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Lord Judd: I have listened with great interest to my noble friend's comments and appreciate his genuine commitment to the well-being of the people who will live in the centres. However, does he not accept that in the realm of education there is one specific issue that needs to be addressed? If we accept that a significant number of the children will ultimately remain in this country, is it not the case that participation in nursery education in the general community is one of the best investments imaginable in terms of successful subsequent integration? Therefore, would it not be unfortunate for children who will remain in this country to be given separate education at the nursery stage which might make subsequent integration more difficult rather than easier?
5.45 p.m.
Baroness Uddin: I refer to self-catering facilities and to the availability of food. Do the Government have a sum in mind per child or per adult per day to buy food as opposed to eating food that may be available at the accommodation centre?
Lord Filkin: I shall seek to respond to those points before I complete my remarks.
I return to my remarks on our proposals in terms of the facilities at accommodation centres. We have concluded that we should provide healthcare at least at the primary level within accommodation centres; that is, facilities similar to those at a GP's surgery. Dental care will also be provided. However, we shall not dogmatically draw the line at primary care. Given the circumstances of many of the people in accommodation centres there may be a case for
providing some secondary mental healthcare and support facilities. If we find that that is the case, we will provide it because it seems to us right to do so.There will also be purposeful activity. In centres, children will be at school but we also think that adult education should be provided—or at least offered, because one cannot compel people to take it up. One would expect English language, IT, some other skills training, and, possibly, basic literacy and numeracy, to be provided. There will also be sporting facilities on site, including football pitches and other facilities, the details of which are yet to be finalised.
Volunteering will be encouraged by accommodation centre residents within their own community and, I hope, in the wider community within which they sit; it is right and proper that people are given those opportunities if possible.
There will be facilities for religious observation. There will be Muslim prayer facilities, a Christian chapel, a multi-faith room and a member of staff who is designated with a particular responsibility for religious observation.
Transportation facilities will be available when people need to move to particular functions. However, in view of what I said about adjudication, one hopes that many of the transportation needs will be met within the centre itself because people will be able to walk to the facilities.
Interpretation facilities will be provided in centres. Again, the issue of size is relevant: it will be simpler to provide a range of good interpretation facilities in a decently sized centre rather than in a smaller centre. There will be access to legal advice, although we will discuss that later.
We mentioned in relation to an earlier amendment that there would be adjudicators and appeal hearing rooms. Most of the case-work would be done on site. We think that that is right. The tone of our discussion on that amendment suggested that the Committee also thought that that was right. That is for the very good reasons that were advanced by Opposition Members at Second Reading and at earlier stages of the Bill's scrutiny. As well as caseworkers, people will be able to have briefing, advice and information that is more targeted to their needs.
The challenge, therefore, is clear. If we think, as we do, that those facilities are right and proper and could potentially provide better support, better services and more rapid processing than we have previously been able to achieve, they could provide better services, support and accommodation than exists anywhere else in Europe. We therefore think that it is right to trial such centres with those services and to establish whether or not our hopes prove to be true. That is why, as Members of the Committee may be able to sense, I am resistant to putting a figure such as 200 in the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, implied that economic or social reasons lay behind the Government's consideration of the figure of around 750. I am not
being arithmetic in referring to that figure; one is talking about a figure that is substantially larger than 200.It is pretty obvious, in terms of the economics involved, that one could not provide that range of facilities in a centre of about 200 people. It is not remotely conceivable that one could do so. One would have to provide such services, if one wanted them, from within the local community and from local services. That is what we have, to some extent, already tried through the dispersal arrangements. In some places in Britain, there are already 200 asylum claimants, and many more are living in the sort of concentrations that we are discussing in relation to the four pilots. They get their support services from the local community. Those arrangements are not disastrous, but they are not without their problems either. We therefore have a benchmark for comparison. That is what is going on in Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Leeds and many other major urban centres. The challenge is whether we can do better than that in terms of support and the speed of processing. That is why we are strongly committed to making the pilot work and to evaluating it objectively to establish whether it does work.
It would help if at some stage we gave Members of the Committee an indication of the sort of accommodation centres that we are considering. Perhaps we should do so informally, because there is no formal process for doing so. I should be happy to share plans with any Member of the Committee who is interested. I came to this debate thinking that an accommodation centre meant a big building. Clearly, one is talking about not even a large Oxford or Cambridge college but a range of buildings that form, in effect, a village complex. Some of those buildings would be family units and others would be for single men—there would be physical separation—and administration centres, let alone the adjudication centres that we have already discussed. If it would be of interest, I will share with Members of the Committee details that give a better feel of what those places might look like, although one can never get a total picture from architects' plans.
The noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, asked about Home Office research. The short answer is that there was an attempt by Home Office officials to get alongside the experience regarding accommodation centres in other European countries but it was more of a quick fact-finding exercise than research. We were trying to see what they had done in terms of evaluation. Very little had been done, which was a pity. Having said that, the exercise was not without its uses and we learnt something. We found that there were many different sizes of such centres and many different functions were covered by the term "accommodation centre". However, there was nothing that afforded us a scientific evaluation. I have already discussed the central issue: whether one is able to provide better support by having more support services on site rather than leaving that to the happenstance of what can or cannot be provided by the community.
I have mentioned that we are already considering the Refugee Council proposal. I am reminded that we are due to meet next week on Monday the 15th. I have signalled that we are pleased to look positively at those proposals to establish whether they can be made to work. The individual houses—we have already discussed them in terms of what will take place in accommodation centres—have the potential to create a sense of a smaller community within the larger community of the accommodation centre.
The noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, rightly reminded us that all of these proposals are subject to planning permission; I agree with her. Planning permission has to be obtained before any such facilities can be built.
The noble Lord, Lord Chan, discussed healthcare screening. In a sense, he is right. There could well be some specialist health needs. That is why we believe that effectively having a GP premises on site, which would allow specialisms to develop—it would be supported, no doubt, by relevant local hospitals—involves a better healthcare service than that under which people are scattered across the community. However, that is to be proven through evaluation rather than assertion.
The key point is to emphasise the range of services that will be provided. I was deeply grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford for injecting a questioning tone. This is not simply a question of size; it is also a question of resources and management and of how the whole constellation of facilities can be brought together to provide better support while at the same time producing more rapid but fair processing of claims for asylum.
We have made it clear that we intend to provide at least trial accommodation centres in non-urban areas; we have discussed that. A question-mark remains about the Refugee Council arrangement. As we shall discuss later, that is partly because 45,000 people are already accommodated in urban areas through NASS support. We are concerned in this regard with accommodating 3,000 people in the rest of Britain in rural areas. We want to establish whether a different model from that which we have already undertaken works better.
We want viable communities to develop within the centres and we very much want viable communities to develop between the centres and the surrounding area. I understand why and respect the fact that people are currently upset about this change to their life through the planning applications. That is normal; it is human nature.
But I also hope—I do not hope; I am confident—that if planning permission were granted for some or all of the centres, and if they were built and managed well, the decency and support that we have seen offered by people in many urban areas to asylum claimants and refugees in their midst would be offered to those people by local communities in rural areas. I am confident that that is what we shall see when people have a chance to experience what we are trying
to achieve. Of course, none of that prejudges whether planning permission will be granted for the centres. That is a separate matter.There are a number of other points which I should seek to answer. My noble friend Lady Kennedy raised the question of women being at risk from violence. She is right. The issue of both relative violence and wider sexual violence is important. I believe it is an open question as to whether women who are exposed to such threats will be more or less at risk in an accommodation centre. My own view is that it is more likely that they would be protected if they had other people around them than if they were scattered around dispersed units and lost in the local community. But that is to be proven, and my noble friend is right to challenge the Government to demonstrate that women will be properly supported, cared for and protected from abuse in that way.
My noble friend Lord Judd raised the issue of nursery education. He is absolutely right. Good nursery education is extremely important. The point is that, as a result of faster processing in accommodation centres, as soon as people are granted refugee status or exceptional leave to remain, they will move out into the community. So they should, and it is the responsibility of central and local government to support them in their integration. Therefore, I believe that children will move into nursery education more rapidly than would otherwise be the case.
The other point that I should mark is that the process of moving to an accommodation centre from an induction centre and, eventually, into settlement in the community could be quicker—in process terms rather than in time—than under the current arrangement. If a person is to be dispersed, under the current process he will go initially to an induction centre. He will then often be placed in emergency accommodation while dispersed accommodation is found. Then, if he is accepted as a refugee, he will find a permanent home. Therefore, three moves are involved after time has been spent in an induction centre. That is not ideal or desirable. The intention is that a person should move straight from an induction centre to an accommodation centre; he should have his claim determined rapidly; and, if it is successful, within two months or less he should be in the community and resettled in a permanent home and, it is hoped, welcomed by the wider society.
For the reasons that I have given, we believe that this trial should proceed and that it should not be constrained on the face of the Bill. Nevertheless, we have a responsibility to evaluate it openly and fairly in the way that we have been challenged to do by this debate.
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