Select Committee on Public Accounts Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)

HOME OFFICE AND THE DEPARTMENT FOR CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS

30 JUNE 2004

  Q60 Jon Cruddas: It does not act as a disincentive to appeal, does it?

  Mr John: From our perspective, we do not believe it acts as a disincentive. It is a function of what necessary support is needed at the decision-making stage. Crucially, at an appeal stage, if somebody's case has merits, then they will still be entitled to seek legal aid.

  Q61 Jon Cruddas: May I ask a question about case workers? You have asylum applications from 146 different nationalities. I get the impression that you have had generic case workers. Is that the case?

  Mr Jeffrey: No, that is not the case. It is somewhere between generic and specialised. We do try to achieve as much specialisation as we can. Our senior case workers are often considerable specialists in particular countries and we aim for specialisation, at least by region. In terms of managing the volume of applications from as many countries as you described, we do need to have a certain number of case workers doing more than one nationality.

  Q62 Jon Cruddas: Is this something you are working on? I think I pulled this out of the NAO proposals. They might not have said this precisely, but if you have 20 countries which take up X% of all applications, presumably it would be rational to have banks of case workers who have proven knowledge of day-to-day changes in that specific country, who are experts. Is that the direction we are heading?

  Mr Jeffrey: Yes. So far as possible, that is what we do already. The last time I sat in on an asylum interview, it was with one of our case workers who was interviewing a Somali applicant as it happens. The case worker was a considerable expert on Somalia, on the various clans there, on the issues which arise on applications. We cannot always do it, because we are talking about almost 150 nationalities, but to the extent that we can do it and still manage the business in the way that we want to, that is what we aspire to.

  Q63 Jon Cruddas: Obviously that cross-relates with issues of training which are flagged up in this Report as well, in terms of building the service in the future. Paragraph 26, page 10 is about this issue of appeals and whether there is a presenting officer there. Does the proportion of successful appeals increase in appeals where there is no presenting officer there?

  Mr Gieve: As I understand it, the statistics do not show a very clear story, but in managing our presenting officers, we try to get them to the most difficult cases. That is not always possible, but we have a prioritisation of cases. The simple statistics on what the appeal success rate is, is not telling the whole story.

  Q64 Jon Cruddas: Do you grade cases you turn down in terms of the probability of successful appeals and therefore the availability of presenting officers?

  Mr Jeffrey: It is not as simple as that. First of all, we are very keen to get to 100% on this.

  Q65 Jon Cruddas: That was my next question.

  Mr Jeffrey: It is not satisfactory that we should be at less than 100%. Last month we got to 90%. We have 50 new presenting officers currently being trained and mentored who will come on stream quite soon and we are recruiting another 70 on top of that. There is a good prospect that by the end of this year we will be hitting 100% representation rate. In terms of how we deploy those we do have, we certainly give priority to cases, for example, where the appellant is detained, cases remitted back by the tribunal, particularly complex cases, that sort of thing. I would not say that it is very systematic, but we do enough of that nature for it not to be easy to interpret any information there may be about whether we are more successful when we are represented than we are when we are not.

  Q66 Chairman: Just to be clear, if you look at Figure 6 on page 15 and the blue mountain which is "Granted either asylum or short-term protection under backlog criteria" that was a kind of amnesty to clear an earlier backlog. Then if you move forward to paragraph 3.3 on page 29, you can see "In October 2003, the Government announced that families who had applied for asylum before 2 October 2000 would be considered for permission", so we are now creating another blue mountain to clear an earlier backlog. I just wonder—this may be entirely unfair, but I want to give you a chance to answer this—whether the system periodically runs out of control and you have to relax your criteria to clear backlogs and this will endlessly repeat itself.

  Mr Gieve: There is a slightly different situation now than there was at that blue peak. That did coincide with the surge of asylum applications and was an attempt to deal summarily with the old list of those at a time when the business was in real difficulties in handling the volume of business. The ILR exercise we are currently engaged in is not motivated by an inability to handle the cases, but it is learning from experience where families have been living in the country for a substantial period, our chance of removing them, even if we win the case against their asylum application, is low and that therefore in those circumstances the balance of advantage is probably to acknowledge that.

  Chairman: That underlines the importance of dealing with these things quickly.

  Q67 Jim Sheridan: Does it give you concern that at least 50% of applicants go to appeal? Does that give you any cause for concern? Do you ask the question "Why"?

  Mr Gieve: Yes. Clearly they have the right of appeal and that is right, because we do not always get things right or there are new developments which they can point to. Generally, we believe that many applicants want to postpone the hour of departure, so they appeal as a matter of course.

  Q68 Jim Sheridan: That begs the question whether or not the applicant wants to appeal or indeed the applicant is encouraged to appeal. I draw your attention to page 50, Appendix 3. Each application costs an average of £4,000 and there is a breakdown there of exactly where that £4,000 goes to. Certainly the two major factors are legal services and accommodation. I have a particular view about lawyers working on asylum applications. I think there are unscrupulous carpetbaggers within that profession who encourage asylum seekers to go through the process.

  Mr Gieve: There is a variety of legal and other advisers working with immigration cases and many of them have the highest standards.

  Q69 Jim Sheridan: Is it not the case that even in unwinable situations applicants are then encouraged to go forward with the application, not for the benefit of the applicant, but because it is seen as some sort of meal ticket by the profession.

  Mr John: That is actually a matter of legal aid policy. In April 2004 we introduced a series of measures to try to clamp down on the potential for unscrupulous solicitors. The Legal Services Commission are introducing an accreditation scheme which will be fully effective from April 2005. Costs are being controlled by a maximum fee regime in terms of the number of hours which can be claimed, but, importantly, in asylum legal aid cases the merits test at appeal stage is no longer being applied by solicitors themselves; that is being brought in house to the Legal Services Commission. So the Legal Services Commission, through a range of measures, are actually introducing tighter controls, reducing the risk of unscrupulous solicitors being able to play the system in this way.

  Q70 Jim Sheridan: What impact has that had on costs?

  Mr John: It is too early to say at this stage what impact it has had. We are looking at that and monitoring that closely and will be evaluating it in the next couple of months once we have had three or four months running.

  Mr Gieve: We also have an Immigration Services Commissioner who vets advisers; not lawyers but the immigration adviser firms.

  Q71 Jim Sheridan: I personally have seen lawyers representing asylum seekers who suddenly find themselves driving big cars and purchasing big houses. I just find it upsetting that these vulnerable people are being used as meal tickets and the taxpayers are being taken for a ride. The Chairman commented earlier on costs in other countries and there were some positive aspects there. Do you have any indication of the cost to the taxpayers of other countries who may not have a legal aid system?

  Mr Jeffrey: I do not have any information with me. I can certainly see whether, as a department, because we do talk closely to administrations in other countries, we have information of that sort. It is certainly very common in other European countries in particular for the equivalent of our appeals stage to be supported by the equivalent of our legal aid.

  Q72 Jim Sheridan: When you are speaking to other departments in other countries does it not cross your mind to ask how much it costs?

  Mr Jeffrey: It does and I will check whether we have information of that sort.[2]

  Q73 Chairman: Send us a note. Thank you.

  Mr Jeffrey: Yes.

  Q74 Jim Sheridan: Paragraph 3.13, page 35, talks about fraudulent claims "Some of these are found to be fraudulent, and it liaises with the Immigration Service who will prosecute perpetrators where it is practicable to do so". Could you identify what "practicable" is and how many successful cases there have been in terms of fraudulent claims?

  Mr Jeffrey: We certainly prosecute where we can. I do not have figures for prosecutions with me and perhaps I could give the Committee a note on that as well.[3]

  Q75 Jim Sheridan: You have no idea how many people were prosecuted.

  Mr Jeffrey: No, not immediately to hand.

  Q76 Jim Sheridan: What is "practicable"?

  Mr Jeffrey: Where the judgment on the normal criteria for prosecutions is that the case is more likely to succeed than not. It depends very much on the evidence which is available.

  Q77 Jim Sheridan: Can I now move on to accommodation which is another major cost factor around asylum seekers? My understanding is that the accommodation centres are very well run and by extremely good and caring staff, but it does cause some concern in places like Dungable in Scotland which is designed to take families. It is a very sensitive issue and people try to keep the families together and not to break them up so they do not lose sight of each other. Is that the right way to go or is there another alternative in terms of keeping families together or separating them where parents have to be sent back where they came from and the children stay here?

  Mr Gieve: We obviously try. It is very difficult to deal with family cases and we do try to avoid detention for any prolonged period of time. You are right that there have been some cases which have dragged on where the family has been in detention. Most families do live together in accommodation and currently family support is not withdrawn until they are removed. We are sensitive to the desirability of keeping families together; in fact about 60% of our total support costs goes to families. Of course they have rights under the Human Rights Act.

  Q78 Jim Sheridan: May I go back to once the process is finished? My understanding is that of the actual cases where it was agreed that the asylum seeker should be sent back fewer than 10% are sent back.

  Mr Jeffrey: I could not say that that percentage is correct. It is certainly the case that although we have increased the numbers of removals very significantly in the last few years it is still a lower number than the number of people refused. Last year we removed 17,000 people.

  Q79 Jim Sheridan: Seventeen thousand out of what?

  Mr Jeffrey: Seventeen thousand of those who were in a position to be removed. They may in some cases have been refused in earlier years; they may have been refused last year. The difficulty which arises, which is something we have been working very hard on with the Foreign Office and others, is that for some nationalities, although the eventual judgment of our own case workers and the appellate authorities is that they could return to their country of origin safely, it is extremely hard in practice to bring that about, either because they are concealing their nationality, or the authorities in the country concerned are reluctant to document them for a journey. We have a big programme of discussions and negotiations with the countries where that is a particular issue to see whether we can unblock things and remove significantly more than we are at the moment.


2   Ev 17-18 Back

3   Ev 18 Back


 
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