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Lord Clinton-Davis: I know that my noble friend is affected by time and other considerations, but it is impossible to understand his gabble. We are discussing a very important issue, so can he take it rather more slowly?
Lord Filkin: There we go! I have been accused of speaking slowly and of speaking quickly but never of gabble. I shall not repeat what I said because it will be set out clearly in Hansard and we shall all have the opportunity to study it. However, I shall continue at a more leisured pace.
The approach is consistent with that currently taken by NASS, where NASS is expressly prohibited by Section 96(1)(c) of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 from funding asylum seekers' legal expenses and does not fund the costs of travelling to visit a lawyer. Asylum seekers must therefore look to the Legal Services Commission for help with legal costs. At the appeal stage, they may also avail themselves of advice which the Home Office grant funds the Refugee Legal Centre, the Immigration Advisory Service and the Northern Ireland Law Centre to provide.
As we already have a legal aid system, the Government do not consider that separate arrangements are required for asylum seekers. We cannot agree that the Home Office should have a duty to fund provision which will be unnecessary in an
accommodation centre in most circumstances and is already available free of charge via the Legal Services Commission.The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, asked what facilities would be available for legal advisers. We cannot give precise details at this stage, but we intend to provide proper and decent facilities that are adequate for the purpose. We envisage at least consultation rooms and office facilities for visiting lawyers. Where they are based permanently on site, they would have all that they need to function there.
I was also asked about the provision of other advice and support. We are happy to undertake to consider that. We would not want to stop NGOs and other advice givers being on site at centres and having access to residents. Indeed, we would want to encourage that as we believe it often assists the process.
I recognise that I have covered a great deal of dense ground and I have even been slightly fast in doing so. I shall study with interest what has been said by Members of the Committee and I am sure that they will return the compliment. With that, I invite the noble Earl to agree to withdraw his amendment and hope that the Committee will accept government Amendment No. 121A.
Lord Kingsland: Perhaps I may suggest to the noble Lord one of the flaws in the argument so well developed by him. The Government cannot require the Legal Services Commission to furnish legal advice. The Home Office cannot do that, nor can the Lord Chancellor. It is a matter, in the last resort, for the discretion of the Legal Services Commission. It may find that a particular asylum seeker at a particular accommodation centre does not meet the criteria for making a financial grant. What will the Government do in those circumstances?
Lord Dholakia: Perhaps I, too, may put a further question to the Minister. The point at issue is that in the amendment we are talking about,
- "access to competent legal advice".
Rather than depending on the legal services, whether there is power to give advice or not, we are talking about experienced solicitors and advisers being available. On the basis of what the Minister has said, I doubt that. That is why it is important for the Minister to take into account the reason why we suggest "competent legal advice" and why it should be available other than from the Legal Services Commission.
Lord Filkin: Both noble Lords asked good and interesting questions. The noble Lord, Lord
Kingsland, asked what the Home Office would do if the Legal Services Commission did not consider an asylum seeker to be eligible for legal aid. I shall reflect on the question, but my initial reaction is that it would do nothing. I believe that the Home Office would not put itself in the place of the Legal Services Commission and seek to provide a legal aid service duplicating that which is the responsibility of the LSC.
Lord Kingsland: I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. As I understand the Government, one of the fundamental objectives of the legislation is to expedite asylum procedures. The crucial ingredient in meeting that objective is ensuring that the asylum seeker understands exactly what his legal position is. Understanding his legal position will help the Government to expedite the procedures, thus meeting their own legislative objective.
If the Legal Services Commission is unprepared to finance an asylum seeker in a particular case, surely it is in the interests of the Government to step in and provide the necessary money. That will fulfil the purpose of the legislation.
Lord Filkin: The matter is clearly well expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland. I repeat my offer to consider it, but today I will not go further than the position I have advanced.
With regard to the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, about trying to ensure that it is competent legal advice, it is the LSC's intention to ensure that legal advice is made available at accommodation centres from quality-assured suppliers. Specific contracts will be entered into for that purpose. The process is being planned centrally by the LSC, which for several months has been involved in discussions with the Home Office on this issue.
I offer that as a reasonable response and suggest that this is an opportunity for us to reflect on the matter in the coming months. I accept that we have not gone as far as Members of the Committee want without necessarily making a commitment that we can go any further.
Earl Russell: The debate has shown the Chamber at its best. It is not as a mere figure of speech that I want to thank all Members of the Committee who have spoken. The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, and the Minister have found a way forward; that we must all talk further among ourselves about the issue.
I shall respond to one or two of the points made. The noble Lord, Lord Renton, asked about "competent legal advice". I see what is worrying him, but I meant the word "competent" in a rather more technical sense. I meant competent in the field of asylum law and not just immigration law in general. I hope that with that response the noble Lord, Lord Renton, will think that it was not altogether a fruitless suggestion.
The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, about the independence of legal advice is crucial, as is his point about the quality of the initial decision-making. That underlies the whole of any attempts to
reform the asylum system. The poor quality of initial decision-making makes the whole thing go wrong and go on taking time, sometimes for ever and a day. I do not see how we can get that right without "competent" in the sense of qualified legal advice being available at the earliest stage. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, about advice and help from within the community. That is an important point and I am grateful to him for it.The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, raised the big problem about the impossibility of "requiring" the Legal Services Commission and about the Legal Services Commission being bound by criteria. Is it perhaps an answer to say that we ought to treat this as though it were a criminal rather than a civil matter? The penalty of being deported to a country where you may suffer death or torture is equivalent to a criminal penalty of considerable severity. The criteria for cases such as those for the Legal Services Commission are different from those for civil cases, in which one has to have a 50 per cent chance of success. Incidentally, in asylum law, judging a 50 per cent chance of success before a full hearing can be pretty difficult.
The law is still in the process of evolution. Very distinguished legal brains on the Bench have been working on it, which tends to make the law change from time to time. Thus it is difficult to apply those criteria. Would applying the criminal criteria go any way towards meeting the question, or if that is not exactly the way to approach it, is there a solution in that direction?
In the meantime, Amendment No. 121A is before us. It is a good amendment with the one reservation that I have already expressed. The other points can be discussed among ourselves over the summer. I thank all those who have spoken, in particular the Minister for his patience and consideration. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 118 and 119 not moved.]
9 p.m.
Earl Russell moved Amendment No. 120:
- Page 13, line 25, after "(1)(b)" insert "(provided that such amount shall not be less than the level of income support for the time being)"
Some noble Lords may have been present on Monday last when I asked a Question concerning what the Government regard as a minimum income necessary for subsistence. I do not think that I can pretend that I got an answer to the Question. Under the circumstances, I think that for the time being I am entitled to treat the level of income support as being that of the level of subsistence.
If I remember correctly the debates of 1999, the answer I shall receive from the Minister in a few moments is that this is not necessary because a large amount is provided in the equipment at the centres; that is, goods that other people have to buy. It is a fair point as far as it goes, but what it leaves out is the fact that asylum seekers do not have access to the Social Fund.
I recall another point made extremely persuasively by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis of Heigham. She said that poverty becomes much more serious when it continues for a long time. That is because one does not face only the ordinary problems of day-to-day nourishment; there is the difficulty of all one's equipment wearing out. Shoes and overcoats need to be replaced. All this will happen over a period of six months, which incidentally is the length of time estimated by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, for the problem really to kick in. That is an interesting estimate.
If asylum seekers arrive here from, say, Sierra Leone and are sent to Lancashire, they will not have with them the kind of winter clothing needed in Lancashire, especially when one is at all high up. A large number of things must be bought in order to keep warm, for which no application may be put to the Social Fund because asylum seekers are not eligible for it. I should have thought that that would cancel out all the arguments just about to be made by the Minister with regard to basic facilities being provided within the centres.
The Home Secretary has put forward a further argument; that is, that he is afraid of what he terms "benefit shopping" among asylum seekers. With respect, the Home Secretary is not a social security specialist. He appears not to know that our benefits are below the average level for the European Union. The idea that we offer particularly generous benefits dates from a long time ago. It has not been true at any time that I have been in this House. Last night I checked the Eurostat figures in the Library and found that within the European Union we are ranked eighth out of 15 for benefits. That is not disgraceful. Of course there are several ways of measuring the figures and if the Minister wishes to bandy statistics with me, he is welcome to do so. However, I doubt whether this is the time of night for such an exercise.
Anyone who comes to this country for the sake of benefit shopping would do so in ignorance. If the Minister can produce any cases of people doing so, then it will just go to sustain a point that I have been making for a long time; namely, that we cannot deter people from seeking asylum in this country by making the regime experienced by asylum seekers more harsh. That is because there is no provision for publishing the details of our social security provision in the press in Freetown, Sierra Leone or in the backstreets of Kandahar. People in those cities simply do not get to hear about them.
I think that it is perfectly reasonable to suggest that asylum seekers should be provided with a level of income equivalent to income support for the time
being. It is an amendment that I first moved in the Social Security Act 1989. I have been trying for a long time. I fear that I may have to try for a little longer, but I shall keep at it. I beg to move.
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