Examination of Witnesses (Questions 860-879)
BEVERLEY HUGHES
MP, MR BILL
JEFFREY AND
MR KEN
SUTTON
19 NOVEMBER 2003
Q860 Mr Taylor: Then at the end of
that process, 3% have their initial disappointment overturned.
Is that correct?
Beverley Hughes: Yes. I said that
3% of the initial adjudicator decisions at the initial stage of
the appeal are changed at some point during that process.
Q861 Mr Taylor: Minister, this is
not in any way a trap.
Beverley Hughes: No. I am trying
to be clear, because it is complicated.
Q862 Mr Taylor: It is complicated.
What I am really getting at is: the 3% who get some kind of reversal
of their original decision, is that 3% of the original 100% or
is it 3% of the 40%?
Beverley Hughes: It is 3% of the
original 100.
Q863 Mr Prosser: I want to ask you
some questions about removal to safe third countries. JUSTICE
has been critical about the criteria you set to define a safe
country. What process will you put in place to determine whether
a safe third country is actually safe?
Beverley Hughes: We have commissioned
some independent research, which is being undertaken jointly by
the Home Office and the Foreign Office to look at both the conditions
and the processes in certain countries. Secondly, it is actually
lawyers who will judge whether the processes in the countries
we are interested in designating are sufficient to be described
as safe. Most of those countries will be on the face of the Bill,
but we will obviously also include a power to add or subtract
countries should conditions or circumstances change.
Q864 Mr Prosser: How will you make
a judgment of those countries responsive to changes in political
control, changes in human rights issues as time goes by?
Beverley Hughes: We need to be
clear about the kind of countries we are talking about here. We
are not really talking about countries where there is a fine line,
or where processes of that kind—criminal justice and so
on—are being developed. We are talking, in addition to EU
countries, about non-EU countries that I do not think most of
us would have any difficulty in describing as safe countries.
Indeed, there is provision in previous legislation to designate,
and we have designated one or two countries, such as the USA and
Norway. The difficulty with the current legislation is that it
does not cover issues on human rights; it only covers Convention
issues. Secondly, it is not really robust enough to prevent legal
challenge, so by designating the countries as safe on the face
of the Bill, it really enables us, if we want to remove a person
to that country, to cut down the possibility of legal challenge.
But it is not going terribly much further than where we are at
the moment. It is just an extra safeguard.
Q865 Mr Prosser: You would also want
to be confident that the third country understands its liabilities
and responsibilities with regard to receiving asylum seekers.
Beverley Hughes: Yes. We still
have to do that in individual cases. That process will still have
to be gone through in an individual case where we wanted to remove
a person to that country.
Q866 Mr Prosser: In cases where you
are considering an individual, and that individual had relations
and some footing in this country, and no relations or friends
at all in the receiving safe third country, would that be an argument
for allowing him or her to stay?
Beverley Hughes: Not necessarily,
I do not think, although I should make clear if what you mean
by that is could somebody challenge that on, say, Article 8 grounds
as opposed to Article 3 grounds, then yes, that would be possible.
Designating the safe country does not make any difference to the
potential of the person to argue that as a basis of a legal challenge,
the Article 8 family life provision, but it would tend to help
us if they were trying to argue on Article 3 grounds, in other
words, that they might be at risk of their lives if they were
returned home. It would not block off the other human rights potentially.
Q867 Chairman: In the light of what
you have said, can you give us an assurance that this is not,
as some organisations have claimed, a back-door way of giving
legal authority to the concept of regional processing zones, and
that there is not an intention to start listing zones of that
sort on the face of the Bill as acceptable third countries?
Beverley Hughes: No.
Mr Jeffrey: What this springs
from is the point the Minister made at the beginning. If someone
has come from an evidently safe country, there is no reason for
them to claim asylum here rather than in that country. There is
a provision in the 1999 Act that on its face allows us to return
people to such safe countries, within and outside the EU. In practice,
it has not been possible to use it much, partly because it is
still open to certain kinds of legal challenge, which we believe
we would overcome by having a certification process of the kind
that we have been discussing.
Q868 Chairman: We have heard speculation
for example about regional processing zones in east Africa or
the Balkans.
Beverley Hughes: No. It has no
relevance to that at all.
Q869 Mr Prosser: I want to turn now
to changes in support for asylum seekers and families. Your proposals
would have the effect of removing support from individuals and
families who are able to be removed to a third country or go back
home, but refuse to go. The criticism is that they would be left
starving and destitute, and we would have a re-run of the people
who fall foul of the Section 55 conditions. What is your view
of that criticism?
Beverley Hughes: The proposals
are not at all intended to make families destitute. They are intended
both as a deterrent but also as an incentive. At the moment there
are a number of ways in which a family that comes to the end of
the road and whose claim has failed and whose appeal rights are
exhausted, can be removed from the country, although you will
appreciate—and I get many representations from Members about
this—that it is difficult when you have children involved.
But at the moment, people can return voluntarily, and they will
get assistance to do that, from us and also often from the voluntary
organisation that we work with to help us do that. They can be
in very small numbers, if they have had a poor immigration history,
have been detained and removed from detention, but most families
live in the community, and if they do not return voluntarily,
they are removed forcibly. I think all Members know what that
involves in practice, in order to effect an enforced removal.
I have been out with the arrest teams. I did not actually see
any families, but it is not an easy process for anybody, even
individual adults, because of course, arrest teams arrive early
in the morning—that is necessary—and that is an experience
I would prefer families not to have, if I could. I want to try
and persuade as many families as possible, when they come to the
end of the road, to go back in a dignified way, with support,
on a voluntary basis. It may seem contradictory to some people
to say we are going to restrict family support when we get to
that point, but that is our intention. It actually says to people,
"Look, there are some alternatives here. We hope that you
will take the best alternative for yourself and your children,
that is, to go voluntarily, but if you do not, you will be removed
forcibly and you will not continue to get support until we have
done that."
Q870 Mr Prosser: Nevertheless, there
will be those, I am sure, who will decline that offer. Will they
then have recourse to support from their local authorities?
Beverley Hughes: As I say, I hope
it will not come to that, and I do not intend that it should come
to that, but if, in the extreme situation that you are putting
to me, a family was not willing to go voluntarily and we, for
whatever reason, could not remove them forcibly—and I think
that is what we try to do; we try to remove them immediately forcibly—and
disappeared and appeared somewhere else, I do not know. Then obviously
there is provision—because those children are covered by
the same legislation as any child in this country—for the
children to be cared for by the local authority, but not the adults.
I do not think that is in the best interests of those children,
and I hope it would not come to that in any individual circumstance
at all.
Q871 Mr Prosser: I am sure you would
agree that some of the worst instances and reactions we have had
in communities in various parts of the country over the issue
of asylum have been caused largely by perception, and false perception
perhaps, rather than reality. On that basis, is it not the case
that, putting together the issue we have just been discussing
and the possibility of children going under the care of the local
authority, adding to that the new criteria under which they will
be supported, Section 20 instead of Section 17, which means their
local authority would have responsibility to support that child
or adult until he or she is 25, that would be a significant increase
in the burden on a local authority. I am sure I do not need to
recall to you, Minister, the effect in gateway areas like Kent,
when it was the case in 1998 and 1999 that not only were there
large numbers of asylum seekers being thrust together in one small,
inappropriate area, but that the local individuals were paying
extra Council Tax in order to support them. Adding those two issues
together, it caused an almost inflammable situation. Is that not
a problem that you should be looking at?
Beverley Hughes: With respect—and
I know, Mr Prosser, you are very knowledgeable about these issues—I
do not think it is correct to collapse those two issues. What
we are talking about with the Hillingdon judgment is unaccompanied
asylum-seeking children. Clearly, we would not be talking, by
definition, about unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.
Q872 Mr Prosser: There are two elements.
There is the element of a local authority under the new legislation
picking up the support for children or parents who refuse to be
removed, and you can add that then to the Section 20 children,
the unaccompanied children.
Beverley Hughes: On the question
of the Hillingdon judgment and the implications of that, I am
actually talking at the moment with Ministers in the Department
for Education and so on as to how we deal with that, because although
the numbers of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in line with
the overall fall in intake has also reduced by half—so the
numbers actually coming in have fallen by half as well in proportion,
so the impact on local authorities of numbers is less—clearly,
I am very aware that that judgment, for young people already in
the system, being cared for under Section 20 as opposed to Section
17, is significant, and I am aware of local authorities' concerns
about that, and I share them, and we are trying to work out how
we deal with that situation. But the children of families who
are with their parents and due to be removed, if it came to it
that in a particular case the children were taken into care, then
we would act very quickly in those circumstances to remove the
whole family completely, because clearly they would be with their
parents. We would not be leaving those children with local authorities
for long periods of time.
Q873 Chairman: How do you prevent
a situation where you would try to apply the new provision and
the parents simply disappear, go illegal, leaving the children
in the care of and at the expense of the local authority care
under Section 20?
Beverley Hughes: That would be
a difficult situation, because we would not, unless we could satisfy
ourselves, want to return the children, but we could return them
to other members of their family, and that might be a possibility.
Q874 Chairman: Is it not the most
likely response of people who have their support withdrawn, for
the parents to disappear in that way?
Beverley Hughes: I do not know.
That is a very important generalisation about how people might
regard their children as pawns in that game and be prepared to
abandon them to a local authority. I am not sure that that would
be something that many people would do on a big scale.
Q875 David Winnick: Would it be fair
to describe the policy as "starve them out"?
Beverley Hughes: No. It is about
trying to say to people, "You have some choices here. You
have come into the system. Unfortunately, that claim has failed.
You now have to return to the country you came from. But you have
choices. You can go voluntarily, we can enforce that removal,
which will not be a pleasant experience, and one which I hope
you would want to avoid for the sake of your children if not of
yourselves. But if you do not go voluntarily, you will not continue
to be supported at the expense of the people here, because that
is not right." We say similar things to families and individuals
on benefits here now, do we not? None of the benefits we give
to people in this country are completely unconditional, certainly
not for able-bodied people, and so I do not think it is unreasonable
that we say the same thing to other families when they have come
to that point in the process.
Q876 David Winnick: We would deny
them every form of support even if they have children?
Beverley Hughes: It is not denying
people every form of support.
Q877 David Winnick: What support
would they have?
Beverley Hughes: They have the
option, at our expense, of returning home to the life that they
left, and often to the family, the extended family.
Q878 David Winnick: But as long as
they are in the UK, until you remove them, you are saying in the
categories which we are discussing that all forms of financial
support, even though they have children, will be denied, and their
children can be taken into care.
Beverley Hughes: Yes, that is
what we are proposing.
Q879 Mr Clappison: Can I turn to
the proposals for new powers for the Immigration Services
Commissioner? Could you say firstly exactly why the Immigration
Services Commissioner now needs more powers, and secondly, are
you confident that these new powers will not have the unintended
effect of affecting those who provide good advice to people in
need of advice?
Beverley Hughes: On the second
point, I think people in that category will welcome the extension
of provisions. I should perhaps make clear that it was actually
as a result of the Commissioner's own analysis and comments he
made in his Annual Report and in subsequent discussions with myself
and the Home Secretary that he put forward proposals as to how
he felt the regulatory scheme that he is responsible for could
be improved, and all of the five measures that we are proposing
here have come from the Commissioner, and we think they are sensible.
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