Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
HOME OFFICE
AND THE
DEPARTMENT FOR
CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS
30 JUNE 2004
Q20 Mr Steinberg: I would hope so. So
many were applying to come in the first place. Why is Russia classed
as unsafe now?
Mr Jeffrey: I do not know that
Russia is classed as unsafe.
Q21 Mr Steinberg: People are applying
for political asylum.
Mr Jeffrey: The fact that people
are applying from a country does not mean we regard it as unsafe.
What I would say is that Figure 4 is very much a picture of the
past; it is a picture of the period of years when entry into this
country was at its absolute highest. What we have done in the
last 12 or 18 months is to reduce the intake greatly through doing
all sorts of things.
Q22 Mr Steinberg: The point I am trying
to make is that we are accepting asylum applications from countries
which clearly do not appear to be unsafe in the first place. Turkey
wants to join the EU, does it not?
Mr Jeffrey: Yes.
Q23 Mr Steinberg: So why is it unsafe
to live in Turkey?
Mr Jeffrey: I repeat what I said.
The fact that we entertain applications does not mean that we
regard the country as unsafe.
Q24 Mr Steinberg: But we accept political
asylum seekers from these countries. Why?
Mr Jeffrey: We have an obligation
under the 1951 Convention on Refugees to consider claims for asylum
which are put to us. Clearly some from nationals of some countries
are weaker than others.
Q25 Mr Steinberg: So if somebody from
France could apply for political asylum you would have to look
at it?
Mr Jeffrey: Theoretically, but
in relation to European Union countries there is a different set
of processes.
Mr Gieve: We are not giving all
these people political asylum. We are giving a very small proportion
political asylum. The point you are making is that they are claiming
asylum.
Q26 Mr Steinberg: Can I claim political
asylum somewhere else?
Mr Gieve: Yes.
Q27 Mr Steinberg: In Scotland? I cannot
think who would want to go to Scotland, could you? I am surprised
they do not come here looking for political asylum themselves.
If you read this Report, frankly the theme the Chairman was making
is quite a reasonable theme. When I read the Report it just seemed
that there was a total lack of planning and anticipation and all
you were doing was reacting all the time. You were just reacting
to the situation. There was a huge rise in applications from 1999
and over 50% appealed against the original decision. Why does
it appear that you were caught out in Figure 12 on page 26? Clearly
you were just caught out in 2000 and 2001, were you not? Because
you were caught out, the number of appeals determined then dropped
dramatically. Why were you caught out? Why were you not prepared?
Mr Gieve: Actually this shows
the number of appeals increased from year to year but, you are
right, there were several factors in 1999. This Committee has
done two reports about what happened in 1999. At that stage we
were introducing a new IT system, which did not work as expected.
We ran down our staff on the basis that it would.
Q28 Mr Steinberg: You expected IT to
work? You were clearly a very optimistic man, were you not?
Mr Gieve: I am talking about the
department rather than me, but nonetheless the department was
caught out on a major IT case handling programme. At the same
time, because of the Kosovo conflict, the number of asylum claims
went up very, very rapidly. You are quite right, we had not seen
that coming. You are saying that if an event happens we should
have foreseen it. We try to foresee as many events as we can,
we do lots of planning, but we were caught out on this occasion.
Q29 Mr Steinberg: All right, you were
caught out. Then if we turn the page to Figure 13, you set up
courts to hear the appeals but again it just was not planned right,
was it? You got it wrong again. Here you were, with 26 courts
in Hatton Cross, but in North Shields you only had 10 courts.
Mr Gieve: What you are saying
to me is that we should have the capacity to handle a surge of
cases; we should have spare capacity.
Q30 Mr Steinberg: Yes. What I am saying
is that you had spare capacity.
Mr Gieve: Now you are saying that
we should not have spare capacity in North Shields.
Q31 Mr Steinberg: No, I am not saying
that at all. I am sorry, that is a typical civil servant. What
I am saying is that you have spare capacity which is not being
used, why do you not use that spare capacity? I have no objection
at all to you having spare capacity, but then do not just sit
on your backside and not use it.
Mr Magee: That is a matter for
me to respond to rather than John. Actually the capacity is running
overall at 83%. That compares favourably with a lot of the other
jurisdictions which there are in the UK. The National Audit Office
has drawn attention to four courts in particular and has said
we should do better. The good news is that we are actually doing
better and that, if you take the updated figures right to the
middle of this year, we are now talking, for example in North
Shields, about 67% usage rather than 50%, in Bradford 73%, Stoke
68% and Manchester 91%. How are we doing that? Partly learning
lessons from elsewhere, partly by looking to combine jurisdictions,
so for example in North Shields, the County Court work, which
is quite different work, is being housed in the building which
takes the asylum appeals. We are looking, on the contrary, to
make the very best use of the capacity we have.
Q32 Mr Steinberg: I hope so. We are told
in the Report that there were 63,700 cases outstanding at the
appeal stage: 15,500 awaiting an adjudicator; 11,700 awaiting
determination by a tribunal. Here we are again with a lack of
planning, because you must have envisaged this happening, but
you have not done anything about it. When you do something about
it, what happens? We read on the BBC News over the weekend—I
just happened to be browsing—that about 25,000 properties
rented by the government to house asylum seekers are empty because
of lack of tenants which is costing us—it does not say,
but it was quite a considerable amount I understand. So here you
are, you get on top of a problem but then you have not planned
for when you are getting on top of a problem because you have
made ridiculous contracts with the people who own the properties.
You still have to pay them even though the properties are empty.
Lack of planning again, or are you a victim of your own success?
Mr Magee: There are two issues
there. I shall deal with the first one, which is about the court
room capacity and planning. As John Gieve said, in answer to a
different question, some things were foreseen; with the best will
in the world other increases which have caused problems for the
system over the last few years people would have struggled to
foresee, the impact of a Kosovo or whatever. On the contrary,
with the expansion of court room capacity, the expansion of judiciary
to deal with the appeals, the expansion by well over 100% of numbers
of interpreters needed, a tribute needs to be paid to Martin John
and his staff for the way they have dealt with what was a crisis
at one time and the way they have tried to plan forward for the
future.
Q33 Mr Steinberg: What about the houses?
Mr Gieve: When we set up NASS
(National Asylum Support Service) at the beginning in 2001, we
were facing a crisis in housing people. We wanted to get them
out of Dover and London and the South East. We were desperate
for housing and we had to go on the open market and get it where
we could. In negotiation, we obviously at that time had to choose
between how much we paid on the spot market, like we do per bed
for emergency accommodation, and how far we offered people the
assurance of an income for several years, when you get it cheaper
because they can count on it for a few years. At the moment we
are a victim of our own success and we have reduced the asylum
intake and backlogs by more than anyone expected a few years ago,
but we are now working on renegotiating those contracts in order
to minimise the cost.
Q34 Mr Steinberg: A victim of your success.
Mr Gieve: Do you think it is a
success or not that asylum applications have come down? When the
Prime Minister told us we had to halve the number of unfounded
asylum applications, I thought that was a pretty stiff target
and I think that IND (Immigration and Nationality Directorate)
did extremely well to do it.
Mr Steinberg: Congratulations.
Q35 Chairman: Mr Steinberg was asking
about appeals against asylum decisions. He did not refer to Figure
18 page 39 which we should put on the record. This shows that
if we are looking at appeals against initial asylum decisions
the overall proportion upheld has increased, despite the fact
that we read in paragraph 4.ll that you set up a project to deal
with this. What went wrong?
Mr Jeffrey: Certainly it is the
case that the success rate on appeal in the last few years has
been higher than it was before. We regard that as something we
should be addressing because it obviously is related to some extent
to the decisions taken. It is worth bearing in mind that the proportion
of allowed appeals depends on a number of factors and it has been
the case recently that there is a gap between the original decision
and the appeal hearing and circumstances can change in the course
of that time passing. Also, the nationality mix does have an impact.
There are some nationalities where there are particularly difficult
issues around whether the person's story is as they claim, whether
they are even the nationality they claim and credibility is an
issue. A lot of these cases which we lose on appeal are undoubtedly
to do with the quality of the original decision, but some reflect
the fact that sometimes a conscientious decision taker will take
a different view from a conscientious adjudicator on the credibility
of the account which has been produced.
Q36 Mr Allan: Can we stay on that appeals
issue? If we look at Figure 19 on page 40, which tells us about
the percentage of appeals allowed, we see for Somalia 38%. What
that looks like to me is that you are operating a policy of refusing
them all and then seeing who is persistent enough to get through
the appeals procedure. Is that a fair assessment? Somalia has
not changed in donkeys' years. It has been a mess forever.
Mr Jeffrey: I do not think it
is a fair assessment and Somalia is a very good example of what
I was talking about. There are undoubtedly a significant number
of very well justified cases which genuinely demand a great deal
of sympathy involving people from Somalia who have come here in
recent years. There is also a significant number of claimants
who we believe are either from adjacent East African countries
and pretending to be Somali, having destroyed their documents,
or who have already achieved some form of status in another European
country, come here and then claimed asylum, having already done
so somewhere else. Disentangling these two phenomena, one extremely
genuine and the other rather exploitative, is what this is in
some ways all about. We may not get it right, but one should not
assume from the fact that the appeals success rate is high, that
we get it as wrong as all that.
Q37 Mr Allan: In a sense what you are
saying then is that you do not expect to get the initial decisions
right in the case of complex countries like Somalia; you need
the appeals process to do the job properly.
Mr Jeffrey: I am not saying quite
that. I am saying that we do our best to take the correct decision
first off, but there may well be a difference of view between
the decision makers and the adjudicator who hears the same facts,
but is sometimes more ready to believe what is said than the original
decision maker might have been; sometimes new facts have come
into the picture in the intervening period. One thing which may
lead to some narrowing of the gap is that the faster we get and
the more we do get on top of this, the less likely it is that
a long period will have elapsed between the original decision
and the hearing of the appeal.
Q38 Mr Allan: High rates exist in various
countries, Somalia 38%, Zimbabwe 28%, Turkey 29%, Iran 30% and
so on. In all of these high number cases, it cannot be acceptable,
that only a percentage of initial applications is being dealt
with correctly. 38% is just a phenomenal amount of appeals allowed.
It does not seem like an appeals process any more, it seems like
an initial determination when you talk about those numbers.
Mr Jeffrey: It is a high figure
and it has caused us to look quite carefully. Recently we have
analysed a sample of cases involving Somalia to see whether we
can learn something from what is happening at the appeals stage.
That will be fed back to the case workers. This is an issue which
the NAO Report touches on and we do attempt to learn from the
appeal process and to play back our perceptions of why we lose
cases into the original decision taking. I take the point.
Q39 Mr Allan: Am I right in thinking
that the public service agreement target for 2005-06 is that you
should only have 15% of appeals successful, that you should be
getting 85% of them right?
Mr Jeffrey: Yes, that is correct.[1]
1 Note by witness: I would like to point out
that the figure of 85% of asylum decisions upheld by adjudicators
is an internal target and not part of the Public Service Agreement.
The PSA target for 2005-06 includes IND taking high quality decisions,
with 85% of asylum decisions assessed by external assessors found
to be fully effective or better. Back
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