Select Committee on Home Affairs Minutes of Evidence


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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