Section 55 of the Nationality Immigration and Asylum Act 2002

Section 55 of the Nationality Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 has been in force now for just over a year. During the first three quarters of the year just under 7500 people were refused all support from NASS (the National Asylum Support Service) as a result of decisions using Section 55 powers.

Why were such large numbers refused support, and what has been the impact of this on those refused and on service providers?

Section 55 was introduced into the Act at the last moment in the Commons, with very little time for debate. It allows NASS to refuse support to any single asylum seeker on the grounds that they have not made their claim for asylum as soon as ‘reasonably practicable’. At the time MPs were told that this was intended to deal with people who had been in the country and supporting themselves for some time before making their asylum claim.

The Home Secretary said “We are saying to people, if you have been here for some time, by all means tell us how you got here, what your circumstances are, the means of entry and what you have been doing since you reached this country and we will provide you with support.”

That isn’t how Section 55 has been implemented in practice. Roughly three quarters of all single in-country applicants have been refused support during 2003. There are many well documented cases of people who had been in the UK a matter of a day or two, or even just a few hours, before they asked for support, but who were refused.

Because there is no appeal to an asylum adjudicator against a Section 55 refusal, the result has been that the Administrative Court has been overwhelmed with applications for statutory reviews of the decisions. In over 90% of cases the Court agreed to grant interim relief.

The consequences of the way in which Section 55 has been implemented are becoming evident, especially in London. In November a survey was carried out which had been commissioned by the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. Organisations working in London with asylum seekers were contacted and asked to report on the services they provided, and the asylum seekers they had seen, on a particular day. Among the Refugee Community Organisations contacted (92 in all) the response rate was over 50%.

The organisations who responded had seen 283 asylum seekers directly affected by Section 55, which was 25% of the asylum seekers they saw that day. People were asked where they had slept the night before. 20% had slept rough in the street, and another 9% in an unoccupied building. Not surprisingly 56% had stayed with friends or family or someone else from their own community, and 10% in lodgings provided by a community group.

What this shows is that predictions of the effects of Section 55 have proved to be accurate. It is leading to people being on the street. It is putting strains onto friends and other members of the same community. None of this should surprise us. Staying with friends temporarily is common among all groups of homeless people. Failed asylum seekers who have had support cut off frequently also end up in this position.

Just before Christmas, during the debate on the new Asylum Bill currently before Parliament, the Home Secretary responded to a number of MPs who took the opportunity to raise questions about the operation of Section 55. He announced that in future it would be generally assumed that someone who asked for support having been in the country no more than 72 hours would qualify for support, as opposed to a 24 hour rule previously applied.

No MP who was involved in the debate could remember 24 hours ever having been mentioned before as the normal rule being used. Nor has it ever appeared in any published NASS guidelines as far as I am aware. Even since this change it is still the case that over 50% of applicants are being refused support, and court challenges are going on. It still does not accord with what we were told when the legislation was going through Parliament, when the implication was that someone would have to have been in the UK for weeks or even months before they would lose access to support.

There may well be attempts while the current Bill is going through to insert an amendment to Section 55, either to remove it completely, or to ameliorate its effect by, for example, bringing in a right to a speedy appeal on a refusal of support. At the very least MPs will want to see Section 55 implemented as we were originally told it would be.

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