coming from Africa and may
have Aids or other transferable diseases, and it would seem to
be sensible to make available infant formula milk in the right
circumstances. It obviously would not cost much money but just
be a relatively straightforward change to make I would have thought?
(Beverley Hughes) I am pretty sure that we have made
a change. I think there may be a difference in the age of the
children that qualify between indigenous people and children of
asylum-seeking mothers.
650. My question was only a month ago.
(Beverley Hughes) I will check on it.
Chairman: Send us a note about that.
Bridget Prentice
651. I am going to return to removal and delay
but try not to cover the ground you have already covered with
some of my less punctual colleagues. I want to ask you about how
long the average wait from the end of appeal to removal is, if
you have those figures; and what the longest wait has been. It
has been put to us that it is almost entirely the fault of the
Home Office that these delays occur.
(Beverley Hughes) The variance in terms of the period
between the end of the process and removal is very great indeed.
People going through the non-suspensive appeals process at the
moment, and I think about 97% of those who are refused are removed
within a period, it is taking about 10-14 days in total. That
is at one end. At the other end, there are very small numbers
of people who have been here some considerable time. I think the
longest period of time, which you probably have already had, is
somebody who has been in detention for about 500 days.
652. What is the reason behind that? Why is
it taking so long?
(Beverley Hughes) There are a number of reasons why
removal cannot be effected immediately, which I am sure the Committee
have come across in its deliberations. They are not all to do
with the Home Office, although I think whilst we have got much
better at organising removals, as I said at the beginning, I still
think we have got further to go in terms of making this an integral
part of the asylum process. Until recently it has been tacked
on to the end and done separately; but I think it needs to be
an integral part of the process. Travel documentation is one particular
problem; legal issues; human rights applications and judicial
reviews are another factor that can delay removal; lack of cooperation
from receiving countries to accept somebody as their national;
or, indeed, to agree, for example, to charter flights landing.
There are a number of issues around other countries. Although
this is not a factor in those rare cases where there are long
delays, it does happen quite a lot as you probably heard from
your visits to removal centres, I think it is an increasing phenomenon
the behaviour of some asylum seekers as they are taken on to planes
to try and frustrate removal by threatening violence or by pretending
to be mentally ill. I think this is an issue because when those
people (if the removal is thwarted through that because, understandably,
pilots are reluctant to take people whose behaviour looks like
it might be a risk) go back to the removal centre I am told through
my visits that word gets round very quickly that this is one way
of delaying the process. Last but not least, although this is
not a significant factor in the run of things, as I said earlier
I do get a large number of letters from MPs, and once an MP's
letter comes in then the removal is delayed until I have looked
at the case, which I try to do very, very quickly. I do think
colleagues have to sometimes weigh up how they fulfil their obligations
to people in their constituency, but also understand that sometimes
MPs will also be used at the end of the road just to delay things
further.
653. Amongst that variety of things, even after
the appeal system has been gone through, there are still legal
ways by which a person can delay removal?
(Beverley Hughes) Yes.
654. Also problems with travel documents. Indeed,
in our own visit one person told us directly that they do make
themselves behave very badly en route to the plane in order to
stop them going. Have you never considered then chartering a plane
in which you would take purely those people who had to be removed?
(Beverley Hughes) Yes, we actually do a lot of charter
flights relatively. Obviously, as I say, we need the permission
of the country to land and the technical ability to land. Certainly
there have been weekly flights out to Kosovo. In fact, I went
to Stanstead myself very early one morning before Christmas to
see one of those charter flights and how it was handled. I was
very impressed with LPI that had done the escort from Harmondsworth,
and the way in which they managed that, and watched the flight
go and talked to some of the people who were going on that flight.
Where technically we can, where we have got the volume of people
going to one place to support that—because that is where
it makes sense also in terms of cost-effectiveness because it
actually starts to become cheaper apart from anything else to
move a large number of people (40 people, say, on a flight to
Pristina) than to try and remove them individually even if we
could—we are very keen to use charters, and where the volume
of people going to one place supports that.
(Mr Jeffrey) If I could just add some figures. In
the last couple of years we have removed by charter just over
4,000 people to Kosovo.
655. What other improvements do you expect to
see in terms of reducing that delay between decision and removal?
(Beverley Hughes) First of all, we are trying to use
contact management with asylum seekers right from the beginning
of the process. Certainly with new intake people we have got the
ARC card, we have got the identity, we have got the fingerprinting
and we have got a number of pilots in different parts of the country,
the Liverpool team for example, who work very well piloting a
much more active contact management with people throughout the
process, keeping in touch with them so that we actually know where
they are, if and when their claim fails. Secondly, we are trying
to anticipate problems with documentation much earlier in the
process, and trying to resolve those difficulties or make sure
that at the point at which the process is complete those problems
have been resolved. That will not always be possible, but it is
an attempt to say we are not going to wait until the end to suddenly
find out we might have a problem with documentation. This has
got to feature in the thinking about the management of that case
right from the beginning. Thirdly, working diplomatically with
colleagues in the Foreign Office with those countries where travel
document issues, and issues about accepting people back, are more
problematic, and that is going on. Fourthly, negotiating readmission
agreements with particular countries. My colleague Bob Ainsworth,
on our behalf, recently concluded readmission agreements with
Bulgaria and Rumania, for instance. We are trying to work with
Turkey to find a route through into Northern Iraq—not an
admission agreement, obviously, but permission to have a route
through there. Certainly those discussions were going reasonably
well. A number of measures targeted on the particular problems
to try and actually eradicate them.
656. I think we are aware of some countries
being more resistant to having people returned to them than others.
What do you do to keep people informed about the progress of the
case? You have talked now about contact management. One of the
problems that has been put to us is that a person is down for
removal but has no idea when that is likely to happen; they are
not able to take up work; they are given temporary permission
to remain; all of which are really not satisfactory. What is done,
or should there be anything done, to keep that person informed
as to when they are likely to be removed?
(Beverley Hughes) I would make two points there. I
think keeping people informed is a good aspiration if you think
people are going to cooperate with the removal. That is the dilemma
in many cases, that people do not want to go and, therefore, there
is a difficult decision about how far keeping people informed
and therefore, in a sense, helping people to prepare for removal
becomes counterproductive because they simply disappear. That
is a difficult judgment to make. Secondly, it has been my view
for some time, and I know Bill Jeffrey shares this, that we do
not do as much as we could in terms of maximising the potential
of voluntary departure. When I was in Canada before Christmas,
although they deal with much smaller numbers and it is therefore
much easier for them, nonetheless they do have an approach in
which they start to talk to people from day one about "what
if your claim does not succeed" and throughout the process,
in a sense, to bring them to the point when their claim is refused
of not just writing them a letter, not even just serving the notice
on them personally (which we have started to do) by going round
and giving them the letter of refusal, but actually calling them
in and saying, "Look, here is your refusal letter. This is
where we are. This is what the options are. One of the options
is voluntary departure", and to put a case for that as a
much more dignified and managed way of leaving the country, given
that leaving will probably be inevitable. We want to try that
approach much more, because I think there is much more potential
to get people to that point of acceptance than perhaps we have
been able to draw on hitherto.
(Mr Jeffrey) Could I just briefly supplement that.
I agree very much with what the Minister says about voluntary
removal and we have got to build it much more into the process
and work where we can get people to remove voluntarily; but we
must accept also that it is in the nature of this phenomenon that
the majority of people do not want to go. It is not really, as
much as Mrs Prentice was suggesting, a question of us keeping
people waiting (and I was tempted to make a point when we were
talking about the impediment to removal) but more a question of
a lot of people disappearing. I think our best chance in these
cases lies through ever-closer relations with the police. We have
always worked quite closely with the police. I think that relationship
is building up in localities particularly in London, and we have
a very close working relationship with the police which leads
us to discover a number of people who have disappeared but whose
removal we can then pursue.
657. One of the problems about disappearance
is that it is such a gap between the decision and the potential
removal. That is a good excuse to disappear, is it not?
(Mr Jeffrey) Increasingly that is not the case. There
is a very significant difference between the past and the present.
We do not really have the figures for the readings to deal with
IT support if one goes into the past, as I mentioned earlier.
It is certainly the case that there are people whose asylum claims
date from some years ago who were refused some time between then
and now and they have not been removed but have disappeared in
the meantime. Exactly how many we cannot be sure. As one gets
more up-to-date one gets into a period in which the information
is better, and our own performance is better in terms of taking
relatively early decisions—we are hitting our decision-taking
target at the moment—and then moving relatively quickly
towards removal. Underlying that there are questions for us about
where we set our targets. We have been giving quite a lot of thought
internally to that in recent times.
David Winnick
658. Minister, in many respects this is the
crunch of the matter, is it not? You have people who, as far as
they are concerned, think one asylum seeker is one too many, but
for the large majority of people who will be reasonable the general
feeling is that there is so much delay about those whose cases
are judged to be lacking merit before they actually leave the
country; and a good number, as indicated by Mr Jeffrey, simply
disappear?
(Beverley Hughes) I think you have to think of two
populations because, as you know, there was a very significant
backlog some years ago and what we tried to do to get on top of
the whole process to deal with new claims and to set targets about
the timescales for decisions and for appeal, and then to removal
of people with that population; but it is certainly true, that
although we have reduced the peak of the backlog from 120,000
plus to just under 40,000 now, and that is not much more than
work in progress, I think that is a considerable achievement.
There is still obviously a significant number of people who have
been here for some considerable time and they present particular
issues, because the delay, yes, has been much greater in those
cases. With the new cases, I think if you look at the course of
those—and that is particularly why I want to have the cohort
basis for statistics up and running—you will see that the
process for them in terms of the timescale between the actual
end of the process and removal is much, much less and coming down.
We have also legislated for that group, since October 2000 was
the implementation date, and the previous legislation, that people
no longer can mount successive appeals; they have to put everything
in one pot at the appeal stage. Whereas previously, for a group
of people who have been here for some time and certainly came
before October 2000, their process is still covered by the previous
legislation. Some of those do put in successive appeals and human
rights claims of one kind or another. Where we have changed the
system, and set ourselves targets for new cases, we are not doing
badly. It is the older cases, very often that MPs come across
and write to me about, where, yes, those delays are significant
and, yes, people can disappear.
659. Would you accept that at the moment, with
a good deal of public disquiet—leaving aside those I have
already mentioned whose prejudices can never be appeased, and
should not be as far as I am concerned—and the broad public
who have anxiety over the numbers of people staying in this country
without any merit whatsoever, that much more will have to be done
to assure the public that there is a far quicker process of removing
people whose cases have been turned down by the Home Office and
have no further right of appeal?
(Beverley Hughes) I think you are absolutely right,
yes. Of course I agree with you. I am a constituency MP as well.
I think that those kinds of issues, together with what people
see clearly as abuse of the asylum system, is what fires people's
concern and anger, and rightly so.
|
