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Lord Judd: My noble friend the Minister was very helpful in trying to set the context for the amendments. In doing so, he came precious near—I am sure that he agrees— to inviting us to have another Second Reading debate. I will forgo responding to that inherent invitation, except that when one sets a
context, one must always examine whether it is the full context or partial. I hope that my noble friend will forgive me if I make the point again that we have a flawed international situation. We live—as we are constantly reminded—in the context of a global market with the free movement of capital but there is no free movement of labour. Given that basic flaw, there will inevitably be a problem with irregular migration, or however one describes it, and the rest.In our society, when a community's economic circumstances change and an individual leaves it to put matters right for his family elsewhere within the bounds of the United Kingdom, such a person is regarded as a social hero—the right kind of citizen. When the same happens internationally, the individual is thought a pariah.
Having been involved directly and indirectly in such matters over a lifetime, I have reached the conclusion that the mistake is seeing an absolute dividing line between asylum and the others. The issue is much more complex. Often, the person whom we dismiss and almost condemn as an economic migrant is facing hell at home. It may not be political hell in the asylum sense but hell nevertheless. We should not be content about slipping into language and adopting an attitude that does not relate to that situation.
The phrase "earliest possible opportunity" speaks of insensitive, bureaucratic drafting. The gap between those of us who sit at tables talking about issues theoretically and the reality for people in asylum situations is immense. What is the "earliest possible opportunity"? People will have been through the most appalling experiences. It may take a long time before they work out what they should be doing and how. Simply to dismiss them and their opportunities because they did not make an application administratively as soon as possible seems altogether too inflexible. That kind of rigidity may be an attempted substitute for wisdom and firmness. Wisdom, firmness and self-confidence do not require inflexible, rigid language in legislation. Legislation should set the context in which the right thing will be done.
I hope that my noble friend the Minister—whom I genuinely hold in very high regard in all sorts of ways—will not mind my taking him slightly to task. The drafting smacks of "Do as we say, not as we do". What if we as legislators were to say, "We will only give serious consideration to proposals that were put before us at the earliest practicable moment"?
5.30 p.m.
Lord Dholakia: Will the Minister accept the figures that have been produced in support of Shelter's statement that in-country asylum applicants are just as likely to be successful in their initial claim as those who apply at the port of entry? It cites that in 2001, for example, 20,105 in-country applicants were granted asylum or exceptional leave to remain compared to 10,915 port applicants. A further 17,475 in-country
applicants were granted asylum or exceptional leave to remain on appeal compared with 4,445 port applicants. Do those figures not support the point?
Lord Judd: I am glad to give the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, the opportunity to make that important observation. Governments encounter difficulties and changed circumstances during the passage of legislation that require them to introduce a recommitment process to reconsider points. Let us, therefore, consider what sometimes happens in the reality of life for some refugees as regards how they approach their rights and what they should or should not be doing. We should show more understanding of that.
I conclude with the observation that what matters is that every single person who is entitled to asylum gets it. What matters, therefore, is the case for asylum, not an administrative consideration of when an application was lodged or from where, whether it was a suitable place administratively for the Home Office, and so on. The issue is the merit of the case before us. If we lose sight of that, we have lost sight of the whole principle of commitment to asylum.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: I follow the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, on "as soon as reasonably practicable". The noble Earl, Lord Russell, will recall sitting in the Gallery when we were discussing these matters in the House of Commons in 1996. At that stage, for constituency reasons, I expressed concerns about the provisions that the then government were bringing in, particularly in the context of sleeping rough, to which the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, referred a moment ago. The refugee whom the noble Earl describes, who has made the journey halfway across the planet, may not be quite as trusting of someone in uniform as the noble Earl believes him to be. Those who have come here because they are being harassed in their country of origin may have grounds for being unenthusiastic about people in uniform rather than the opposite. It may take them time to adjust to the circumstances here.
To give an indirect example, during the Recess I was talking to a family friend whose daughter is married to a farmer in Zimbabwe. At that time they were still farming. He said that he was not concerned about either his daughter or his son-in-law because they are adults and so can make up their minds about where and how they live and what they do. His concern was about his grandchildren, who are aged eight and four. He said that they came over during the Recess for a holiday with their grandparents. Within half an hour of their landing at Heathrow and his collecting them to take them home, the elder of the two boys asked in the car, "Granddaddy, are there war veterans in England?" Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings come such fears.
Earl Russell: I apologise for troubling the Committee further. We have been reminded that Amendment No. 5 is grouped with Amendment No. 3. Nobody on these Benches has yet said anything to it, and I think that we should.
I am not clear about the exact aim of Amendment No. 5, and I would be grateful for clarification. Are we talking about information about the applicant's means of supporting himself, or about information on the asylum claim? Does every single misstatement disqualify an applicant under Amendment No. 5, or is it only the refusal to co-operate with the authorities? That is an important distinction, because I have seen applications being turned down because of an error of one day in the memory of an applicant who is in jail without access to paper. It is notorious that on chronology memoirs of all sorts are a particularly unreliable source.
The House may remember my intervention during the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew of Twysden, last week. In quoting a case from the reign of Richard II, I made an error of one year in the date that I gave, for which I apologise. I would not have thought, and I would hope, that that does not totally disqualify my credibility. If I can claim that, I hope that an applicant for asylum can claim it even more. I hope that this provision will not be applied in the case of every trivial error. The doctrine of de minimis non curat lex—the law takes no account of trifles—needs to be applied. If we were to include only the refusal to co-operate with enquiries, that might be reasonable. I hope that the Minister will reduce the provision to that rather than put it forward in this form. At present it is liable to lead exhausted officials into temptation, which they are not always very good at resisting.
The Earl of Listowel: One factor in people's failure to apply for asylum at the port of entry is that they may not have a passport, perhaps because they are not on good terms with the authorities in their own country. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain what happens if someone applies later because they were concerned about applying without a passport.
Lord Joffe: This clause is based on the premise that refugees know that they need to apply for asylum. It would astonish the noble Lord, Lord Corbett, and, I think, many other Lords to learn that many refugees do not know that they need to apply for asylum. When people are in great danger, working and opposing a government in a country with very few laws, England seems like a beacon of light where they assume that they will be welcome. It does not occur to many refugees until a considerable time after they arrive here that they need to apply for asylum.
When I came to this country as a refugee 35 years ago, I thought that I would be welcome—as a lawyer, I ought to have known better. I did not know that in the United Kingdom, which was regarded as the one country that would be totally sympathetic to one, refugees needed to go through a process of applying for asylum. Many refugees still assume today that they do not need to do anything other than get to this country, which they have been brought up to believe is one where freedom prevails. Obviously, once refugees have been here for some time, almost all of them will
learn otherwise. The basic assumption that refugees know that they need to apply when they arrive is not correct.
Lord Clinton-Davis: I support the noble Lord, Lord Joffe. I do not speak idly. I speak from experience as a lawyer in a local practice and in the West End of London. People do not readily understand the need to apply for asylum or their legitimate rights immediately. I wish that my noble friend would understand that. People are inarticulate, particularly if they have gone through a terrible time in their recent past.
I practised as a solicitor in the London Borough of Hackney for a number of years. I wished that all my clients had been articulate so that they could have expressed to me their rights and needs. But people are not always like that. It is easy for the authorities to expect too much and my noble friend is guilty of that.
I have a great deal of sympathy with the remarks of my noble friend Lord Judd. We are both speaking from our knowledge of people; how they react; what are their immediate concerns; how they express themselves. I wish that they were more capable of articulating their cause, but they are not always.
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