Examination of Witnesses (Questions 692
- 699)
TUESDAY 16 SEPTEMBER 2003
SIMON HUGHES
MP
Q692 Chairman: Thank you for coming,
Mr Hughes. As you know, the Committee is now coming towards the
close of its inquiry into asylum matters and we are grateful to
you for coming along. Could you give us a brief overview of the
Liberal Democratic policy in this area and the key bullet points?
Simon Hughes: Thank you very much
for inviting me. The party's view is summarised in a note that
I hope you and colleagues have had a chance to look at. I will
just select some key points from that. Firstly, the best way of
dealing with people who would seek asylum is to try to minimise
the conflicts in the places from which people leave. That clearly
is the source of the issue. The more we can deal with conflict
resolution to produce greater justice, fairness and good government
in those places, we reduce the pressure on every other country
of the world. Our view is that the next best place for asylum
matters to be dealt with is as near as possible to the countries
that people come from. That is the logical place for that to happen.
There will always be some people who make their way further away
and come to western Europe. The core proposition that I have written
about and spoken to government about—I have spoken to the
European Commission and other governments and UNHCR—is that
it would be better to see this as a matter to be dealt with as
a European Union issue, together, rather than seek to do separate
policy approaches which in a way have the effect of passing the
parcel. The number of people who come to Europe as a whole is
more or less outside our control. The number of people who come
to any particular country in Europe can be influenced by what
governments do but the influence may be fairly short term so it
would be better to have not a common European Union immigration
policy—that is an entirely different issue—but a common
European Union asylum policy. The core proposal in that context
is that wherever people first present themselves in the EU they
should be processed there. Under the Geneva Convention they would
have to be accepted by or dealt with by that country. That would
be under the umbrella and the auspices of the UNHCR and I know
they are willing to do that because I have talked to the Commissioner
and others. Over a five or ten year period, the number of people
who are accepted is shared on an agreed formula between the countries
of the EU. The great merit of that proposal, I would argue to
the Committee, is that it avoids any argument that any particular
country can be seen to be a soft touch or getting an unfair share.
The public do get exercised if they think we are "taking
more than is fair or reasonable" in any country, whether
in Denmark or France or wherever. If it was seen to be a responsibility
shared for those who have a good case and who make their case,
it seems to me that much of the pressure would go out. The unevenness
of the graph, in terms of applications, would be flattened and
there would be a much more secure system. I propose that the best
way to deal with that is that we have applications dealt with
by the state where people arrive; you then have an oversight of
that by something I have called for the purpose of argument the
European Refugee Agency. It is taking on European Union policy.
They have been thinking about these things, so it is not picking
it out of the air and not taking into account what they are doing.
They then are responsible for negotiating with Member States the
sharing of people. I have been to Sangatte and other places. There
are sometimes very good reasons why somebody would want to be
in a particular country, irrespective of where they first appeared
in the European Union. If they speak French as their first or
second language, they may well be far more comfortable in a French
speaking country and want to go there. It is noticeable that on
the list of people who come to the UK very few from north Africa
who are French speaking come to us. If they are from a former
Commonwealth country, when Sierra Leone had civil war and Sri
Lanka had civil war, they would probably want to come here. That
is the core proposal as to how you deal with the issue. One of
our problems has been that there has been no legitimate way for
people to present their case. They have had to get into Britain
and then present their case. To get into Britain has either required
them to come in under another route legally and then change the
basis of their application, or come in illegally. That is profoundly
unsatisfactory because it is terribly intensive in terms of demands
on police and security and immigration. It is very costly. It
would be far better to have a system whereby people were told,
whether you are in the country nearest to the one you have escaped
from, whether you arrive in any country in the EU, "You make
your case there. That is a perfectly legitimate way for you to
make your case." If you then have a particular reason for
wanting to come to the UK—say you have made your case in
France—you have a Geneva plus type agreement between the
UK and France which says, yes, we will accept as part of the settlement
that some of the people may be able to come to the UK if that
is where they have their link, if that is what the language is.
Lastly, about appeals, we profoundly disagree with the proposition
that either we should process people outside the territory of
the EU or that the appeals should be outside the country people
come to. Apart from its legality—it is of dubious legality
and it strikes me it would fail if it was challenged in the courts—we
are one of the richest parts of the world. We surely can cope
with people who come to Europe, if we are efficient and well organised,
and be able to process them here. If their case is turned down,
if you have an efficient system, you should be able to deal with
the appeal system. It is a matter of speed and competence. Chairman,
knowing your immediate past history but looking back beyond the
period when you were in the Home Office, I was reflecting more
specifically in the last day or so. Government copes with millions
of people's tax returns every year and processes those. Government
copes with millions of people's social security applications,
passport applications, driving licence applications. We process,
through the criminal justice system as you know, hundreds of thousands
of people every year. It strikes me that for a reason that is
not logical we have just never put in place an equally efficient
system for processing asylum and there is no reason why we should
not.
Q693 Chairman: Is the sharing out
process you have around European Union countries in your model
for asylum seekers or for those granted refugee status?
Simon Hughes: For those granted
refugee status.
Q694 Chairman: The situation where
we have at the moment large numbers of people coming from particular
countries to seek asylum would not change at all?
Simon Hughes: It would be a nonsense
to move people somewhere else just for the purpose of processing
the case. It could however also apply to those who were given
exceptional leave on humanitarian grounds. It could be both those
categories.
Q695 Chairman: Under your system
in a year's time when the EU is significantly bigger, one would
presume you would be in a position where a significant number
of people have come to this country and obtained refugee status
and your authority would look at the figures and say, "The
UK has too many asylum seekers. Poland has very few" and
the people would be moved to Poland. Do you think that is going
to be as workable as you make it sound?
Simon Hughes: You choose an extreme
example because Poland would start with none, having just become
a new Member State.
Q696 Chairman: Logically, the new
Member States would take virtually all the asylum people with
refugee status for some time to come?
Simon Hughes: Of course. That
would never be an agreed way forward because just like all the
other EU agreements, whether for funding of controversial things
like agricultural subsidies, you work out a formula that is agreed
between the Member States. I guess the new entrants would only
take a number after an initial few years. That is why I have argued
that you would try and see it in a five or ten year time frame.
Up to the early part of the 1990s, by far the bulk of asylum seekers
in the EU went to Germany. They had many more than we had. They
had of the order of 300,000. Why? Because a lot of the people
were coming from south east Europe and that was a natural place
for them to go. German numbers have tailed off; our numbers have
increased. It seems to me that that is partly arbitrary. It is
partly led by things we all know about such as people who exploit
other people and believe at a particular time that the best place
to go is country A.
Q697 Chairman: If somebody with refugee
status was told that they had to move from this country to another
country to make the numbers up, you would make it part of the
system that they would have to reside in that country. They would
have no freedom of movement within the European Union to return
to the country they would rather live in?
Simon Hughes: What you have to
do is, when somebody is granted asylum, there then has to be a
renegotiation of where they go and that would be their country
of settlement, yes.
Q698 Chairman: They do not have to
remain there?
Simon Hughes: That would be the
country where they were settled, but there are other issues to
do with rights of people who have refugee status to travel around
the EU. They are not limited. They are not forbidden from travelling.
Q699 Chairman: It rather sounds as
though a lot of people, having got refugee status, will be moved
half-way across Europe to make the numbers up and then will travel
back immediately to the country they prefer to live in. There
are no means of preventing that happening?
Simon Hughes: We are talking about
a much smaller number than asylum applicants because those who
are granted asylum are fewer than 50%. We are not talking about
the sort of figures who have come and made their case here. We
are talking about, in this country, under 50,000 rather than 100,000.
You could argue that they would have to stay in the country for
some years before they were entitled to freedom of movement around
the European Union. I support the view that you have to have an
initial period, which is the exceptional leave to remain period
for those people who do not get immediate asylum, which will be
dependent upon what is happening in their country back home. That
could be four or five years, so for those people there would not
be a right to move round until they had permanent settlement.
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