Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240
- 259)
TUESDAY 13 MAY 2003
MR PETER
GILROY, MR
MARTIN HOWE
QC AND MS
HARRIET SERGEANT
Q240 Mr Singh: They cannot claim
asylum unless they are on British soil.
Ms Sergeant: 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, David 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 Sergeant: 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 Sergeant: Well, they do not.
France has half the numbers that we do.
Q245 Mr Singh: How do we know that?
Ms Sergeant: 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 Sergeant: 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 Sergeant: 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 David 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 David Winnick: It is a very
provocative question. Would Ms Sergeant or Mr Howe wish to comment
on that?
Ms Sergeant: 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 David Winnick: One can always
put that point to the Minister.
Ms Sergeant: 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.
David 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.
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