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Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: My Lords, as ever it is a privilege to follow the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and his delicate dissection of a highly-focused element of today's landscape. Your Lordships' House owes a considerable debt to my noble friend Lord Waddington, not only for securing this debate, but for his masterly exposition of the subject and the scene. He has placed some of us in his particular debt by obviating the need to essay a comprehensive survey of the data ourselves. My observations will be subjective, but will seek to illumine some incidental corners of the scene.

In 1968, when the Conservative Party won control of the London borough of Camden for the first and only time, I was appointed chairman of the Camden Committee for Community Relations by the late Lord Finsberg. I accepted the post, provided that there was a significant increase in financial resources from that which the previous Labour council had used, though I also gave a commitment that unlike Oliver Twist I would not ask for any more over the three-year period. Nineteen sixty-eight was the year of the late Enoch Powell's river Tiber speech. It was a sharp baptism, but I have retained an interest in the subject ever since.

The Conservative Party, even at the height of its majorities in 1983 and 1987, was necessarily short of inner-city seats. I myself thought that this was an incidental disadvantage for us in formulating immigration policy. I personally regretted that the Treasury did not afford more resources to the immigration service when the refugee pressure began to build up 15 years ago, although I acknowledge that the pressures on public expenditure in the early 1990s were extreme. I join my noble friend Lord Waddington in recognising the immense contribution to this country, referred to by others in this debate, both by refugees and by those who arrived here in less traumatic circumstances. The country has been the richer for their contribution. The noble Lord, Lord Rees-Mogg, once opined in one of his Monday morning articles in the Times that I was the only member of the then-Major Cabinet whose family had come over with the Conqueror. I am grateful to my forebears for having cast our lot in these remarkable islands.

These virtues cannot blind us to the fact that, as some of my colleagues have said, all is not well in the world that we are debating today. After the 1997 general election, I was one of only two Conservative MPs representing inner-city seats, the other being the late Alan Clark in Kensington and Chelsea. Despite our multiple decimation at the general election, I had thought that it might be an Indian summer of parliamentary life. That
 
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it was not, was because the decision of the Home Office not to reply to asylum seekers' letters, and then in due course to request MPs to cease writing to Ministers while the immigration records were computerised, meant that my correspondence with the Home Office at official level rose forty-fold in that Parliament.

Labour London inner-city colleagues with better access to the actualities of Lunar House during the computerisation period told lurid stories of the Health and Safety Executive shutting down properties into which paper records had been moved for months on end for decontamination and fumigation. Individual papers eaten by rats were also reported. Without ministerial emphasis, it was inevitable that MPs' mail became separated from the files to which they referred. Home Office officials were commendably civil and sought to help, but it was clear that they were vastly overstretched.

If I may make a personal comment, I thought that Ministers who could no longer answer mail from MPs—and I did not blame them for that—were foolish in not informing MPs, who were after all regardless of party now their main line of representative contact with applicants, of some of the detailed data about benefits policy that could have saved all of us writing a mass of unnecessary letters. I can make that comment because, inadvertently, I was sent an instruction from Lunar House on its way to the Benefits Agency in Leeds. I told Jack Straw, the then Home Secretary, that I thought that the information being in the public domain would save all of us a great deal of trouble, with which—in answer to a planted question by myself—he concurred.

On the negative side, the crux of the problem in terms of the community at large is—to borrow an emotive word from Latin America—the "disappeared", those liable to deportation who have never been deported. We British are a tolerant race, but the existence of an estimated 250,000 people in our midst who should not be here strikes the indigenous Briton as unfair, to use a particularly British criterion. It is made worse when a minority of them run prostitution rackets, or settle arguments with a knife.

The delays in deportation likewise provoke that reaction of unfairness. Two Nigerians who had been working as resident club servants in a West End club in my constituency, undisturbed for 10 years, were suddenly arrested at dead of night and immediately deported. I was flooded with correspondence from the highest names in the land who were members of the club in question. If I may say so, those who disappear after MPs have invested much time and trouble in their cases do their whole communities harm by that ingratitude.

I shall not dwell on my party's policies for those matters save in one regard, which is my party's recent announcements on health policies, particularly in relation to TB and HIV/AIDS among immigrants. Since 2002, I have been pro-chancellor of the University of London. My noble friend Lady Chalker of Wallasey—no mean witness herself in these matters, and chairman of the governing body of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine—made it possible for me to have
 
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an informal briefing over lunch with the school's leading academics. Unprompted by myself and long before my party's recent announcement, they volunteered that health controls would in fact be a very sensible development.

Let me conclude with topical issues. For two years, the panel set up with the ALG, the Home Office and the London Asylum Seekers Consortium—it considers the special pleading of councils with a shortfall on Home Office grant funding for local authorities for their part in support of asylum seekers—has worked well. However, in the third and current year, the Home Office cut down the amount reclaimable under the special pleading arrangements without substantiating why. It would be helpful if the Minister would say a word about that.

Secondly, Section 9 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004 is currently being piloted by the Immigration and Nationality Directorate at three of its local enforcement offices across the UK, covering 120 families of which 32 belong to 11 London local authorities. The legislation may lead to the Home Office support being withdrawn from families who have no right to remain in the UK. That is likely to result in families presenting to local authorities as destitute. Social services departments will be required to assess their needs, and may have to support the children of failed asylum seekers or support whole families. There has been no written assurance from the Home Office that the costs associated with the Section 9 pilot will be reimbursed. Perhaps the Minister will comment on that.

Thirdly, since the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, there has been a real increase of destitution in the UK. The Act denied any access to benefits for those EU citizens residing in the UK. That meant that those EU citizens or failed asylum seekers with special needs or community care packages had to be supported by local government, without any means of reimbursement. Westminster's current spend—I take Westminster simply because it was my constituency—in support of failed habitual residents who cannot be moved out of the country is just under £500,000 a year. Such council tax accretions are not good for community relations.

Finally, in an area of the Minister's current responsibilities, there are consequences as well from these matters on inner-city affordable housing stocks that run the risk of exacerbating community relations among the indigenous population. You have to represent an inner-city seat, as the noble Lord did, to know what those reactions are from families who have lived in the same neighbourhood for four generations.

Baroness Harris of Richmond: My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, for initiating the debate—if only it helps to lay to rest the myths and more extreme ideas that have been brought forward. In declaring my interest, I must advise your Lordships that for four happy years I chaired the European Union Committee's Sub-Committee F, which dealt of
 
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course with these very issues. Indeed, some of your Lordships taking part in the debate were members of that committee when we discussed at length proposals involving illegal immigration, border guards, the role of Europol, asylum and so on.

The European Union has been moving steadily towards a common and comprehensive policy on all those matters, because it is self-evident that we cannot tackle the serious nature of illegal immigration, terrorism and national security on our own. We are all reliant on each other to secure the safety of our borders. Legal migration brings many benefits, but is undermined if illegal immigration is allowed to flourish. Illegal immigration creates insecurity in host countries and attracts organised crime. It places illegal immigrants at risk of exploitation. We all know the horror stories of the Chinese who were found dead in the lorry in Dover, and the young women trafficked from Eastern Europe. Worst of all, we heard some terrible stories of children-trafficking when we took evidence from London airport's Immigration Crime Team. The image of that visit and the stories that we were told will stay with me always.

Perhaps it might be helpful to make sure that we understand what we mean by the frequently—and wrongly—used words describing the people who wish to come here. In part 2 of our report, A Common Policy on Illegal Immigration, we gave these definitions on page 9:

The finding of the committee was that illegal immigration is largely fuelled by opportunities to work. We found little evidence, however, of enforcement of existing controls on illegal working. We felt that that was a powerful "pull" factor for people wishing to get into this country without proper documentation.

As the lead article in the Spectator of 29 January this year found,

Of course there is a clear need for co-operation between member states on external border controls. The strength of the external frontier is only as strong as its weakest link. As we say in paragraph 50 of our report, Proposals for a European Border Guard:


 
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We welcomed the Government's active participation in external border issues, but it is unfortunate that that is limited by our increasing isolation in terms of practical co-operation, particularly our exclusion from the European border management agency as a result of our not being a full member of Schengen.

Remembering the words which defined the various categories of applicant, it is futile to look for quick fixes—whether withdrawal from the 1951 convention, quotas or transfer to a faraway island—to reduce the asylum caseload. Extraterritorial processing is not the answer, for legal, constitutional and practical reasons. The key is a robust and speedy initial determination system. The quality of that initial decision-making, which must include a proper appeals system, is the single most important component of an effective asylum system, backed up by prompt removal or voluntary departure of failed asylum seekers.

If the Government are unable or unwilling to remove failed asylum seekers, they must not leave them in a state of limbo with no legal status. There can hardly be a more distressing sight than the pleading eyes of a young mother who may not fit the exact requirements of an asylum seeker but who knows that a return to her country of origin spells hopelessness and suffering. And she may of course have paid a small fortune, in her terms, in order to get here in the first place.

We desperately need talented and professional people to come to work and live in this country. We need to make it a welcoming and positive place for them to come to, perhaps initially as students and then to apply for jobs here once their studies are completed or, perhaps more importantly, so that they can take their skills back to their own countries and have an enduringly happy memory of their time here. So I was, of course, delighted to read that the Home Secretary said when speaking in a House of Commons debate on the Government's five-year asylum strategy on 7 February this year:

How incongruous, then, that the Government are proposing to implement substantial increases on the charges that overseas students have to pay to extend their leave to remain in this country to complete their studies.

I declare my interest as a member of Court at the University of York, where the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Brian Cantor, informed me of his deep concern about this matter. He advises me that the former proposals, introduced in 2003 without any consultation whatever, were received by students, as may be supposed, with great negativity. Those proposals—to raise the level of fee from £250 to £500—will truly be a double whammy. The University of York has worked extremely hard to help the Home Office to ameliorate its processes in order that students should perceive some improvement in services in return. Those are not evident.

So, in the light of the Prime Minister's initiative to increase the number of international students studying in the UK, I ask the Minister: what assessment has
 
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been made of the impact of the increased charges on universities' recruitment efforts; what justification do the Government suggest universities should give students for the increased charges; and when will they be brought in? International students at York and other institutions make an enormous contribution, as the Home Secretary recognises, and this is a poor way indeed to encourage them to come here in the first place.

Finally, there is no real knowledge yet of how many illegal immigrants we have in this country. Many are economic migrants coming here for a better life. They do not become a drain on services because they cannot: they cannot access benefits as they are not legally here. They keep hidden from the state as much as possible. They work in the lowest paid and often dangerous jobs. They are therefore often forced into the hands of criminals, who take full advantage of their fearful status.

In order to ensure that we have fewer illegal immigrants in the future, we would do better by providing help in the countries of origin of these economic migrants, giving them better information on just what they can expect when they come here. And we would do better by supporting those countries in whatever way we can to give their own people the hope and security of a sustainable future in their own land. That is the challenge that we face and that is what we must work together to achieve.

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