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Oral evidence Taken before the Home Affairs Committee on Tuesday 13 May 2003 Members present: Mr Chris Mullin, in the Chair __________ Memorandum submitted by Mr Peter Gilroy Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: MR PETER GILROY, Strategic Director of Social Services, Kent County Council; Chair of the Association of Directors of Social Services Asylum Task Force, MR MARTIN HOWE, QC, Author of the Politeia pamphlet Tackling Terrorism, and MS HARRIET SARGEANT, Author of the Centre for Policy Studies pamphlet Welcome to the Asylum, examined. Q122 Chairman: Good morning. Welcome to our witnesses, Mr Gilroy, Mr Howe and Ms Sargeant. This is the second session of the short inquiry we are doing about the reasons for the rise in asylum applications and how they are processed and what can be done to reduce them and deal with them more effectively. Could I start by asking each of you to introduce yourselves and to say briefly how you became interested in the subject. That is not difficult to guess as far as Mr Gilroy is concerned. Mr Gilroy: My interest obviously is that the port of Dover is in Kent. Since the mid-90s Kent County Council has had to take a fair share of responsibility of the people coming through the port of Dover and it is the busiest point of entry. That is my interest. Q123 Chairman: Yes, and large numbers of asylum seekers started coming through. Mr Gilroy: Very much so. Q124 Chairman: When did they first start coming on a large scale, would you say? Mr Gilroy: I would say about 1997/1998 but particularly 1999. Between the months of April right through to October we had about 15,000, and in 1995/96 I think we had about 50. It was a massive change. Q125 Chairman: To what do you attribute that massive sudden change in 1999? Mr Gilroy: I think the change was to do initially with the Balkan tensions, the Balkan problems. We had significant numbers coming from that area. It then moved more latterly to Afghanistan, Iraq, and we now have a combination of nationalities. But, in volumes, those were the countries that we originally ... Most of the asylum seekers we have dealt with have come from countries where there has been some conflict. It is clear that we are - still are - coping with that. There are very significant numbers of unaccompanied minors in Kent. We currently are looking after about 1,800; at its height it was about 2,500. Most of those youngsters that come to us - mostly young men - have been arranged through trafficking. Many of them have lived in the European Union for some time once they have got into the European Union, but, without exception, most of them have been travelling to the UK. Q126 Chairman: We will come back to that later. Mr Howe? Mr Howe: Mr Chairman, a large amount of my legal practice is related to European Community law. I have taken, I suppose, a broader interest in that subject and in the European Convention on Human Rights. I want to make clear that I do not practice in immigration law as such. I was extremely interested, or "concerned" is probably the better word, about the way in which our legal and judicial system appears to be failing in a number of ways in this particular area. As you are aware, my initial interest in the area was specifically in relation to terrorism - and this Committee I think looked at that issue about 18 months ago when the Terrorism Bill was under consideration - but it does lead on to the broader question of asylum across the board. My concern is that for the best of reasons we have created a sort of network of legal decisions and precedents and court procedures which have resulted in almost a complete breakdown of the effective dealing with asylum cases. Q127 Chairman: Have you taken part in some of those cases? Mr Howe: No, I do not practise immigration law, so I am afraid it is a study from ---- Q128 Chairman: It is a hobby. Mr Howe: Slightly more than a hobby. Q129 David Winnick: Is it political? - I mean, out of political interest. Mr Howe: It is, frankly, in this field, mainly out of my political interest, yes. Q130 Chairman: Thank you. Ms Sargeant? Ms Sargeant: I have lived in the Third World for a number of years and have written three books on it. When I came back to this country, I was asked to write a report for the Centre for Policy Studies on immigration. I spent a year researching this, talking to everyone I could find who was involved in it, from asylum seekers, illegal immigrants, to immigration officers, immigration lawyers, and also spent some time at the Home Office in Croydon. I do not believe I have an ideological position on this but I do think that we require an immigration policy that is logical, well constructed and, because immigration policy has long-term consequences, bi-partisan. The title of my report is Welcome to the Asylum which I think shows what I found. Q131 Chairman: When was it written? Ms Sargeant: It came out in September 2001. Q132 Chairman: So it was written during the preceding year, perhaps, is that fair? Ms Sargeant: I wrote it the preceding year, yes. Q133 Chairman: Is it still up-to-date, would you say? Ms Sargeant: Yes, I think largely it is still up-to-date. There are perhaps a few details that are not, that have been changed, but mostly the underlying problems are still there. Chairman: Okay. Mr Prosser is going to start the ball rolling for us. Q134 Mr Prosser: I am directing my first question to views from all three of you, please. We know that many asylum seekers, economic migrants, will cross many continents, will cross Europe, and still risk life and limb to come the extra 20 miles to gain entry to the United Kingdom. Why do you think asylum seekers put all that effort into coming to the UK in preference to other EU countries? Mr Gilroy: Chairman, my observation of this is based on operational experience only, but, talking to my French colleagues in Calais - we have discussed this issue - and talking to a number of asylum seekers, and my staff talking actually to thousands, there seem to be a number of reasons. One reason is that many have been in the European Union for some time. We have overwhelming evidence in Kent of youngsters speaking a number of languages - French, Italian - meaning that they have been around a long time. They are moving around the European Union, and that is just about trying to find work, trying to change their circumstances - and they are quite open about that. That is one reason. The other reason is the trafficking issue. There is no doubt - again we have had evidence - of traffickers picking certain countries within the Union and indicating that those would be the countries to go to. It is quite clear, if you look at the different ways the European Union complies with policies in relation to asylum, we do it differently. Some believe that the way in which we treat youngsters, for instance, in the UK is different from the French. There is no doubt it is different. We would be providing accommodation; the French seem to have a much more relaxed position about accommodation than we do. That is another reason: they seem to think that services would be better. The third reason, of course, is that many have what they believe to be an extended family here and they would wish to come and find their family and make contact with them. So it is a set of complex issues, some of it economic, some of it to do simply with a belief. As many have said to me - only last week youngsters were saying to me, from Iraq - "I came here because it's a free country and I know that I'm going to be treated fairly." They say that quite openly. So it is a complex set of reasons as far as my experience is concerned. Q135 Mr Prosser: Mr Howe, of these asylum seekers for whom you have evidence they have moved around the various EU countries, do you have any evidence as to their status? Have they made claims for asylum in those other countries? Do they have a status? Mr Gilroy: No. No status. Q136 Mr Prosser: Mr Howe, what is your view? Mr Howe: Obviously, the legal picture is only an aspect - there are many other reasons - but I do believe that the legal position or the legal framework does play a part. I think one significant part of that is that the interpretation of the Geneva Convention is not uniform in different European countries. One specific example which I have put into the papers you have seen is in relation to the treatment of persecution by non-State agents, where I think the position of both France and Germany is that they do not recognise as qualifying for asylum under the Geneva Convention people fleeing from countries where they are subject to persecution by non-State agents. They treat it as State agents only. If you happen to be from one of those countries and you are clued up enough to know that our courts interpret it differently and do extend the Convention to cover persecution by non-State agents, that obviously ----- Q137 Mr Cameron: To clarify, non-State agents are family feuds, Mafia. Mr Howe: Yes. I am sorry to jargonise. That of course means it is a magnet for those who are clued up on that issue to come to this country rather than France and Germany. I think there is a broader issue also: I think procedurally we are more generous in terms of allowing more appeals, more applications for judicial review, etcetera, etcetera, which allow the process to be spun out, sometimes not meritoriously, if I may put it that way. Q138 Mr Prosser: On that latter point, are you encouraged by the changes which have taken place in the 2002 Asylum Act, which has reduced the number of appeals? Mr Howe: Yes. I mean, I think, in a sense, that is part of what needs to be done, but it is not the whole story. The problem is that the more you reduce statutory appeals, the more opportunity there is then to go round to the administrative court and apply for judicial review, because there is the blanket jurisdiction of the High Court, even in cases where there is no statutory appeal within the tribunal system, to review cases. I think on that front, unless one is being completely radical and cutting down judicial review rights, there may well be administrative improvements that could be made in the courts system, such as making sure the same applicant's cases always go back as far as possible to be dealt with by the same judge, so you do not get this renewal of applications again and again on different grounds or slightly different grounds hoping to hit a more sympathetic judge. Q139 Mr Prosser: On the issue of the different interpretations of the Convention, ideally and almost by their nature applications should be equally interpreted and processed. Why do you think that difference exists? How could we possibly bring them into line? Is there a mechanism? Mr Howe: This raises a very important issue. I do not think it is mentioned in the Home Office evidence which is before you. That is, there is currently a European Union draft directive under consideration which would harmonise standards of the interpretation of the Refugee Convention. It is a first pillar matter and therefore under the Amsterdam protocol this country does have the right not to participate in it but my understanding of the position is that the British Government is at present opted into that draft directive. I think there is some prospect of agreement being reached on it in June but, like all these things, they go off. That would have the effect of requiring each Member State to adopt a harmonised definition of refugees. It would also have the effect, if adopted in its present form, of entrenching Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights' position into European Union law. Whatever the merits of harmonisation as such on the question of making one country more attractive or less attractive than others, the adoption of that directive would Communitise that aspect of our law and would open up further appeal channels to the European court from our own courts and would, indeed, allow Acts of Parliament to be overturned if they are held by the courts to conflict with those provisions. At the moment, under the European Convention on Human Rights, all they can do is interpret and make declarations of incompatibility, but, if that comes in, of course, under Community law they would be able to overturn them. I think one important issue is whether it is appropriate for the British Government to maintain what I understand to be its current position of opting into this measure. Q140 Mr Prosser: What is your view? Mr Howe: I would say no, because I would think the downside of doing that is very much greater than the upside. On the issue of persecution by non-State agents, for example, the harmonised position would be that the protection of the Convention would extend to them. I mean, if you like, the argument in favour of that is that would force France and Germany to take people who at present may be heading for this country in preference, but the expense of doing that would be to make the whole European Union more attractive as a destination for asylum seekers. Q141 Mr Prosser: Rather than just the United Kingdom. Mr Howe: Rather than just the United Kingdom. Mr Gilroy: May I add to that, because I am intrigued by that hypothesis. If you accept that most of the people who we are getting at the moment are attracted already to the European Union as a block - which is pretty wealthy, relatively - I am not sure that, whatever happens, they are still going to be attracted to the European Union as a whole, simply because they are attracted by all sorts of benefits and employment and things that they see they want. I suppose, from my point of view, as an operational person who is trying to manage this process, I have become very fractious and sometimes frustrated to talk to my colleagues. I went down to Brindisi, to see how the Italians were coping at the port when people were coming across from Albania. I assumed I would see a quite sophisticated process of assessment but I did not. When I asked, "What happens now to these people?" they said, "Well, they are going back to Albania." I said, "When?" "Now," they said. I asked, "When? Do you mean now? This minute?" "Oh, yes." I thought: "What about appeals?" Yes. They were back, and they even had the Italian police at the Albanian side. I came back to the UK thinking, "That's interesting. You couldn't do that in Dover." If we did, we would have everybody saying that this is not the way to protect both asylum seekers and those seeking sustenance when they believe they are at risk. I am frustrated, I am fractious about this because I think that, unless we get some sense within the European Union, these things will always continue. I agree that the law is confused at the moment, but I am not convinced that not signing up will make it worse. Q142 Mr Prosser: Ms Sargeant, can I ask you what you think are the attractions, the pull factors, which encourage people to come from other European countries? Ms Sargeant: I think you have to look at who exactly is coming here. Seventy-five per cent of asylum seekers are young men and these young men have all paid criminal gangs between £10,000, £15,000, £20,000 to get here, so obviously they are not coming here for, whatever it is, £35 a week, because that is not going to pay off their debt. The reason they are coming here is because we have a thriving black economy in this country. Not only do we have a thriving black economy but it is also very easy to work illegally in this country because we do not have identity cards. We think of the black economy, I think, as a fly-by-night thing on the periphery of the economy but that is no longer the case. Most large companies, for example, would not consider using illegal labour but they will use a contractor - and now more and more companies are outsourcing and using contractors - and these contractors do use illegal labour. I interviewed a man from the Inland Revenue whose job it is to investigate companies. He said, "As a tax inspector whose job it is to investigate companies, I can tell you that people are finding ways round this all the time." He said, "In certain sectors, it is now pervasive" and he mentioned the construction industry, fruit growers, catering, fashion and cleaning companies as the worst examples. While there is no check on this, we are not going to be able to stop these young men from coming. Q143 Mr Prosser: How effective do you think identity cards for all UK citizens would be in limiting the black market? Ms Sargeant: I think it would be very effective. The simple reason is that the asylum seekers find it very difficult to work in other European countries whereas they do find it easy to work here and that is why they come here. I think it would be certainly worth trying. Q144 Mr Prosser: Do you have any other ideas for tackling what you call this "black hole", where people disappear into the black economy. Do you have any other ideas or suggestions which this Government might take up? Ms Sargeant: This probably will relate to other questions but I think our whole asylum system is fundamentally flawed and this division between asylum seeker and economic migrant is an artificial division. I think we should scrap that and have a quota system, which I think would be far fairer. At the moment we are simply taking the people who have the money to pay the criminal gangs to get here. If you are poor, you stay behind in the country. If you are elderly/women/children you stay behind in the refugee camps, you do not get a chance to come to this country. It is fundamentally a very unfair system. I think that a quota system, coupled with identity cards, would be a lot fairer and possibly more easy to manage and cheaper. Q145 Mr Prosser: Mr Gilroy, I want to turn to the specifics now of Kent and Dover. Can you tell me how many asylum seekers or do you have a feel for how many asylum seekers are currently entering through Dover and other ports in Kent? Do you have a feel for the trend, if not the numbers? Mr Gilroy: The trend, in the last few weeks, is down. I think that is significant - and it is probably predictable, to some extent, looking at the international issues that are going on. That is an important significant shift because up until the last few weeks the trend had been gradually up each year. We normally get 100 to 150 youngsters coming through the port every four weeks that we have to look after. That has dropped, certainly for the last four weeks. We are down now to about 50, 60, so it is definitely a downward trend. My colleagues in immigration tell me that has been a downward trend across the piece in the last few weeks. From Kent's point of view, I am still looking after nearly 3,000 who actually should have had decisions made about them a long time ago. It is an irony that we still have that group now who have lived in Kent all that time and still have not had decisions made, because I am not sure what the Government is going to do when these decisions are made. If you have been living here for three or four years, there is a moment when, in removing someone - particularly when you just get a letter in English saying that you have not had your appeal upheld - it really does not matter to you very much, you are not going to move. I think we are going to have some serious issues with that population living in Kent. But, overall, at the moment the trend is significantly down. Q146 Mr Prosser: Can you estimate the proportion of people coming in at the moment who are genuinely fleeing from persecution as opposed to economic migrants? Do you have a feel for that number? Mr Gilroy: I, like most of my colleagues, have thought about this issue a lot over the last few years. It tends to be polarised but, in truth, in real life it is not polarised, it is more complex than that. You can say that people are coming from countries where there are threats, but, as Harriet said just now, the issue is around how they get here and how their families arrange for them to get here. That, to me, is very significant. That issue is about being an economic migrant. I would say, on average, in Kent certainly, our view would be that for round about 50 per cent broadly you could easily say, "Well, these people are here because they are looking for a better life, they want jobs." They would normally be part of immigration, they would be saying they were coming here for work purposes. In the United States, they would be looking for a green card actually to look for work. Q147 Chairman: Would you speak up, please. Mr Gilroy: I am sorry. I am saying that in terms of why they come here and the proportion that are economic migrants or the proportion that are genuine asylum seekers is complex. It is not a black and white issue. Having said that, our experience in Kent would suggest that significant numbers, certainly up to 50 per cent, would be in the category of coming here because they are trying to seek work and to make a better life for themselves. Q148 Mr Prosser: You have said that the trend is downwards and that was confirmed by the Minister when she spoke to the Committee recently. She said there was a dramatic increase in the numbers. To what degree do you think that is influenced by elements such as the closure of Sangatte and sites and the elements of the 2002 Act which, for instance, designates 17 countries for which there is an unfound case for asylum and they are returned almost immediately. Mr Gilroy: I think they are all significant indicators, Sangatte and the new legislation. I would also add that the issues in Iraq that have taken place have also destabilised, to some extent - listening to some of our people - some of the trafficking that has been going on in recent years. All of that has had an effect too. Probably there has been a public message. I do think that has had an effect, because one or two have said, "Well, of course the message now is that the UK is not as easy a place now as it used to be." I think all these things are having an impact. Q149 Mr Prosser: How successful or otherwise has the dispersal system been for Kent in particular? Mr Gilroy: I think this has been a very, very difficult area, to be honest. For both NASS and Kent ourselves, to take people from Kent in large numbers, whether it be through the immigration service or through our own services, and parachute them into local authorities around the country, has created some quite serious problems. First of all, it adds to the sense of perception to the public that they are being flooded with people. In truth, there are significant numbers, but if you concentrate people in certain locations then the public perception very quickly is affected by that. Q150 Mr Prosser: But the impact on Kent and Dover. Mr Gilroy: It has been very significant indeed. We have had populations in Kent that have had no ethnic tradition at all and over the last six years we have had to place thousands of people overall into those areas. It has had a dramatic effect on public confidence, public perception. It is not actually a racial issue, it is a reality issue that people do feel intimidated when large new communities suddenly appear in significant numbers. I think London - which has had the most of course - is multi-ethnic. It is one of the largest cities in the world, it can absorb, it tends to absorb. We get communities in Kent along that coastal strip - and remember that that is the poorest part of Kent - so we ended up using accommodation, because of money, because it was cheaper, and you end up with other problems emerging simply because of the policies. So it has not been an easy time for us in Kent over the last five years. Q151 Chairman: You mentioned that 50 per cent had come for economic reasons. What about the other 50 per cent? Mr Gilroy: I was saying it is difficult because every time we have discussed this nationally we seem to get into sound bites either at one end of the spectrum or the other. The more you are into the subject, you realise it is more complicated than that. For instance, the Afghan boys we have dealt with in Kent were all, without exception - without exception - arranged to be brought here by criminals who had taken money from their families. The families' reason for doing that in the first sense was not economic; the families' reason was that the Taliban at that time were attacking the male members of the families. It was quite clear that they were at risk. If the father had been murdered, the issue was that the next eldest needed to be moved fast. You knew that in the first instance it was about asylum and about risk. Then the secondary issue comes. The secondary issue comes when you have talked to the youngsters and then they start to say, "Well, I think what I would like to do now is to carry through my education and make an economic contribution to the country and not necessarily go back home." It is complex. That other 50 per cent is not simple sound bites, it is much more convoluted than that. Q152 Chairman: You are saying that 50 per cent approximately were fleeing some kind of persecution. Mr Gilroy: Yes. You only have to look at countries of origin. You can see that those countries of origin had serious issues - and Afghanistan, for us in Kent, was a big one. In that sense, it was clear that these youngsters got here, even though they were brought by criminals who had paid, and when they left Afghanistan it was because their parents, or their mothers generally, thought them to be at risk. Q153 David Winnick: Harriet Sargeant, on criminal gangs, you suggested identity cards and one or two other measures. Do you really feel, whatever measures are put into effect, that effectively the criminal gangs can be curbed? Ms Sargeant: I think at the moment we are doing absolutely nothing against them, so anything would be better than that. David Winnick: If you take, for example, the tragedy ---- Chairman: Mr Winnick, may I stop you there. You are asking question 11, which is in Mr Cameron's name. I am sorry about that. Q154 Mr Watson: I have just a point of clarification. Did you say what evidence you have to show that the majority of young men entering the country have paid criminal gangs? Ms Sargeant: I think nearly all of them ... How else do you get into this country? There is no other way for them to come here. Q155 Mr Watson: It is speculative. You have no evidence. Ms Sargeant: I have talked to an awful lot of asylum seekers. I think if you went out and talked to every asylum seeker you would find they had all come in with criminal gangs and they all say this is the only way to come into this country. The reason is because of changes this country made. In the 1980s we started asking for visa requirements from various countries and in that way there was no other way of entering this country. I mean, if you are in fear of your life, you can hardly go outside the British Consul and queue up and ask for a visa. The only way you can come here is by coming in with a criminal gang. Q156 Mr Watson: So you have reached that conclusion by interviewing asylum seekers. Ms Sargeant: Yes. And by looking at the facts, that, if you are physically in one country, how do you get to another country if you are not allowed to take a visa? Q157 Mr Watson: There is no evidence that there is any other way of getting in. Ms Sargeant: I could tell you another way of getting in but this is not used because of the aggressive marketing of the criminal gangs in their own country. A much simpler method of going in, which the criminal gangs also use, is simply to take a French identity card - to go to Paris, and to buy a fake identity card, which is very easy to do, and to use that to enter this country. If you go and stand at Stansted Airport, you will see streams of people entering, holding up their identity cards, and they are not stopped. Q158 Mr Watson: Are you saying there is a market in French identity cards? Ms Sargeant: And Italian ones, yes. Q159 Mr Watson: French and Italian identity cards. Ms Sargeant: Yes. Q160 Mr Watson: At Stansted Airport. Ms Sargeant: No, not at Stansted, I am just saying you can see how easy it is to come in on that. I could go into this in more detail, if you want. Q161 Mr Watson: If you have evidence about wholesale fraud going on in France and Italy with identity cards, we would like to see that. Ms Sargeant: With the French identity card, the technology behind it is about 50 years out of date, so it is very easy to forge it. Also, you are not required to have an up-to-date photograph on it, so, again, that is very simple - in fact, some people might borrow their uncle's or their nephew's or whatever. The Italian identity cards, each is different according to the different part of Italy, and some are handwritten even, so those are extremely easy to forge. Q162 Mr Watson: So criminal gangs are doing this. Ms Sargeant: Well, actually ordinary French citizens do it because you can be fined if you lose your identity card. It is actually cheaper to buy a fake one in France. Q163 Mr Watson: The point you are making is that criminal gangs are reproducing or ---- Ms Sargeant: Yes. Q164 Mr Watson: -- are, wholesale, applying for French identity cards. Ms Sargeant: I interviewed one Afghan asylum seeker and on the way he went to a town on the north-west frontier where they are faking not just French identity cards but also British driving licences, birth certificates. There is a huge business in forged documents. Again, I can go on about this. Q165 David Winnick: If we had identity cards here, why would the same not apply? Ms Sargeant: I hope that we would have slightly more sophisticated ones than the French and Italians, which are handwritten or from 50 years out-of-date in technology. I think that is a very important point, that we must have identity cards that cannot be forged. Q166 David Winnick: But the gangs would become sophisticated in the manner in which they carry out false documents. Ms Sargeant: This may be optimistic of me but I am just hoping that the Home Office can come up with something that would not be so easy to fake. Q167 David Winnick: That would be 10 years in advance. Ms Sargeant: Not necessarily. There has been quite a lot of discussion about iris recognition. There are all kinds of new technologies that are being investigated at the moment. Q168 David Winnick: As I understand it, it is not intended to have identity cards, if it goes ahead, until about eight or 10 years time. Ms Sargeant: Well, then that is the choice of the Government. I think it is something that could be brought in more quickly. Q169 Chairman: That is something we shall be investigating. Mr Gilroy? Mr Gilroy: I want to come back to the evidence. We had a very strange phenomenon going on in Kent, where we had offered phone facilities to asylum seekers. They were phoning Italy. We did not understand why, nor did the UK police understand why. Eventually, we decided just to go down and have a look for ourselves as to discovering why this was going on. It was, I have to say, a revelation. We went with the Interior Ministry in Italy, in Rome, and they were quite clear about it: the issues of the phone calls were simply to release money for the criminals, because they were telling the criminals that they had arrived and therefore the money could be released. That was a revelation to me. The other revelation in relation to identity cards was that another system pertained where a European passport could be obtained - I think at that time it was for about $3,000. The European passport was posted to the UK at an address, the criminals would bring them into the UK, and there was a number that would then disappear - because, remember, that many of the people that we have looked after over the years haemorrhage into the black economy, they just disappear. The Italians said that you must understand that when certain people disappear they will go into the UK address, tear up the bit of paper that they have identifying themselves as an asylum seeker, and they will then have a European passport. The Italians also said that the criminal fraternity could potentially give as many as seven identities to one individual, and that was particularly true for those that are professionals - there are a very small number. That was to do with the exploitation of women - which I did put in my submission. It is a very serious issue and, again, it was a complete shock to me to hear that we have young women who were auctioned in the European Union, who had been raped, and the Italians telling us that we should separate the young women from male companions - which we were not doing at that time - because they said this was a matter of principle for them. We did start to separate them and we found that significant numbers were on their way to sexual exploitation and had been raped either in Albania - this was Albania - or Italy. So it was a very ruthless, sophisticated process. Coming back to the issue of identities, I suppose I did have that strong feeling about identities at one point but I have come to the view that, whatever you do, unless you go back to the roots, unless you go back to ask the question at the countries of origin: Why are people moving in this way?.... It is acceptable if they are in danger now. I think this is why I am minded to understand the Government's sentiment about trying to establish where countries are safe and where they are not safe, because, unless you go back to look at those questions and to look at your own immigration policies, it does not matter how much you do with identity cards because very quickly the market will create new ones and it will always be ahead of you. I think it will not be a solution. We really have to move beyond the identity issue and go back to ask the question: What is it that promotes people to move in the way they are moving across the European Union and particularly to the UK. Ms Sargeant: Could I just say a bit more about corruption? Because now that the whole of our asylum process is in the hands of criminal gangs, we have widespread corruption. I too have found out about this prostitution. In fact there is actually a place near my son's school, a brothel where they have underage girls, and nothing seems to be done about it. There is widespread corruption in this country, which does not affect any of us but does affect asylum seekers, and it is usually practised by former asylum seekers on new arrivals. I think we should be really very concerned about this. Also there is widespread document abuse. A recent raid by the police on a Nigerian couple found that they had 13,000 fake documents of every sort that they were making in their home. That is just in one house. They had bank accounts, driving licences, birth certificates. The only genuine document seemed to be from the Home Office giving the wife indefinite leave to remain. This should be an issue we should take very seriously. Chairman: Yes. We are taking it seriously. That is why we are having the inquiries. I want to go on as quickly as possible to what we do about all this rather than just lamenting the wickedness of it all. First, could we ask one or two questions about the backlog. Janet Dean. Q170 Mrs Dean: Thank you, Chairman. There has been a backlog of asylum applications since the early 1990s and that increased from 54,000 in 1997 to 121,000 in January 2000. That has now decreased again to 40,800 in December 2002. Could I ask all of you, but perhaps I could start with Ms Sargeant, why did such a great backlog of asylum applications build up? How effective has the Government been in clearing the backlog? What further steps could be taken? Ms Sargeant: The IND decided to introduce computerisation in 1993. I do not know if you want me to go into the history of this. Q171 Chairman: No, we heard about it last week. Ms Sargeant: The subcontractor producing the software withdrew from the contract, and the staff, instead of having a nice new computer system, had nothing and had to fall back on discarded paper files, 40,000 of which were lost. Decisions in 1997 fell from 3,480 a month in July to 800 in December 1998. That was the main reason for the backlog. I am sorry, the next question was? Q172 Mrs Dean: How effective has the Government been in tackling the backlog and what more could be done? Ms Sargeant: This is a difficult question to answer. Superficially I think they have been effective. Obviously we all have the numbers, we know what the numbers are, but I think this is a matter of number juggling. Q173 Chairman: Just remind us of the numbers. I think they have fallen. The backlog fell from 121,000 in January 2000 to 40,000 by December last year. Does that sound right to you? Ms Sargeant: Yes. 84,000 to 37,000 in December. That is more or less what I have got. And appeals have almost halved, which is unfortunate, I think. Q174 Chairman: That is a fairly dramatic fall, is it not? Ms Sargeant: Yes. But when you think that 33 per cent of refusals are from non-compliance (that is, not sending your form in on time), that can show you how those numbers can be massaged. It is ridiculous to refuse people because their form arrives a few days late. Immigration lawyers have told me the Home Office simply loses it and then pretends it has not arrived. I am a little bit suspicious. I think these numbers can be juggled around. I think it is much more to do with what the Government wants to happen rather than what is actually going on. Q175 Mrs Dean: Are you disputing the fact that there has been a fall from 120,000 to 40,000? Ms Sargeant: I think the whole situation is so fake anyway, it is quite easy .... I mean, if you say that you have refused 33 per cent of people because they simply have sent their form in late, it is a very easy way to get a fall. Q176 Mrs Dean: So you are disputing the real fall from 120,000 ----- Ms Sargeant: I am saying that I do not think the Government is tackling the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is simply that we have an unlimited demand of people wanting to come to this country and we try to ----- Q177 Chairman: You are talking about the backlog of appeals. Ms Sargeant: Yes, let's talk about that later. Q178 Chairman: We are talking about the backlog of applications. Clearly the backlog of applications is of those that have not been processed at all, so what you have just described cannot apply to them. It might apply to appeals. Ms Sargeant: Then I will not say anything more about that. Q179 Mrs Dean: Mr Howe. Mr Howe: The backlog of applications I think is more an administrative question than a legal issue but clearly it does have a big impact on the whole system. The objective must be to deal with asylum claims rapidly and fairly. The problem is once the backlog grows at the application stage: you are then trying to investigate events which took place a year ago, two years ago, etcetera. Then the appeals process gets strung out as well. The practical problems of accommodating asylum seekers whose cases are pending multiply. You are not able to use other methods. For example, it seems to me that wider use of detention is acceptable if cases are dealt with very rapidly but it becomes unacceptable in everyone's mind if there are long delays. Although the administration of dealing with applications is not directly a legal issue, it affects the whole system thereafter, and it is vital that that is brought down and that applications are dealt with at the initial stage rapidly. You can then turn your attention, if you like, to speeding up the appeals process and speeding up the stringing out delay in deportations by judicial reviews. Because one of the ironies is that, once you have strung your case out for three or four years, it is then easier to come along to court on a judicial review for the final decision to deport saying: "It's grossly unfair to deport me now because I have put down roots here and I've got family life" and whatever. Q180 Mrs Dean: Mr Gilroy. Mr Gilroy: I think I would come back to the initial question too: if you get the initial assessment right at the port of entry and make that comprehensive and thorough, then you are unlikely to have a massive backlog. It seems to me that the qualitative issues here are important. Remember that most people who come through the port or come through into this country do not have any documentation whatsoever: there is no history, there is no aetiology; you are trying to make assumptions about their history. I used to think when I was introduced to this subject that the officers in immigration were very experienced people, highly trained. The problem the Government have had - and I think the previous government too, as I understand it now - is with the turnover rate of these officers. The minute you get turnover rate of that level, at the level where people are having to make the decisions, it seems to me that qualitatively your decision-making is going to be poorer. I think that is an issue for government, to stabilise that workforce. In Kent now we are piloting an experiment with the immigration service, where all of my staff are now going to be interlocked with the immigration officers so that we can work together, doing a thorough assessment which stops people getting into the system, waiting for their applications to be heard. We think we will be able to reduce that. The other thing I feel is necessary both for asylum seekers themselves and the general public as a whole in terms of public perception, is that, if people have a decision made and that decision is a negative decision, we really must have a system in place where we act upon that action. It is hopeless to have a system - which I have had in Kent - where people who have had a negative decision, who are from various parts of the world, get a letter in English telling them that they have not been successful, because the first thing they will do, many of them, is disappear. It really has to be well managed, it has to be sensitively managed. If it is not, it really creates further problems, and of course that adds weight and adds problems too for the whole system, because it means that officers who are in various bits of the immigration service are under pressure: Who is going to do that? I also agree with my colleague that one way of making this successful in terms of applications is: if you have a short period of detention, if you make sure that the management is effective and the initial assessments are thorough, you will not get the backlog. The problem with detention, if it becomes too long, is that then the whole system starts to creak. That has been one of the dilemmas, I think for the Government in the last couple of years. Ms Sargeant: Could I say a little bit more. I have sat in on the interviews at the Home Office. I was slightly appalled by the fact, as you were saying, that these people arrive without documents - the gangs advise them to come here without document sand sometimes even provide them with scissors to cut up their documents - and you have no way of knowing their name, which country they have come from or even their age, and you certainly cannot check anything about their story. The idea that you can do an assessment I think is very optimistic. There was one Chinese who was saying he was imprisoned in China. The young determining officer said to me later, "How can I possibly check whether he was in prison in China? I cannot ring up some prison in a remote province of China and talk to them and ask them." There is no way of checking most of these stories. Whether the determining officer decides they are asylum seeker or an economic migrant, in my experience seems to be entirely arbitrary. Q181 Mrs Dean: Could I turn in a bit more detail to how applications are now dealt with. I know in answer to the last question some of you have touched on that. How have recent measures the Government have taken led to an improvement in the processing of applications, Mr Gilroy? Mr Gilroy: They have certainly led to a faster approach in the interim. They have been faster. Where I am struggling is that we now seem to have a two-tier system. The first is the bit that the Government have improved on in the last few months with this new legislation. The second bit is that I still have thousands of people living in Kent who have not had their claims even heard. It just seems remarkable that I have all those people, and, as my colleague has just said, they will have absolute rights now for a judicial, whether we like it or not. In a way, my sentiment falls with them, because, if they have lived here for that long, it would just seem wrong to arbitrarily say that many of them should be dragged back to their countries of origin. I would also say this, one of the big problems that I think my colleagues in the Home Office have struggled with is the whole subject of volume. They have struggled with this to get quality on the one hand, quality decisions on the one hand, and dealing with the numbers of people. I think that has been a real struggle for them. We have had positions, even now, where we have had one part of the family that has had one decision and another part of the family that has had another decision. That does not make sense, if you are going to make a decision about a family. It looked to me as though lefthand/righthand were two different immigration officers and yet it was the same family. So there are real issues about quality and judgment. I am not convinced about whether we can deal with assessments. For instance, on age determination - which has been a vexed issue, a difficult issue - I think we have done extraordinarily well in Kent in the last three or four years in terms of making those judgments - and we do not use any medical tests, we do not use all of those things. This is my point about experience: the more experienced you are, the more consolidation you have of that experience the longer you do the job, the more effective you are at determining. We are finding now that that message is getting through. People are becoming honest. I do not have 55-year olds telling me they are 16, which is what used to happen. We do not get that any more. The Government's new legislation, although it has had controversial elements to it - local government are still worried about one or two of them - I think has improved the situation, and I think to the benefit ultimately of people seeking asylum. You know, they say to me, "The one thing I want is a decision. I need to know. Once I know, then I can get my life back together again." Q182 Mrs Dean: Is there a danger that fast-track schemes will lead to the erosion of the rights of asylum seekers? Mr Gilroy: I think that is always going to be a tension, between balancing the rights of individuals against the system itself - how you make those judgments. Of the UK, I know there has been criticism, but, having now travelled in various parts of the European Union, every time I hear us being criticised I think we are unkind to ourselves. When you talk to the thousands we have dealt with, they will always say to us, "Well, we think the UK is very good on treating us fairly." That is not to say that judicial process is not protracted - I think at times it has been exploited - but I would rather have a process where you are trying to be fair than have a process by which you diminish people's rights totally. I think the UK governments - both the previous one and this one - have struggled with that balance but I think the general thrust of the new legislation - even though there are bits of it I am not happy with - is an attempt to try to make it more effective. Q183 Mrs Dean: Finally, what has been your experience of the induction centre piloted at Dover? Mr Gilroy: It has been positive and negative. I think the positive thing is that it has attempted to induct, it has attempted to control. However, any induction centre in the UK is only going to be successful if it makes decisions quickly. If it does not make decisions quickly, then it leaves the officers, the professionals trying to manage the service, whether they are a voluntary organisation, under contract to the Home Office or anybody else, with a build up of numbers and then you start saying, "Oh, dear, we thought hey were only going to be here for four weeks and actually they are not, they are going to be here for six months." The minute you start to do that, you start getting other things happening at the other end, where people start to be put in hotels again and the whole thing starts to lose public credibility. For me the issue is how effective the Home Office are in managing that initial process of induction.Miss Widdecombe: You are looking very dubious, Chairman. Chairman: I am because I suspect you are about to raise someone else's questions. I shall stop you if you do. Miss Widdecombe: I may be but I would quite like to link that to some of the things that have been said, even if later on it is expanded. Chairman: There will be an opportunity in a minute to pursue the point. I know the one you are interested in. We will get there. Miss Widdecombe: I am not convinced. Q184 Bridget Prentice: Can I ask each of you whether you think the Prime Minister's pledge of halving the number of applications by September is still achievable and, in the process of answering that, what in particular do you think would be the most effective measures to ensure that its pledge is indeed achieved? Ms Sargeant: I am sorry, I did not hear the last part of that. Q185 Bridget Prentice: If you think a pledge is achievable, and I suspect, Ms Sargeant, from what you said you do not --- Ms Sargeant: Wait and see. Q186 Bridget Prentice: What measures do you think would actually make sure that he will achieve his pledge? Presumably carrying on the system as it is at the moment will not be enough, according what you have told us already? Ms Sargeant: I think actually Tony Blair does have a chance of achieving this number but I think it is a short-term victory rather than a long-term solution to the problem. I am assuming that they are claiming the starting figure for this is as at October 2002, which is 9,000, which was one of the highest ever, so that makes it easier to begin with. This promise was made in January 2003, so they would have known then that the December figure had already gone down to 6,500, and they are on their way to showing a marked reduction. The figure of 6,500 is an average figure for a month. We have also introduced visa requirements for Zimbabwe and Jamaica, so that is also going to cut numbers. I think Tony Blair is gambling that the situation in Iraq, which is one of the largest sending countries, will stabilise and in Afghanistan it will stabilise, so that less people will be coming from there. He may well hit his target or only narrowly miss it. Q187 Bridget Prentice: He could hardly have been gambling in January over Iraq, surely, unless he had incredible foresight. Ms Sargeant: Yes, that is a good point but I think he is going to come within it. I agree, and you are absolutely right, or maybe he knew something we did not know. He could very well get to his figure, but this does not tackle the main problem, which is at the moment that there is an unlimited demand from the third world to come here and that if the whole of Iraq, for instance, tomorrow turned up at our ports, we would have, under all the present conditions, to let them in. Because of conditions in many third world countries, and because of the very lenient interpretation that our courts have made of the 1951 Convention, most people who come here can make a very good case for claiming asylum and would have a perfect right to settle here. This is an issue that we really have not grasped and have not looked at. All this is saying is: "We can get the figures down". Yes, maybe we will do so for that month, but something else will happen; the figures will go up again. Q188 Bridget Prentice: Can I ask Mr Howe how he responds to this question? In your pamphlet you very much seem to blame the courts for their very liberal interpretation of the Convention. I think you refer to the notion of protecting the fundamental rights of asylum seekers as being buoyed up. There are a couple of comments where you make it clear that you believe in a sense the courts have almost overstepped the mark in the way that they have interpreted the Convention. In your response to the halving of the numbers by September, can you tell us a little bit more about why you believe the courts need to be reined in again? Mr Howe: I do not want necessary to speculate about the halving of the numbers by September because that is one month. It might happen; it might not. Really the question, it seems to me, is a longer term issue of reducing the trend. You can be very radical and take the view that the 1951 Geneva Convention may be no longer appropriate in modern conditions because it imposes an unlimited obligation, not limited by numbers, to accept anyone who falls within its definition of refugees. The problem with it, in common with so many other diplomatic instruments, is that we, as a country, tend to take these things seriously. If there is a treaty obligation written down, we as a country I think are probably exceptional in the degree to which we really do honour it rather than paying lip service to it. I think there are many other countries in the world who sign up to the Convention and espouse its principles, but to whom in reality it is more lip service than actual performance. Even within the context of the 1951 Convention, it seems to me we could do a great deal about the way it is interpreted by our courts. It is an unusual situation in treaties in that by Act of Parliament we have placed on our courts and on the immigration appeals tribunals a role of directly interpreting and applying an international instrument. We do not have to do that and more normally it is the government's responsibility to sign up to an international treaty; it is then Parliament's role to enact domestic legislation, which fulfils the international obligations. What we have done here is simply to say to the courts, "Here is the Convention: you take it and you apply it". There are a number of specific instances which I mention in the pamphlet where in my own view they really have been extremely generous in interpreting the scope of the Convention. One specific case is: are all adulterous women in Pakistan a social group within the meaning of the Convention? It seems to me that by taking that decision, our courts have gone further than the rather more limited original tasks of the 1951 Convention. I would argue what we should do is to enact domestic legislation which defines the circumstances in which people are entitled to claim asylum and not to have our courts directly interpreting the Geneva Convention; instead they would apply a domestic instrument. Ironically, I think that idea could be rather frustrated if the draft directive I mentioned is brought in, because actually that is trying to do a very similar thing, or the same thing, that the European Union has done. Q189 Bridget Prentice: I wanted actually to ask you specifically about that because I found your comments earlier about the draft directive in a sense surprising, given what you have said in your pamphlet. I would have thought the draft directive would have actually done what you are suggesting. For example, the idea that the courts here could say that France and Germany are not safe countries seems patently a nonsense. If there was a common directive across the European Union, then surely the courts could never come up with that kind of response? Mr Howe: Yes, but I think the problem lies in the contents of the draft directive. For example, on the issue of persecution by non-state agents, which I have already mentioned, the draft directive would enshrine that into European Union law, so that would be the interpretation which we, in common with everyone else, would have to follow. We would lose the ability we at present have to define our domestic law in a way which did not go along with that interpretation. Similarly, I am just thinking of the definition proposed for persecution; the inclusion of concepts like mental violence may go further than we would want to go if we defined it for ourselves. I think the problem with doing that at a European Union level, whilst I agree it has some relevance to the question of whether Germany or France are safe countries and whether they are applying similar standards, is that we completely lose our own power to regulate our own affairs on that issue. In this context, I am slightly surprised by one aspect of the Home Office evidence because right at the end they say: at the moment, we are committed to the 1951 Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights, but if necessary we will review this in future, and yet at the same time they are negotiating a directive which would actually prevent them from reviewing it in future if it was in this country's interests to do so. Q190 Bridget Prentice: I do not really want to get into an argument about Europe, which may be the tendency if we take this too far. Is that perhaps because the Home Office means that the directive will do what you are suggesting we need to do in terms of the Convention? Is that perhaps their interpretation of it? Mr Howe: It may be their belief but I would not agree with that belief if it is their belief because I think you would actually entrench it the wrong way. Q191 Bridget Prentice: Can I ask you finally this on this point: you say in your pamphlet that asylum seekers in the UK form a sea within which dangerous terrorists and terrorist supporters can swim and hide. What evidence do you have of that? Mr Howe: I would have thought there is a number of instances such as the discovery of ricin --- and I think that was earlier this year or late last year --- in a flat apparently owned or occupied by asylum seekers. I was not trying to be pejorative with that description of the sea. The point is that if you do have a large number of people, the great bulk of whom are not a threat --- they are here whether they are genuine asylum seekers or economic migrants and they are not a threat in that way --- entering the country, and you do not know the true identity for many of them and you have no effective way of tracking where they are, then it does make it easier for those with malicious intent to get in and to hide amongst a much larger population of asylum seekers. Q192 Bridget Prentice: May I ask, beginning perhaps with Mr Gilroy, what you think of the feasibility of the transit processing centres that the Government is suggesting would operate outside Europe but would be sponsored, funded if you like, by the European Union? Do you think they may be a part of the solution? Mr Gilroy: They may be part of the solution if you can get the countries where they are going to operate working with you effectively. I see the Italians have already objected to that proposal. It is interesting, is it not, when we talk about these things, and you asked a question about Mr Blair's targets. My view about Mr Blair's targets is that we are probably going to reach them simply because Sangatte is closed, the new legislation is here and the message has got out. Fortuitously, things have been happening internationally that all converge into effecting a downward trend, but for how long we do not know. The idea of having some means back somewhere in Europe, places where we can transport people back to before making judgments, sounds initially attractive, but I still do not believe it is the solution. I still keep coming back to the view that a solution must be having a more aggressive, dynamic approach in the countries of origin from where these people leave and actually the UK having a different approach. I am in favour of quota systems because I think quota systems at least have a rational basis to them, if you can get countries to agree them. What I found when I was looking at the way the Italians were working with parts of Albania was interesting. I do not mean the central government, I mean local government. I was interested in the way local government had placed itself into Albania for economic reasons. It actually tried to do things, I thought quite imaginative things, which were trying to stop people inevitably coming across the water into Italy for economic reasons. I know that sounds naive, and perhaps it is, but it does seem to me that unless politically you are going to look at those issues seriously --- they are not a panacea --- all these other measures in the end are palliative; they are things that you might feel are going to deliver something for you in the short term but, in the long term, are they going to stop this? I believe there is a trend of east-west migration, which I think people are not wanting to admit to, but I still believe instinctively that that is part of what is going on. Q193 Bridget Prentice: If I understand you, you are saying things like reconstruction programmes within the countries of origin would be a much better way of ensuring that people, (a) will remain in the country of origin and (b) will not seek asylum, and we are talking about asylum as opposed to economic migrants again? Mr Gilroy: Yes, and I know that is utopia and I know hard-edged politicians will say I am in another world. I understand that issue. It seems to me that whatever else, whatever the national policies are across certainly the western hemisphere at the moment, there should be some focused approach as part of that overriding strategy to open up that debate. It is actually about looking at those economics and saying, "What can we do?" To be honest, I would love to have seen local government in the UK being more imaginative in trying to help with that issue because if local government could do anything, it is to help the things like community infrastructure. It can look at things like economic regeneration and make a contribution in that area. I do not think we have done that so much in the UK and I think we could. I do not see it as a panacea. There would have to be other strands to any policy, but if you just have one and you said, "We will have these things out there, and will it not be all right then?" no it will not; it might be all right for a while but it will not solve the issue. Ms Sargeant: I very much agree with that. I think you have to look at what is happening in the third world countries from which these people are coming, from which these young men are coming. Certainly in Arab countries you have had the population trebling in the last 40 years. I have here a survey of 800 young Moroccans. It just gives a snapshot of what they are thinking. This survey was carried out recently on the mood of young people. It questioned 800 young Moroccans under the age of 30 living in densely populated areas. Half wanted to leave Morocco to look for a better future in Europe. This rose to 83 per cent at university level and 86 per cent had applied for a visitor's visa to Europe; all had been denied. Half affirm this would not stop them emigrating, despite the danger and the illegality of their actions. The survey also revealed disturbing pessimism. Two-thirds of these young people believed conditions in their country would not improve and they cannot advance. Corruption and over-population have just blocked advancement in their own society and they are coming here to look for something better. Those are the conditions that have to change. Q194 Bridget Prentice: That brings me rather neatly on to my final question, which is about the distinction between economic migrants and genuine refugees. You have all commented on it in some form so far. Is there any case for some fresh thinking on this and, if so, what are your ideas? Mr Gilroy: I believe that there should be a much more imaginative approach to the whole question of immigration. Many people that I have seen over the years are graduates and would wish to make an economic contribution to the country; that is not at all the sort of image that we get. There are many that are educated, who wish to work and could work. Even now, under the new legislation, we are excluding any of them if they want to work; they are not allowed to do so. I would have said we could be much more creative about our immigration in relation to their countries of origin. In other words, you could have a much more coherent approach to what we mean in terms of immigration. We hear that all of these youngsters have been excluded. That may be appropriate, but if we could think more creatively about what we mean by immigration and what we mean by employment, we might be able to make a difference. That is the first thing, trying to link up the whole question of economic migration and that is mainly about people wanting to improve their lives. I have that every day of the week in Kent when I talk to the youngsters we deal with. The second thing I would say is that whatever happens in relation to the asylum services or the structures we have to work within in this country and however strong they are, when people do arrive, we ought to be imaginative and make fast decisions about the way in which we help them get further education and the way we get them integrated into our communities, however small that number. The faster we can do that, the more integrated they will become and they can make an economic contribution to the country. I keep coming back to this principle of trying to think through more imaginatively and maybe take some risks on the question of work permits in the countries of origin, thinking that through a bit more creatively than we do at the moment. That would be my point. Mr Howe: Of course if we could set the entire world to rights, we would not have the asylum problem. Short of being able to go round the world and correct the endemic problems in every country there is, we as a country have to say that we are a crowded island and there are limits on the numbers that we can take, for whatever reason. Once you have that view, of course there is room for discussion on what the limits should be and how high and how low. Once you take the view that there should be limits, you then have to ask the very fundamental question about the whole asylum system. That is a system by which people who do not fit your criteria, whatever they are, but you feel you want to allow them into this country, can bypass whatever system you have. It seems to me you just have to bring that under control. Once that is under control, you can then, if you like, look at the issue of: should we be more generous in terms of work permits or should we perhaps skew our policy towards specific countries where there are specific reasons for allowing more flexibility in our normal immigration laws than others? I would strongly argue that you cannot do that side by side with a completely uncontrolled system of asylum, where the people who succeed in getting in are, by and large, those who are able to pay for their passage, get past the barriers and get in here. It is essential to bring that under control in order, if you like, to be more imaginative on other aspects of the policy. Q195 Bridget Prentice: Just briefly before Ms Sergeant comes in, the ones who are able to pay for their passage, are they not also most likely to be the ones who are going to be economically active if they are given the right to stay? If they are able to find the money in the country of origin to pay for their passage to get here, are they also not likely to be the ones that are more entrepreneurial or have the higher skills, or whatever? Mr Howe: That may be so. That is an interesting question. The logical extension to that is to hold an auction for places to come to this country! That may not be what asylum is about. That may be a valid consideration under immigration control but it is not really what our asylum system is intended to be dealing with. Ms Sargeant: I think at the moment we have a very unfair system because it is the gangs who dictate who comes to this country. I feel that we should actually be deciding who comes to this country rather than a criminal gang. If you take the premise that there is an unlimited number of people coming here and that we cannot take everybody, then the fairer way would perhaps be to have some sort of quota system. We as a country could debate how we wanted to form that quota system. It could be made up of certain people with skills; it could be made up of certain people who are in refugee camps who are simply poor and in need; it can be made up of people who are relatives. That does not really matter. We could have a combination of all of these. I think, as long as we have a system that is clearly understood and well broadcast and seen to be fair and transparent, this would be a big improvement on what we have now. Q196 Mr Cameron: I want to ask the question first about criminal gangs and trafficking but I think we know what your answer is going to be. I am going to come on to quotas, because that does seem to be the radical suggestion you are making. Are you all saying effectively that the percentage of asylum seekers coming who have been trafficked by gangs is almost all of them? Ms Sargeant: Yes. Mr Howe: I believe so; it is very high. Mr Gilroy: I believe so originally, but bear in mind that a proportion of those we get have lived in the European Union for some time. My view is that virtually all of them originally were trafficked. Q197 Mr Cameron: Short of fundamental changes to the asylum system, which I am going to come on to, is there anything else that the Government could do to actually tackle the activities of these criminal gangs? Ms Sargeant: No, because the fundamental thing is that, in order to claim asylum, you have to be physically in this country. While we have that, we are going to have criminal gangs. Mr Gilroy: I would think one thing they could do is make sure that the police services across the European Union are more coherent. It was clear to me when we went to Italy that there was no a sense of coherence. I naively thought there would be but there was not. I would have thought that would be one thing they could be thinking about, how the police services operate across Europe as a whole on this subject. Q198 Mr Cameron: The picture you paint, Ms Sergeant, in your pamphlet is: here is a system costing £2 billion and, at the end of the day, it is delivering about 10,000 asylum seekers into this country. That is the point of it, is it not? That is how many people actually get asylum each year, about 10,000. It gives us a system of illegal immigration of about 100,000. It is costing a lot of money and it is all being run by criminal gangs. That is your pamphlet in a nutshell. Can you explain then how these quotas would work? Let us assume there is a quota of 10,000 or 20,000; what would physically happen to someone who gets off the ferry at Dover and says, "I claim asylum"? Perhaps even before that: if you wanted to be part of the quota, what do you do? Do you go to the British embassy in whatever country and say, "I would like to apply for asylum?" How do quotas work? Ms Sargeant: I have to say I am not very sure about this. I am moving into territory I have not really covered in my report. The American system was to have quotas by country and people would go in their own country and apply in the 1920s to go to the USA. I assume we would have something like that. We could change the quota from year to year, looking at what was happening in the world. Obviously we would have had a much larger quota for Iraq over the last few years than for another country, and so it would be fairly flexible. For someone arriving in this country, that would be very difficult. I am not sure. I do not think I want to answer that. Q199 Mr Cameron: It seems to me you paint a convincing picture of how the asylum system is failing but, in order to find an alternative, I think there needs to be an answer to what happens to people who still come here, having torn up their papers getting off an aeroplane or getting off a lorry in Dover or half-way up the motorway. The Government is now talking about having a processing centre offshore. Mr Gilroy, you said you were in favour of quotas at one stage. Could you give us some more of your thinking? Mr Gilroy: Yes. I am thinking again in terms of the European Union because that is the way in which asylum seekers work. That is what they do; they come into the European Union and eventually they come to the UK. I would have thought that one way forward would be to make sure that all the gateways across the European Union were more robustly and more coherently managed and to have a formula not dissimilar to the States. I would not just base it on the population, which is what some of the commentators have talked about. I would also put it on hectare space as well of the country of origin. There is an issue about how much space there is in our towns and cities. You could have a formula that was signed up to by all countries. If you had, certainly in the short term, a data set --- and we are developing a data set at the moment for unaccompanied minors for the UK --- you could have a position where at least someone coming through the port would be added to a normative number based on the formula, notwithstanding the problems of getting countries to comply, with which all the European Union countries would have complied. There could be a closer relationship between the big gateways --- Gatwick, Heathrow, Dover and those where we operate. I have made a proposal to Brussels that actually it would be useful for the big gateway countries that have lots of people coming through to share the way they operate at the point of entry, to see whether we can get best practice. Q200 Chairman: Will you send us a copy of that? Mr Gilroy: Yes. Q201 Mr Cameron: This means people coming to the continent of Europe would then be distributed, as it were, under a formula agreed, not just based on population but based hectare. I suppose that would get over one problem of common borders, which is that if everyone is trying to end up in the United Kingdom, you otherwise are relying on the border post at Brindisi to police your own ports? Mr Gilroy: Yes. Q202 Mr Cameron: Perhaps I could turn to Mr Howe on quotas. What would the government of whatever persuasion have to do to introduce a quota system? How many treaties would you have to tear up? How big a change is it? Mr Howe: There are two types of quota system you could implement. You could implement a quota system which is a supplement to the existing asylum system, and that would not cause any legal difficulties. Q203 Mr Cameron: It would not solve the problem of 100,000 people coming each year, ten per cent of whom are judged to be genuine asylum seekers? Mr Howe: It would not solve the problem you are addressing, which is: what do you do with people who simply turn up illegally in this country? The fundamental problem of the asylum system as it stands is that it actually is a system that intrinsically rewards illegality because the ability to stay in this country comes from physically being present here and therefore physically overcoming and bypassing visa controls and other controls which are designed to stop people getting here illegally. If you want us to take the view that we are going to have a quota system that replaces the existing asylum system, what one would then be doing in principle is saying that we are going to take the obligations under the 1951 Geneva Convention, which are unlimited in number --- however many turn up, you are obliged to take them --- and replacing that with a system of quotas. Presumably you would then have to say, rather than judging people on the basis of an absolute standard under the Convention, "We are going to take X thousand of the most deserving cases from this particular country and we are going to reject the rest". It seems to me that is the basis on which you could operate it. Q204 Mr Cameron: If the extra person turns up at Heathrow, he would have to be put back on the aeroplane from whence he came or he would have to go to a third country processing centre or whatever. You could not entertain those extra applications? Mr Howe: If you have a quota, that is the logic of it. Instead of an absolute standard that you are judging people against, simply in essence you are judging people's cases against each other. The X thousand of the most deserving are the ones you take and the rest we have to return. You are still left then with further both legal, humanitarian and treaty problem regarding those who do not qualify under your quota system but whom you cannot return for administrative or practical reasons to their country of origin or who come within the Article 3 UNHCR provision of being exposed to inhuman or degrading treatment in their country of origin. You have a further issue as to whether the quota system could be reconciled with those obligations. Q205 David Winnick: Coming back to criminal gangs, if I remember correctly, it was 58 Chinese who suffocated to death a few years ago so tragically. My question is to Harriet Sergeant, since she has laid great emphasis, and no doubt rightly, on this aspect. Would that be a deterrent? I am almost certain that what happened tragically was not reported in China, but, if it had been known, would that be any kind of deterrent to people coming here, be it from China or anywhere else, under such circumstances? Ms Sargeant: I think you have to put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself if you would have been deterred. I think they would probably say, "Out of thousands and thousands who are coming, it was only 58, so I will be lucky and I will get through". Q206 David Winnick: Presumably they would also say, "Well, 58 died, but the rest are alive and have made it"? Ms Sargeant: Yes, and they would probably have relatives here who have made it. I think you also have to remember that what they hear about this country is very much from the gangs. The gangs market themselves quite aggressively. They would only hear good things. For instance, they all tell me they hear a lot about the availability of young women, and that seems to be the big attraction, rather than any of things that we would probably rather they heard about. Q207 David Winnick: As long as there are the conditions which have been described, particularly by Mr Gilroy and indeed yourself, as you have laid out on Morocco, would we not be right to come to the rather pessimistic conclusion that the demand is so great that it would be difficult for any government, though obviously every government would do its best, to deal effectively with these criminal gangs and they would use any method, any form of criminality, in order to keep in business? Ms Sargeant: I think the demand from the third world is so great that the numebrs coming here are unlimited, and that is what you have to look at to begin with. Perhaps we are getting a little muddled between emigration and seeking asylum. I am sure all of us here would agree that we would all want people to be able to escape out of their country if they are in danger of their lives. That does not necessary mean that they are going to emigrate to the first world. The two do not necessarily go together. I happen to think that immigration should be a reciprocal arrangement. One of the reasons that the Iraqis came to the UK and had no choice but to come to the UK is that, if you look on the map, the Arab countries around Iraq simply refused to take them. I always find it very helpful to put oneself in the place of the asylum seeker. If this happened in the UK, where would we want to go? We would surely want to go to a country that was close by and culturally similar. We would want to go to France or Holland. I cannot imagine that any of us would want suddenly to go over the Nigeria or Indonesia. I think we perhaps muddle up the two processes here. Q208 David Winnick: With the Moroccans that you mentioned in that survey and the Chinese, it is not a question of asylum seekers. As we know, China is a dictatorship. The reasons are economic above all else, the fact that they would be able to earn a living here, though not by great standards, and have to pay back, of course, those who got them here. Economics is the real motive for coming here, is it not, in those circumstances where the criminal gangs are concerned? Ms Sargeant: Yes. We have discussed this and Mr Gilroy was making the point that it is very muddled. If you have lived in the third world, you know that whether you are an economic migrant or whether you are an asylum seeker is actually quite an artificial definition, and it changes from day to day, from hour to hour. It is not a clear-cut definition at all. I think it is a waste of a lot of people's effort and time trying to make that clear-cut definition. Q209 David Winnick: Those who paid with their lives in coming here, those I mentioned at the beginning that suffocated, clearly in their own minds, in so far as it is any kind of distinction, were first and foremost potential economic migrants to the UK? Ms Sargeant: From China, yes. Q210 Miss Widdecombe: Mr Gilroy, you have mentioned detention on a couple of occasions. You have also identified a large number of problems with people disappearing into the system, people coming over into the system with false documents already available at addresses, people ringing up Italy to release money to go to the criminal gangs because they have already arrived. We have a situation at the moment when all you have to say are three words --- "I claim asylum" --- and you must be admitted into the country while that claim is determined. Is it your view that those problems would be largely, if not wholly, addressed if all new applicants were detained until their applications had been decided? Mr Gilroy: Yes. I think if you had detention at that point and you could create a system that was fast and people were not languishing in any form of institution --- and families are in that category --- you would resolve the problem. Certainly it would be one of the major messages to traffickers. One of the things that traffickers do --- and the youngsters tell us this time and time again, and so do the families when we deal with families --- is tell them how to behave; they say what you should do. In fact, sometimes the people that come across to the port tell us they have torn their documents up as they were coming across on the ferry, if they do come in that way. If you detain, that is a public message to the criminals. It is not easy because the assessment process is not easy. It also means that there is less chance of haemorrhaging. We lost great numbers during the late Nineties that just disappeared and I was desperately worried because, as a Director of Social Services, we had youngsters that just went. I became very nervous. I asked, "What are we going to do about this?" There were child protection issues and sexual exploitation issues. It depresses me now when I see the latest report from London relating to the red-light district and parts of London where I see a large Albanian population. That is a depressing picture. I know detention carries with it all sorts of prejudices. In my position I am anti-institution. I do not like institutions, but I think if you could protect people efficiently, humanely and fast, that would take away a lot of the problems, certainly operational problems, that we are seeing. Q211 Miss Widdecombe: Do you also believe that it could act as a deterrent towards applicants coming here in the first place who did not have a genuine claim? If the message that went out was that if you come to Britain with a false claim, you will be detained, you will be dealt with quickly, you will be sent back, is it your view that would act as a deterrent? Mr Gilroy: Yes. Q212 Miss Widdecombe: Is it also your view that if it were to be a successful deterrent, that would benefit the genuine applicant because he would be competing with fewer numbers and so he would be dealt with more quickly. Also, if we had that applicant in situ, we could identify him quickly, go through all the supplementary inquiries and everything else that is necessary because he would be there, and then we could, in those circumstances, tailor a much more satisfactory resettlement package than a lot of them get at the moment when it is a rather hit and miss business? Mr Gilroy: I agree. The real challenge for is, if we are going to do that, is to make the initial assessment process, the securer process, of a high quality. It would need to be of high quality and not last very long. That is the key for me. The Achilles' heel for us in the UK traditionally, certainly under the current system, is that great intentions --- we will do this in so many days --- you will find is not achievable. The point you are making there is real and it is one of the things I have felt very strongly about when, certainly in the late Nineties, I saw the chaos that ensued with literally thousands of people just getting into the black economy of the UK. Nobody knew where they were. I am waiting for the moment when we have a horror story of a youngster and somebody is going to come back to Kent and say to me, "How did you allow this? Why did this happen?" Of course, it is not in my gift to control it. Once these youngsters disappear, they disappear and you do not know where they are. Q213 Miss Widdecombe: Could I ask if either of the other two witnesses want to come in on that proposition? Mr Howe: Yes, I would like to comment on the issue of detention and what Mr Gilroy referred to as the Achilles' heel. If it is fast, then you can deal with people quickly; it is manageable. Once the whole thing takes longer, it becomes unacceptable to detain people, particularly families, for a very long period of time. Also, the sheer physical issue of providing sufficient space and accommodation becomes very difficult. There is a serious problem here in the way the courts and the European Convention on Human Rights interact because Article 5 of the Convention provides for the right to liberty. On the face of Article 5, there is an exception which permits states to detain illegal immigrants and people who are to be deported. However, the courts have interpreted this, both the Strasbourg court and our own domestic courts, in a way in which they say that the detention has to be proportionate to come within Article 5, and it can only be proportionate if the deportation is imminent, or if you have a specific factor like a flight risk in a particular case. That is all very well, but that is then coupled with another set of jurisprudence under Article 6 of the Convention, the right of access to a court to determine your legal rights. That leads to endless appeals being entertained. Because the courts cannot deal with judicial reviews in particular very rapidly, they say, "Once you have filed a judicial review application, because we, the courts, are so slow in dealing with it, therefore your deportation cannot be imminent and therefore you have to be released from detention". This is sort of Alice in Wonderland logic which of course results in it being the case that, in order to get sprung from detention, you go and file a judicial review application. It seems to me that sort of issue would need to be addressed and indeed dealt with in order to make a detention policy workable. Q214 Miss Widdecombe: That is extremely helpful. Is it your view that it could be addressed? Are you putting forward an insuperable problem or are you simply putting forward something that, with a necessary adjustment of the law, could be dealt with? Mr Howe: It is a necessary adjustment. You would need to adjust the law to make that work. You could also administer that within the courts, I think, to take steps to speed up the way they deal with judicial reviews and immigration cases. Q215 Miss Widdecombe: But the law could so be adjusted, in your view? Mr Howe: You would still have a potential problem of conflict with the Strasbourg court because individual petitions might be required. Q216 Miss Widdecombe: There are clearly ways of dealing with that as well. In your view, the law could so be adjusted? Mr Howe: It could be, as we stand at present. Ms Sargeant: I have reservations about detention. I have visited Oakington, which is for those with manifestly unfounded claims or those likely to abscond. The camp itself is impressive; it was very well thought out and it is a pleasant place to stay. Two things, however, mitigate against the success of Oakington, and I think of any detention centre. The first is the sheer expense of it. At the time I went, and I think it costs more now, it cost £2,700 per week to hold one asylum seeker. Your mind boggles when you think what that sum of money would do for somebody in the third world. The other problem was that it simply does not work. What is meant to happen is that the asylum seekers come to Oakington for a week and they put in their claim. I think 98 per cent have had their claims for asylum rejected. They then put in their appeal. The centre was not designed to hold people for longer than a week and so, at the end of the week, they put in their appeal. They then have to leave the centre ready for the next lot of people to move in. That means that they are simply put on a bus with a packet of sandwiches and sent to Liverpool and then they are lost. They simply vanish. The Home Office admitted that they have no running checks on them. In other words, Oakington is a complete waste of money. I think only a handful of people, not even that, have actually left the country. Q217 Miss Widdecombe: Yes, but with respect, Ms Sergeant, I was not asking you about Oakington, which is one particular form of detention, and you have actually identified various problems that arise in which I think we would all be intensely interested. I asked you a different question. The question I asked you was, and it was the original one: if all new applicants were to be housed in secure reception centres until their application had been processed, would the sort of problems that you have identified today about criminal gangs, disappearances, forged documents, et cetera, largely or wholly be addressed by such a policy? Ms Sargeant: Are you saying then that, having been held in the centre, they would be removed from the centre and deported? Q218 Miss Widdecombe: Yes. Ms Sargeant: I actually very much doubt that can happen in the present circumstances, but, if it could, it would have a big effect. Why go to the huge financial cost of setting up these centres? Why not simply have a better removal system? Q219 Miss Widdecombe: How much of that £2,700 is board and lodging? How much is the cost of detention? How much is the cost of the immigration officers, which you would have to meet anyway? How much is the cost of capital replenishment? When you come up with figures like that, they are very arguable and addressable and will vary hugely from detention centre to detention centre. I have asked a very simple question: would the problems that you have identified be largely or wholly addressed if you had a policy of detaining all new applicants until you had processed their claims and removed those who had failed? Ms Sargeant: As the law stands at the moment, we cannot do that. Q220 Miss Widdecombe: We have already said that we could adjust the law. I am asking you a specific question. Ms Sargeant: If you could hold them through the appeals process --- Q221 Miss Widdecombe: I am asking you a specific question. If --- Ms Sargeant: This is a hypothetical question. We are all saying if the third world was a much nicer place to live, we would not have an asylum problem. Q222 Miss Widdecombe: You obviously do not wish to answer my question, Ms Sergeant. Ms Sargeant: It was a hypothetical question. Q223 Miss Widdecombe: Of course it is because when you are forming policy, you begin with a series of hypothetical questions. Either answer the question, or we will pass on. Ms Sargeant: Very well then, I will say that if you had the situation where you could remove people from the detention centre, put them on a plane and send them out of this country, then I am sure that would act as a deterrent. What that would cost us, I cannot being to imagine. Q224 Miss Widdecombe: It would act as a deterrent and it would solve, either largely or wholly, the problems that you have identified today? Ms Sargeant: I think I will not answer that question. Miss Widdecombe: I am not surprised. Thank you very much, Chairman. Q225 Chairman: Do you agree or disagree with Miss Widdecombe? Ms Sargeant: I disagree. I do not quite see the point. I disagree with it. Q226 Mr Singh: Mr Howe, I want to push you a bit on some of the ideas you pose in your paper. You have not gone this far but is it possible for the United Kingdom Government to say, "We are taking no more asylum seekers. We are taking time out. We are suspending the whole thing for a year"? Is it legally possible for us to do that? Mr Howe: In order to do that, you would need to denounce the 1951 Geneva Convention and the New York Protocol. It is possible under the Convention to do that. I think you have to give 12 months' notice, if I remember correctly. You would still, however, then be faced with issues under the European Convention on Human Rights, which of course does not directly contain any provision relating to asylum, but Article l3 impacts on the asylum question in that it inhibits your ability to return people. You would also need to deal with the position under European Community law, which is rapidly changing, as I have already discussed. Q227 Mr Singh: If the British Government felt the situation was such that it amounted to a national emergency, are we then not able to take action in terms of the national emergency independently and as a sovereign nation? Mr Howe: That is a very broad question. Under the European Convention on Human Rights, there are provisions which were invoked in the terrorism case for the derogation in the case of an emergency threatening the life of the nation. However, the derogation provisions do not apply to Article 3, which is what prevents you from sending people back to countries where they are exposed to a risk of inhuman and degrading treatment. It is not possible within the Convention to get rid of that obligation. The European Convention on Human Rights, however, can be terminated on six months' notice, and so you could leave the Convention. Q228 Mr Singh: What if we just ignored the Geneva Convention and said, "We are taking no more asylum seekers"? What would happen to us? What would the ramifications be? Mr Howe: The ramifications of ignoring it for a year would be mainly political because it does not actually have any enforcement mechanisms and probably a high percentage of countries round the world do actually ignore it, even though they are signed up to it. The ramifications of ignoring the European Convention on Human Rights would be that you would get a lot of individual petitions to the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg with claims there and presumably judgments against the British Government on the plain ignoring of the Convention. As for the ramifications for ignoring Community law, again we can do it in domestic law and pass an Act of Parliament suspending the 1972 European Communities Act, but that would lead , shall I say, to the least big political problems within the European Union. That would be a big step, having many ramifications outside the field of asylum. Q229 Mr Singh: From what you are saying, when the Government has said that it may wish to review its obligations under the Geneva Convention, that desire is just hot air then, is it not? Mr Howe: At the moment it is not because the British Government could simply give notice that it is leaving the Geneva Convention and more strictly the New York Protocol, which extended it to events after 1951. However, after June, if this directive has stopped it, it will not be so easy because it is then embedded into European Community law that we are obliged to comply with, amongst other things the 1951 Convention. Q230 Mr Singh: Would our status at the United Nations be affected if we withdrew temporarily, let us say, from the Geneva Convention? Mr Howe: We are entitled as of right to withdraw from it. What we could do is give notice of withdrawing from it and then re-sign it again after a year if that is what we wanted to do --- a moratorium or reform. It would have political ramifications but it is something we would be entitled to do under the treaties. Q231 Mr Singh: If we went down that road, could we control the asylum problem? Mr Howe: I think we would have a much better chance of bringing it under control. At the end of the day, however, whatever the legal framework, you have to recognise there is still a humanitarian issue, which is that people arrive in this country, however they have got in and whatever their circumstances, and they really are going to be subjected to appalling treatment if they are sent back. Whatever the legal framework adopted, there is a humanitarian issue as to how far you are willing to go along that road, which I think everyone here would want to face. Indeed, a great deal could be done to cut down on all the non-genuine cases and the abuses of the system. Q232 Mr Singh: I turn to Mr Gilroy. From your experience, what proportion of people, asylum seekers, are arriving here without any form of papers? Mr Gilroy: Virtually all of them. Q233 Mr Singh: Do they have to have some documentary evidence of who they are, a passport of something, when they get on a plane or a ferry? Mr Gilroy: That is an intriguing question, what happens at the other end. I do not particularly want to answer that question because I might say things that I might regret later. All I would say to you is that they do have papers sometimes, but invariably they do not. What they have done with the papers since they arrived in Dover from the point when they were in France, I have no knowledge. I can tell you now that the nearest thing I have seen on some of our asylum seekers, particularly youngsters, are social services cards from other parts of Europe, which has not pleased me. It would suggest that they have been to social services, but you will not see passports and rarely will you see any documents. Q234 Mr Singh: Surely to get on an aircraft there is a passport check? Mr Gilroy: I am not sure but I assume that is so. Ms Sargeant: If they are coming by aeroplane, yes. I spoke to an immigration officer who said they did a spot check on a plane coming from India and there was a group of Indians who had used their Indian passports to get through the restrictions and to get on the plane. Because of the carriers' liability, planes have to check that people are legal who are allowed into our country. But, once on the plane, the gangs had provided them with scissors so they could go and destroy their Indian passports and then claim asylum as Afghans on arrival in this country. Q235 Mr Singh: If the aircraft were obliged to take photocopies of the ID documents, identity documents, that they are using, at least when they got here we would have something to identify them with? Mr Gilroy: I think that is a very good idea. Q236 Mr Singh: No one has followed that up. Ms Sargeant: Not that I know of. Mr Gilroy: It would obviously help at the major airports. It would not help very much at the port of Dover. Q237 Mr Singh: Why? Mr Gilroy: Because you would have to have different conventions --- Q238 Mr Singh: Could we stop people boarding ferries and coming to his country if they did not have the appropriate identity documents with them and refuse to allow them to get off the ferry if they did not have the appropriate ID documents? Mr Gilroy: It would be worth exploring. I have a sense that, given that we have now got immigration officers on the French side, this is a very tricky issue. My legal colleague may have something to say on this. I know that there has been some discussion about at what point this is French territory and at what point we would be imposing our policies on French territory. There are issues on that. I would guess it is worth exploring. Q239 Mr Singh: Can we stop somebody getting off the ferry without the appropriate ID documents and send them straight back without them ever touching British soil? Ms Sargeant: But they just claim asylum. Q240 Mr Singh: They cannot claim asylum unless they are on British soil. Ms Sargeant: The immigration officers I have talked to have said this is actually an initiative that they have found has worked pretty well. I am sure Mr Howe has the legal position. From their point of view, having immigration officers stationed on French soil they found pretty effective in stopping people; they have turned people round saying, "If you want to claim asylum, go to our French counterpart and claim". Of course, they do not want to claim asylum in France. Yes, they found that pretty effective, but the moment it is known that happens at a particular port, they would try to get in at other ports. You are seeing that now. You would have to have it at all the ports. Q241 Mr Singh: This is the point I am making, that before anybody disembarks, they would have to produce some relevant identity documents, otherwise the ferry has to take them straight back? Mr Gilroy: The point that you made was an interesting one about planes. That may apply to all ports potentially; that is, that you must not only have the document but you must have the facility to photograph the document so that they do not destroy it in transit. That is an interesting thought. In the absence of the Chairman, Mr Winnick was called to the Chair Q242 Mr Cameron: Presumably, if you had a quota system, you could say to people that you had photocopied their passport and, with anyone who comes over on the ferry from France, that you are returning them to an entirely safe country. You could say, "Go back to France and apply for asylum to this country at our embassy in Paris, thank you very much". To anyone coming on an aeroplane, if you photocopy their documentation, at least at the point at which they arrive, you would know exactly who they are and the same could apply? Mr Gilroy: Yes. Q243 Mr Singh: Going back to your point, Mr Gilroy, about the Italians sending Albanians back, it sounds an attractive idea but for us it has been far more difficult because where could we send Iraqis, Kurds or Afghans to? The Italians could do that but it is not feasible or opportune for the UK to do it. Mr Gilroy: The point I was making is that the Italians are also supposedly complying with the Convention on Human Rights and all the things we have all signed up to. It just seemed odd that they are doing it differently to the way we were doing it. That is the point I was trying to make. In terms of the issue about Iraq, I think we could now, and I do not see why not. We have just seen recently people going back by plane. I think it all comes down to the fact that in the end the Government must decide what countries are in the category that they can return people to and what countries are not. I think that is what the present Government have been trying to do in recent months. Ms Sargeant: At the moment, we spend £20 million on refugee camps and we spend £2 billion on the asylum process in this country, which seems to me completely the wrong way round. I think what we are all worried about is sending people back who claim asylum in this country. Where would you send them back to? Obviously none of us would want to send them back to the country they fled from. If you had far more effective refugee camps, and at the moment they are pretty horrible places, and if money was spent on them and they were run properly --- at the moment they are very corrupt --- then perhaps we would be able to enforce the quota system. Q244 Mr Singh: We talk about this country having a huge asylum problem. Would you agree with me that, whatever figures you take, France and Germany and maybe other European countries face a similar problem, if not larger, but ours is clearer because our figures show that people do apply for asylum here, whereas they do not maybe in Germany and France. It is quite obvious that people are lost in the system in Germany and France and not applying. They will have just the same level on the asylum issue that we have? Ms Sargeant: Well, they do not. France has half the numbers that we do. Q245 Mr Singh: How do we know that? Ms Sargeant: That is of asylum applications. Q246 Mr Singh: We are saying people do not apply in France; they want to come here and apply. How can you tell that France does not have the same level of problem that we do here? Ms Sargeant: Because they have to have identity cards in France. People cannot get lost. Q247 Mr Watson: But they are all fake in France, are they not? Ms Sargeant: Maybe, but people cannot get lost in the French and German systems as they can in this country. I have met people who have lived for years in this country. You can get illegal housing, you can fake documents, whatever, and you can go backwards and forwards, you can travel. I would not like to say this categorically but I have a feeling that this just simply does not happen in France and Germany, and that is why our country is much more attractive. Mr Gilroy: In talking to French colleagues about the subject, it is interesting that with countries that have a larger land mass --- the issues are similar in the US because the US has a similar attitude --- it is more laissez faire, and there is no doubt about it, people can disappear. Although you are correct about the issue of identity cards, people can disappear. If you go to Paris or even to Calais today, you will see that my French colleagues will accept things that we would not accept. There is that issue. I still say that this country in land mass is very small and the population tends to be concentrated much more. Therefore, people are much more exposed as they are not across the European Union. Obviously, you can see that they have asylum problems as we do, the whole of the European Union does, as do the Italians, but there is an issue about people dissipating in the system. People know they are there. The black economy, for instance, in Italy is very large indeed with regard to asylum seekers, as it is in the UK. The whole of the European Union has problems but numerically it is true to say that in actual numbers the UK, in physical terms at any rate, is a very attractive place for many. Q248 Mr Watson: People who deal with asylum seekers in my own local authority of Sandwell describe NASS as the most inefficient public sector institution in the country. I am particularly directing my comments at Mr Gilroy. Do you think those criticisms are justified? If you think there is some justification, what could be done to tackle these problems? Mr Gilroy: I have made some comments on that in my submissions to this Committee. I start by defending NASS; it did have to pick up a fairly significant issue very fast. It very quickly, and I thought this was a mistake, went to subcontracting in the private sector and in the voluntary sector. It then left it to the contractors to find housing. I think that was the first mistake. The second mistake was not to believe that if you publicly consult with local communities, and I include in that local government in all its forms, on the basis that you are going to get NIMBY-ism and those problems, you are going to have serious difficulty. My experience in Kent is that if you do talk locally, you will get that response but quite often local politicians know their issues and they can turn round and say to you, "You were going to go there. Please do not go there but we do think you might be able to go here". In other words, you get much greater intelligence about the issues of communities, and I think NASS never did that. My other worry about NASS is just simply that they do not have the trained personnel. It is very difficult, and if you look at the providers that they have used in the private sector, there are some providers there that were just into accommodation for students; there are other providers who are into other forms of housing and they have seen that as an opportunity. I have been very concerned, and in fact we are talking to colleagues in the Home Office at the moment about having some proper training on child protection --- there was the Climbié case only recently --- about a whole range of issues to make sure that ethnicity issues and community issues are covered. There is no point a private provider parachuting people into a town and they will have to drive 50 miles --- and we had that in Wales --- before they find any evidence similar to theirs. I have some empathy with their problems in the organisation but I do believe that they need to decentralise and have a more managerial approach to their business. If they did that, and with some sensitive consultation with local government and other partners, their reputation may improve. Q249 Mr Watson: How effective do you think their moves are to decentralise? Mr Gilroy: Decentralising and devolving means you have got to stop trying to micro-manage everything; you have to devolve matters to the regions and allow local government --- and we have consortia arrangements in this country --- to take an interest in this in a much more creative way. If they are going to decentralise, it means that the regional managers need to have the power and should not be having to refer back to the centre every five minutes; they should be given the power to get on with it and make sure that they have good standards and that they are managing this effectively. Q250 Mr Watson: We are told that might well be happening now. Have you seen any evidence of that yet? Mr Gilroy: It is a cultural thing, is it not? It is going to take a while if they are genuine about it. Q251 Mr Watson: Again, using experiences from Sandwell, people tell me it is virtually impossible to contact NASS when they need to do so. Mr Gilroy: That is a problem. Q252 Mr Watson: Is it getting better or worse? Mr Gilroy: I think at the moment I would like to reserve my judgment on that. Colleagues tell me that they are going to get better at this. Certainly I do not have a problem now with communicating at the highest levels. We now have informal sessions and we talk to each other about these issues. It is always a problem, is it not, if you have a policy, applying and complying with the policy, but putting application to the policy is another matter. I think where NASS has struggled and the civil service has struggled is in putting serous application into the policy intention. That is about training, management and all those things. Q253 Mr Winnick: But you yourself do not have any problems? Mr Gilroy: Yes. Q254 Mr Watson: On the monitoring of the subcontracts, do you know if they have any monitoring regime at all to see how effective the subcontractors are or is there any evidence that they have actually cancelled contracts through inefficient delivery of services by subcontractors? Mr Gilroy: Yes, there is some evidence of that. My position on that is that if you are going to use subcontractors, you have to have a highly decentralised monitoring process. You cannot believe you are going to do that from Croydon or London; that is just not possible. I think their infrastructure has yet to deliver on that. To answer your question, did Kent have problems, we did. In 1999, for about six months to a year, we were placing people around the country but we very quickly, within six or seven months, realised that you cannot do that; you actually have to get to local people and get intelligence about those local communities and then you can make judgments. The last thing you do, which we have never done, is leave it to the providers to determine that. Q255 Mr Watson: In conclusion, do you think there is an argument that could be put that NASS is the most inefficient public sector institution in Britain today? Mr Gilroy: I would not wish to answer that question. I do not know. Q256 Mr Winnick: It is a very provocative question. Would Ms Sergeant or Mr Howe wish to comment on that? Ms Sargeant: I went to the refugee centre in Newcastle. They spent most of their time complaining to me about NASS. They said that one of the major problems, and you touched on it, was that NASS's centre of operations was so far from the NASS headquarters in Croydon. They said that NASS had not noticed that a river runs between North and South Shields and that they were expecting asylum seekers to have to take a ferry and a bus in order to collect their money when there is actually a perfectly good post office at the end of the road, but they simply did not know the geography. Their solution to this is that NASS should move its headquarters from Croydon up north, where it would spread a little prosperity by employing people in the north. Q257 Mr Winnick: One can always put that point to the Minister. Ms Sargeant: And also that the asylum seekers at the moment are arriving in London and then they are dispersed, whereas if NASS was somewhere else, they would go straight to the place where they were going to stay. I discovered one woman had had three or four moves before she did settle. Mr Gilroy: I raise just one other point here. One of the things that has concerned me is the issue of healthcare. We talked to NASS colleagues about this. With women in particular there is the very serious issue about being pregnant and being pregnant through rape. We have had examples where the system was moving people through the NASS operations but unconnected with the health care system nationally. We had women who were expecting to be aborted, for instance, being moved with no communication up-country and who had then found it was too late for an abortion. That sort of operational issue is very serious. We are working closely with colleagues to try to improve all of this but it has been very difficult. Mr Watson: I think you really are putting the case that this is the most inefficient public service in Britain. Mr Winnick: You have made your point, Mr Watson. Q258 Mr Watson: These questions are just for Mr Gilroy. Mr Gilroy, you mentioned the number of unaccompanied minors coming to the UK as asylum seekers. Could you remind us why that is happening and what services you have to provide for them? Mr Gilroy: It is happening because they are brought here, usually through the instigation of their family, mostly their mothers, by criminals. It is mostly young males who arrive here. Q259 Mr Watson: How young are they? Mr Gilroy: The youngest we have had was eight but the average, probably two-thirds of them, are between 16 and 18. They are mainly male, although in recent times we have had another influx of young women. There is one real issue, and I am glad it has been raised. We look after these youngsters in two categories. We call one category Section 17 under the Children Act, which is where we assist, befriend and provide financial advice and we also provide accommodation. We think legally that is all right. For those youngsters, we do not take the corporate parent responsibility. We do that sometimes with the indigenous population; we just help to see them through, et cetera. The other section we use is Section 20 where for the younger ones, all those under the age of 16, we become the parent of those youngsters while they are in the UK . May I add one point? At the moment, local government is extremely nervous because it looks as though the advice coming out of the Department of Health could well suggest that every single youngster that I have in Kent should be in care under Section 20. The obligations on Kent County Council of that happening, both in social work and all the standards that we have to provide, would be quite horrendous. It would also give me real problems in persuading my director colleagues in the country to take some of these youngsters and to become the corporate parent because their politicians would say that we are giving them the financial commitment, and that would be the case, up until the age of 24 in law. Q260 Mr Watson: What are the current numbers costing you in Kent for Section 17 and Sect on 20 and foster care? Mr Gilroy: If you count the adults we are still looking after, it is about £50 million. If you just count the unaccompanied minors, it is about £25 million. Q261 Mr Watson: You have put in your submission to us some changes you would like in the funding arrangements from central government to local government to help asylum seekers. Is there anything you want to add to the material you have given us? Mr Gilroy: I think that is all. Q262 Mr Watson: Finally, section 55 of the 2002 Act is the section that the Home Secretary introduced and almost re-introduced what Peter Lilley and Michael Howard had done previously. If you do not claim asylum the moment you arrive, you are then not eligible for benefits. That is basically what the Act said. It was appealed against. Although the judge upheld the law, he struck down all the particular cases. That is my understanding of it. What changes have been made, Mr Gilroy, to the operation of Section 55 in the light of that ruling? Are you concerned about the burden it might put on local authorities and NASS, particularly from your experience in Kent? Mr Gilroy: The change, as I understand it, is that the Government have made more robust the initial assessment process, so that these people are not captured in the judicial review. For local government, of course, it does mean on occasions that we could be caught in a separate judicial challenge and, notwithstanding the implications of that section and that the Government says we should not help, we already have two judicial review cases in Kent where people are saying that they believe they are entitled to our services because they are more than destitute and they have special needs. Q263 Mr Watson: What happened last time this was tried was that people found they were destitute because they could not claim benefits as they had not applied for asylum straight away and they ended up calling on local authorities to help. You are saying that is going to happen again in your view? Mr Gilroy: Oh, yes, I am sure it will. Mr Winnick: On that note, we will conclude this session. May I say, Mr Gilroy, Ms Sergeant and Mr Howe, that we are extremely grateful to you for your evidence and for the way in which you have answered our questions. The fact that this has gone on for nearly two and a half hours shows our interest in the very useful evidence you have given us. It will all be part of our inquiry. Thank you very much. |