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The Lord Bishop of Southwark: I rise to support this amendment in the knowledge that the Government do
not wish to make families destitute. The Minister assured us of this at Second Reading. Against this, neither do the Government wish to be taken for a ride with those whose applications for asylum have failed enjoying benefits and having, it might be felt, no incentive to leave. Hence Clause 8.Clause 8 removes benefit from families whose claims have failed. If there are children, I understand that they remain eligible for support under the Children Act 1989 if, and only if, they are separated from their families. Children, then, might be seen as bargaining counters.
Last year, I visited the newly restored workhouse at Southwell in Nottinghamshire. It was designed to prevent people falling into total destitution, but not to make their lives so comfortable that they had no incentive to seek productive work. Part of the regime of humiliation was for children to be separated from their parents. Even though occupying the same building, they were not allowed to mix or meet. So, pressure of the most painful kind—enforced separation from their children—was a social lever on perceived wastrels. Clause 8 has a hint of the social policy of that workhouse, and runs the risk that, rather than being separated from their children or returning to a desperate situation back home, parents will disappear into destitution, taking their children with them. As the noble Baroness said, the policy is not designed to make families destitute, but that might in fact be the effect.
There are further reasons for arguing for the removal of Clause 8 or, at the very least, for the insertion of the new subsection (6). First, Clause 8 gives government the challenge of operating one set of legislation, which could all too easily cause them to break another. It is not clear that the removal of children from their parents' care, in the case of a failed asylum claim, would be in the best interests of the child. If it is not, the Children Act principle that the welfare of the child is paramount is immediately infringed.
Further, it is not clear how the removal of the child would be effected. Social work guidance indicates that the first choice of care should be within the family. Is that guidance to be breached? Is it a matter of child protection?
Amendment No. 22 proposes a new subsection (6), which would seek to ensure that nothing done under Clause 8 contravenes the rights of the child. It would ensure that the Children Act and comparable legislation across the UK is not contravened. Without it, I wonder how much time will be spent in judicial or quasi-judicial processes to decide which law has the greater clout.
A former Minister has given assurances in another place that at every stage families have open to them the chance of voluntary departure with a paid flight and reintegration assistance. I cannot see how that suddenly becomes attractive unless it is because starvation, homelessness and the loss of one's children seems to be worse. In the event that it does not seem to be worse, we might pause to ask what return is feared if destitution in this foreign land is to be preferred.
I began by suggesting that we are seeking balance in our legislation. Government do not wish to be cruel and do not wish to be taken for a ride. The adoption of the new subsection (6) would provide necessary balance to legislation which at present sails so close to the wind of human rights as to risk capsizing the entire enterprise.
9.30 p.m.
The Earl of Listowel: I speak to the Question that Clause 8 stand part. I am concerned that we may place some families in an impossible situation by introducing the clause. If a family's perception—whatever may be the truth—is that on return to their home country they and their children are at great risk, how can they make the choice between returning to that country and the choice of making them and their children destitute? My concern is that that will be the viewpoint of some of the families we are talking about.
The Government have had a successful approach to asylum claims. They have reduced the number of claims by half in six months. I remember in past legislation how concerned the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, was about the processing of initial claims. They have reduced the processing time for initial claims from, I believe, 18 months to two months. Good progress is being made.
The Government have doubled the return of asylum seekers whose claims have been rejected. So, again there is encouraging progress, although I know there is a long way to go in that direction. As has been said, it is very important to keep the public's confidence in the asylum processing procedure. I understand where the Government are coming from on this clause, but I am concerned that some families affected by this may be pushed into destitution. Given the Government's success in this area, I wonder whether we have really reached the stage where we want to take that risk.
Some years ago, I watched some video footage from a toddler group of a mother and her one year-old child. The child kept on pursuing her rucksack and digging through it. He pulled out a carrier bag, from which he had earlier had some crisps. He kept on going back to this bag, and his mother said, "No, you have eaten your crisps, there are no more crisps left". The mother became increasingly angry and impatient with the child. In fact, the child had been placed with the grandmother, because the mother was not able to understand that her one year-old child could not understand at the same level as a five or six year-old that if one explains to him that there are no crisps left, but he had them earlier, he will just not understand, and he must be treated in a gentle, reassuring way and diverted from such activity. The child was being put in an impossible situation by his mother. He was expected to behave like a six year-old or seven year-old, when he was only one year old.
Recently, we discussed the case of Joseph Scholes who committed suicide nine days after his entry into custody on a two-year sentence. It is alleged that from the age of six he experienced continual sexual abuse from a member of his father's family. His parents
divorced in 1997, and there followed an acrimonious custody battle. He was seeing a psychiatrist; he was suffering from depression and suicidal thoughts. He was on medication.He voluntarily entered a children's home. Six days after his entry to the children's home, he was involved in a string of street robberies. As I understand it, it was reported that he was not accused of being violent, and that he was on the periphery of these activities, but he was found guilty on three charges. Two weeks before he went to trial, he slashed his face 30 times over, and he cut his nose so deeply down to the bone that they had to redecorate the walls in his bedroom because of the flow of blood. The judge took some 19 days to decide on his final judgment for the boy, when he was sentenced to a two-year detention and training order.
I need to know more about this case, but it seems to me that he should have had some psychiatric help; he could have been put into a secure children's home, or a local authority secure unit, but not into a young offenders' institution, as he was. I use his case to illustrate the danger that sometimes the law puts the most vulnerable people in society into an impossible situation that we, from our point of view and our experience, may think it reasonable to have expectations of normal, law abiding behaviour from individuals, but they, because of their experience, are unable to meet our requirements. To punish them in that circumstance is counterproductive.
I quote from a document published by the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. Some asylum seekers have,
- "memories of parents, children or other loved ones being butchered before their eyes, of being brutalised and beaten by men who showed no mercy, of being raped or sexually tortured in other ways so humiliating and degrading that they scarcely dare confide that it occurred".
- "This large family comes from Central West Africa. The youngest child is 5 or 6 and the oldest 17. The family arrived in the UK separately. The oldest child had no idea his mother and siblings were here and vice versa . . . The oldest child was traumatised by the life he spent as a 'child soldier' and the violence he witnessed. Being reunited with mother and siblings has been the best medicine they could possibly receive. Nevertheless, they are still actively receiving treatment from the Medical Foundation. The mother says that she will kill herself rather than return to her own country. We are taking these threats seriously. She and her children have all had episodes of extreme mental disturbance and, while these are not so grave following the family's coming together again, it will take little to push them beyond what they can reasonably endure.
- The Home Office has refused them and their case is pending appeal. If their appeal were to fail and Clause 8 applied we fear for their physical safety because of the mother's capacity for suicidal thoughts".
I am concerned that a family like that might be put in an impossible situation. To our mind, a return to Rwanda may seem extremely safe, but the mother thinks that she would be putting her children in harm's way. She may therefore choose to make herself destitute.
We understand from the discussion in the other place that there are a significant number of families who have been denied claims and have not yet got as
far as removal—the sort of families that this clause affects. Can the Minister be more precise about the number of those families, and the number of families that she expects will reach the point where they are made destitute under the clause?I hope the noble Baroness might consider meeting some representatives from the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture to discuss these concerns. I would be very glad if any of your Lordships wished to visit one of Barnardo's projects for families in temporary accommodation and meet some asylum seeking families in that situation, or go with a health visitor to some places in east London to see again the situation of some families there. I cannot promise that I can arrange that, but I would certainly try.
I am concerned that some of these families—we do not know how many—may be being put in an impossible situation where, in their perception—no matter what we know to be the truth—to return is too horrifying a thought to contemplate, and they may choose to make themselves destitute and make their children suffer in this way, because they believe that that is better than the other option. I look forward to the Minister's response.
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