House of Commons - Home Affairs

Select Committee on Home Affairs Second Report

2 THE ASYLUM PROCESS: AN OVERVIEW (continued)

17. The Government is introducing a comprehensive induction process for all asylum seekers. This will be provided through designated induction centres, at which applicants will be familiarised with asylum procedures, receive detailed briefings on different aspects of the asylum process, have their rights and responsibilities explained, and have their health and support needs assessed. The intention is that applicants will stay for about two weeks in a centre, before they move on to an accommodation centre or are dispersed round the UK. At present only two dedicated induction centres are operating, at Dover and Leeds. Others are planned, but in a number of cases these plans have faced strong local opposition.[14]

18. A 'fast-track' asylum centre operates at Oakington near Cambridge: asylum seekers are detained there if they come from countries from which claims are "presumed to be unfounded", to enable swift determination of their cases (usually within 10 days). This fast-tracking process has recently been extended to Harmondsworth detention centre near Heathrow.[15]

19. In its 2002 asylum white paper the Government also proposed to establish a network of accommodation centres.[16] It was envisaged that, following an initial trial, these would provide 3,000 places for first-time asylum seekers, offering full board, education, health and interpretation facilities. The Government commented that "The intention is that these places will be offered to a proportion of asylum applicants, and those who refuse an offer will not be offered alternative forms of support. Asylum seekers in accommodation centres will not be detained, but will be free to come and go; however, they will be required to reside at the allotted centre throughout the processing of their application. In August 2003 the Deputy Prime Minister gave planning approval for an accommodation centre on Ministry of Defence land at Bicester, Oxfordshire, and the Home Office announced that it would be moving ahead rapidly with plans to develop the site.[17] Other sites being considered are at RAF Newtown, Nottinghamshire, and at HMS Daedalus, Gosport, Hampshire.[18]

20. There are currently two levels of appeal against an initial refusal to grant leave to remain in the UK. In 2002, 67% of initial asylum applications were refused. Of those refusals, 77% (i.e. 51% of the initial applications) were appealed against, to adjudicators of the Immigration Appellate Authority. At this first level of appeal, 22% of appeals were successful.[19] There has been a steep rise in initial-level appeals in recent years, accompanied by a rise in the proportion of appeals which are successful, from one in 25 in 1994 to one in five in 2002.[20]

21. Claimants whose appeals are dismissed at the first level may be given leave to appeal to the second level, that of the Immigration Appellate Tribunal; in addition, the Secretary of State may also appeal to the Tribunal. Calculation of the proportion of original applicants who proceed to each level of appeal is made difficult by the nature of the Home Office's statistics. These relate to all applications, decisions or appeals within a specific time period, and do not track a specific cohort of individuals through the process. The difficulty is made clear by the following table, in which asterisks indicate breaks in the continuity of data.

22. The above figures show that 11% of appeals from the first stage of appeal (the adjudicators) to the second (the Tribunal) are successful, but this cannot be expressed as a percentage of the appeals rejected at the first stage, because we are not necessarily dealing with the same cases. On the basis of the Home Office's published figures, it is not possible to say what proportion of applicants whose claims are rejected by the adjudicators seek leave to appeal to the Tribunal. Furthermore, the figure of 11% for the success rate of further appeals does not take into account the fact that nearly half of further appeals are remitted back to the adjudicators;[21] if these remittals are removed from the calculation, 22% of cases determined by the IAT are successful. Those referred back to the adjudicators may also be granted refugee status.

23. In an attempt to circumvent this difficulty, the Minister of State supplied us with figures for the 12 months up to September 2003 which included unpublished Home Office data on the outcomes of remitted appeals. During that period there were 61,925 asylum applications, 69,195 initial decisions and 74,811 adjudicator appeal decisions. (The high number of adjudicator decisions reflected an earlier surge in applications.) In the same period further appeals from the adjudicators to the Immigration Appeal Tribunal were allowed in 1,090 cases (1.4% of the original adjudicator decisions) and 995 more were allowed at the adjudicator tier having been remitted back from the Tribunal on further appeal (a further 1.3% of the original adjudicator decisions). Allowing for 31 successful asylum-related applications for judicial review, and three appeals granted by the Court of Appeal, a total of 2.8% of the original adjudicator decisions were overturned on appeal.[22]

24. The Government is currently proposing to replace the two-tier system with a single appeal to a new Asylum and Immigration Tribunal, with applicants expected to raise all their grounds of appeal at a single hearing.[23]

25. Applicants may at any stage ask to be returned to their country of origin under a Voluntary Assisted Return Programme. This is administered by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and funded by the Home Office. In 2002, IOM facilitated the voluntary return of 1,196 individuals from the UK to a wide variety of countries.[24]

26. Asylum seekers may receive financial support and accommodation from NASS while their claims are being considered.[25] To be eligible for support, they must satisfy IND that they applied for asylum at the earliest opportunity.[26] The cost to public funds of supporting asylum seekers in the last financial year for which statistics are available (2001-02) was £1,046 million.[27] At the end of September 2003, a total of nearly 86,000 asylum seekers were receiving NASS support (of which nearly 52,000 were supported in NASS accommodation and the remainder were receiving subsistence-only support). The Government has pursued a policy of dispersal of asylum seekers to the regions: an asylum seeker has no say in where he or she is sent. The regions with the highest populations of asylum seekers in NASS accommodation were Yorkshire and the Humber (19% of the total), West Midlands (18%), the North West (18%), Scotland (11%) and the North East (10%). However, nearly three-quarters of all asylum seekers in receipt of subsistence-only support (24,830 individuals) were located in London.[28]

27. If asylum seekers are granted refugee status, i.e. indefinite leave to remain in the UK under the 1951 Refugee Convention, they have a right to build new lives in the UK with the same legal rights and responsibilities as UK citizens. If they are granted Humanitarian Protection or Discretionary Leave (formerly Exceptional Leave), the same is true but on what may prove a temporary basis.

28. To help refugees adapt to their new life, the Home Office has a refugee integration strategy, which is to—

Include refugees as equal members of society
Help refugees develop their potential and contribute to the cultural and economic life of the country
Set out a clear framework to support the integration process across the UK
Facilitate access to the support necessary for the integration of refugees nationally and regionally.[29]

The Home Office announced in December 2003 that the Challenge Fund, set up in 2001 to help refugees integrate into the community, had disbursed grants totalling nearly £2 million to more than 40 local initiatives. It was also announced that the Fund, initially set up for three years, would continue in existence indefinitely.

29. When, however, a final determination is given that asylum seekers do not have leave to remain, they are expected to leave the UK. If they do not do so voluntarily, they may be detained until they can be removed. In September 2003, 1,270 persons who had sought asylum at some stage were being detained in the UK under Immigration Act powers. By the end of 2003, about 1,500 failed asylum seekers were being removed from the UK each month.[30]

14 See Home Office press notice 167/2003, New induction processes introduced to improve the asylum system, dated 18 June 2003 Back

15 Home Office press notice 074/2003, New fast track pilot for asylum claims, dated 18 March 2003 Back

16 Home Office, Secure Borders, Safe Haven: Integration with Diversity in Modern Britain, February 2002 (Cm 5387), paras 4.28-39 Back

17 Home Office press notice 223/2003, Home Office reaction to the decision on a proposed accommodation centre at Bicester, dated 19 August 2003 Back

18 Home Office press notice 037/2003, New steps in asylum seeker accommodation centre trial, dated 11 February 2003 Back

19 Asylum Statistics United Kingdom 2002, paras 25-30; Tables 7.1-2 Back

20 Ibid., Table 7.1 Back

21 The Department of Constitutional Affairs defines remittals as follows: "Appeals are remitted when a defect in the adjudicator's determination is revealed which the Tribunal cannot correct. The error of the adjudicator may be, for example: that he failed to make findings or a finding of fact on the evidence before him; that he ignored evidence which was before him; that he did not consider objective evidence before him. … Most remittals are to a different adjudicator. Rarely, a case is remitted to the original adjudicator, for example so that he can take into account extra material which erroneously was not before him at the original hearing, without having to re-hear all the evidence." (Ev 261) Back

22 Ev 259; other figures in this paragraph are taken from Asylum Statistics: 1st and 3rd Quarters 2003. Back

23 See our recent report on The Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill: First Report of Session 2003-04 (HC 109), paras 34-40. Back

24 HC (2002-03) 654-II, Ev 145 Back

25 See paras 163 ff below. Back