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Lord Filkin: I thank noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. There is clearly not an issue between us on the importance of dealing with applications for asylum as rapidly and succinctly as we possibly can. I think that everything that has been said in our two sittings thus far has affirmed that. Such action is in the family's interests and in the Government's interest. The issue is whether it makes any sense in practice to have a statutory lock-in in the Bill as opposed to a process in which the Government clearly set themselves goals on what they seek to achieve. For reasons that I shall try to outline, I think that a statutory lock-in in the Bill would not be in the interests of good government or of families.
I start by trying to counter the view that accommodation centres are necessarily bad places. I hope that I have been able today to outline the quality of accommodation and the support that will be provided. It is not necessarily true that families will suffer from being there, although we recognise that, if it is positive, most families will be pleased to receive an early decision on their asylum application.
Amendment No. 104 would mean that people could be supported in an accommodation centre for a maximum of 10 weeks unless exceptional circumstances applied. Amendments Nos. 107A, 111A and 111B would mean that asylum seekers and their dependants could be there for a maximum of six months. We have made it abundantly clear that we do not want people to remain in accommodation centres
for long periods if it can be avoided. We are all agreed on wanting to process cases quickly while ensuring that decisions are fair.We are trialling these accommodation centres. We expect them to deliver faster processing times, and we believe that the increased contact time they afford should reduce delays. I think that some of the features we have discussed today such as adjudicators and caseworkers on site are a very significant shift in the likelihood of being able to process asylum claims in accommodation centres much more rapidly than was envisaged when the Bill was first introduced in another place. I get a sense that the Committee generally welcomes that.
However, let us look at the reality of the situation. If by "exceptional circumstances" one means that a family did not go to appeal after a negative decision, I think that it would be slightly more realistic. However, families and individuals have a statutory right to appeal, and no one is suggesting that they should not do so. Particularly if they exercise their full range of rights, it is going to be extremely difficult for that process to be encompassed within 10 weeks, if possible, or within six months, as will often, if not always, be the case.
Let us consider the time periods allowed by statute for appeal. No one is arguing that we should reduce those. An asylum seeker who is refused has 10 working days in which to appeal to an adjudicator. If his appeal is dismissed he has a further 10 working days to appeal to the tribunal. If he is turned down at that point he will have 10 working days in which to apply for statutory review of the tribunal's decision. Alternatively, if leave is granted, there will be a substantive tribunal hearing on the application. Straightaway we are looking at four to five weeks before we begin to examine the time taken to interview, the need to check the information provided, any new circumstances which come to light, and so on.
Amendment No. 104 does at least provide for exceptions to the rule whereas Amendments Nos. 107B, 111A and 111B do not. But I would envisage all sorts of practical difficulties with interpreting what exceptional circumstances were. Would they be wide enough to cover a situation where a person was due to receive their final determination in a matter of days or weeks when it might make no sense to require someone to move to a dispersal area? Would they cover the situation where a person actually wished to remain in the centre pending a decision because the supportive environment catered for their needs or they needed a little more time to move on? Would they deal with a situation where there was a sudden significant increase in asylum applications because of a particular regional conflict which might have a short-term effect on processing times? If the amendment does not do this, it clearly makes little sense. If it does, then does it really achieve anything more than adding extra bureaucracy whereby the Secretary of State needs to authorise the additional exceptional period?
I am not complacent and I am determined that we must do better. But we are making real improvements. Our latest provisional data—I believe that the noble
Lord, Lord Avebury, mentioned this—indicate that 53 per cent of applications received in the period from April to December 2001 had initial decisions reached and served within two months. Some 47,015 asylum appeals to an adjudicator were determined in 2001–02, an increase of three-quarters compared with 2000–01. It is also important to reflect on the point that the vast majority of those who are granted refugee status or exceptional leave to remain receive that status at the time of initial decision, as I believe was mentioned previously.I should make some other important points. Accommodation centres are designed to provide a supportive environment for asylum seekers. Those who have come seeking refuge and who have also asked for support from the Government because they are destitute will have a roof over their heads, adequate food, activities to occupy their time, interpretation facilities and will be in contact with many other residents who speak the same language. They will also be in a centre which is designed to keep them informed about the progress of their case. The inclusion of a time limit by implication suggests that accommodation centres will be awful places. That is not the case. The logical consequence of these amendments is that, regardless of whether someone feels safe and secure, we have to move them to a different area. I heard the point that was made, I believe by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. We would not want to have a situation whereby to meet some arbitrary time limit we had to move a family somewhere else just to keep faith with that time limit. That would be a case of turning government goals on their head and making the goal the objective rather than the interests of the family and the processing.
However, we have tabled an amendment in response to the concerns about the length of time families with children may spend in accommodation centres. We will come to that shortly but that is designed to reflect the particular concerns about children. The amendment will enable the Secretary of State to make regulations requiring him to consider after a period of time, likely to be six months, whether accommodation other than in an accommodation centre should be provided to a family, and after a period of time, likely to be nine months, requiring him to provide alternative accommodation should the family request it.
The noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, mentioned exceptional circumstances where delays overseas have resulted in claims not being processed in time. However, that is not always capable of being described as an exceptional circumstance. What would happen if the delay in a large number of cases was due to that? As I say, that circumstance could not always be considered exceptional.
As regards turnaround times, I wish to try to signal that we are not complacent. I shall not go into a lot of detail. The turnaround times that we have quoted previously relate to the processing of the massive backlog that started to build up when numbers of applications went through the roof from 1996 onwards. Therefore, the average is weighted by longstanding applications. As regards recent
performance, we are turning around about 70 per cent of cases in two months. That is extremely positive news. It is not as fast as we would like but it is a positive sign. The location of case workers and adjudicators on site should enable our initial decision-making further to speed up. However, as regards appeal processes, even with the increase in the consideration of cases by adjudicators to 6,000 cases a month by November—that is the target and will constitute a phenomenal increase in throughput—we cannot guarantee that all that will be done within a time limit on the face of the Bill.There was some suggestion that families would be incarcerated in centres, but that is not true. They are free to come and go, subject to reporting restrictions. We do not think that the centres will be against the interests of children but we shall consider that in more detail later. Those centres will provide good education, good support for families, good play facilities and perhaps the first stability that some of those families have had for months. We strongly refute the view that they are bad for children or that they should not necessarily be there. Potentially, they will provide a better and more caring environment than will some dispersed accommodation.
I have no doubt that I have not answered all of the points at this late hour. For the reasons that I have suggested, we feel that although we are utterly committed to accelerating turnaround time while maintaining fair process, restrictions in the Bill would not be in anyone's interests, least of all those of families.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns: I am grateful to all Members of the Committee who took part in this debate at this late hour. I have been given much food for thought for the Summer Recess. There is much that I shall have to consider before taking this amendment forward. Perhaps I should say that at the beginning of my remarks rather than at the end.
I agree with the Minister that we start with the same objectives. We want a system that has speed but is fair. That is always a difficult balance to achieve in any legal system.
The Minister said that he objected to including a statutory lock-in in the Bill. Opposition parties always try to secure some kind of commitment for action from government rather than goals and targets that make a good headline one day but which the next day mean nothing to those involved, who find themselves trapped in the system. The Minister will not be surprised if I return to the issue of the statutory lock-in at some stage.
I was grateful to Members of the Committee for their comments and to my noble friends Lord Brooke and Lady Carnegy of Lour for their support. Although the Minister made some response to my rider about exceptional circumstances, that has not yet been properly addressed.
I was intrigued by the suggestion of the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, who proposed a system for fast-tracking families with children. I had not
considered that heretofore. I shall look carefully at my amendment before bringing it back in a different, more constructive, form. There are, we are told, relatively few families with children involved, so perhaps there could be a way of making the noble Baroness's suggestion a reality.The Minister's reply was rather disappointing in many respects, but I have two points to make on it. First, his summary of the number of people who receive the determination and the period within which they do so does not quite fit with some of the information that I have to hand. I shall look very carefully at the figures that he gave and compare them with the information that I have been given by the Refugee Council and which I have received during the past few months in Written Answers.
Finally, it is important to welcome one part of the Minister's answer. It was absolutely right that he should recognise that those who apply for asylum here need proper time in which to make their application in the proper way and that they should have all the legal advice that they may need. Too often the Government seem to think that the only delays that occur in our criminal justice system are created by the defence, not
the prosecution. I hope that in the system for processing asylum appeals, we shall properly recognise the fact that those who process appeals can be just as at fault as—if not more than—as those who are trying to make a proper application. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 105 to 107 not moved.]
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