Extract from House of Commons Hansard    Debates for 10th October 2005

Asylum Seekers and Leave to Remain

Mr. Neil Gerrard (Walthamstow):

I am pleased to have the opportunity to initiate the first Adjournment debate after the summer recess. The main issue that I want to raise is the change that was made during the recess to granting indefinite leave to people who were given refugee status, a change that was mentioned in the five-year plan that the Home Office produced earlier this year, but a change that had never been debated or discussed in the House before it was brought into force at the end of August. When it became evident shortly before the summer recess that the change was likely to take place, several Members expressed concern. In the last few days before the summer recess more than 40 Members added their names to an early-day motion on the subject.

I really do not understand the reasoning behind the change. It reverses a policy that the Labour Government introduced in 1998. It was announced in the White Paper of July 1998. Before 1998, anyone who was given refugee status was given only temporary permission to stay and had to wait four years before they could apply for indefinite leave. In the 1998 White Paper, we said that the immediate granting of indefinite leave would help refugees to integrate more easily and quickly into society, to the benefit of the entire community into which they had been accepted. It then went on to say that this policy was wholly consistent with the Government commitment to a more humanitarian approach to the UK's obligations under the 1951 refugee convention and to faster identification of those in genuine need of protection.

Those arguments were absolutely right in 1998. I do not understand why the same arguments are not regarded as valid now. I know from correspondence that I have had with the Minister over the summer that he may say that things have changed since 1998, that we are now in a different situation and that the number of asylum applications has changed considerably. Indeed, it has dropped a lot in the past year or two. The Minister may well say that the time scale for decision-making has changed. It is welcome that the time scale now for initial decisions is so much shorter than it used to be. The arguments that we made in 1998 for indefinite leave were not about numbers or time scales for decision making. They were about principles—what was the best way to help people whom we recognised as refugees to integrate into society, and how could we best to operate our commitments under the 1951 convention? The convention does not explicitly demand that we immediately give indefinite leave to someone to whom we grant refugee status, and until 1998 we did not grant leave in such circumstances. However, doing so is in the spirit of the convention, and that is the argument that we made in the 1998 White Paper.

European countries do not all grant indefinite leave. In the five-year plan published earlier this year it was argued that a number of European countries granted refugees temporary leave initially rather than immediate settlement. That was true before 1998, however, and we did not regard it as a valid argument. If we are going to reverse the policy of granting indefinite leave—a policy that is only seven years old—it should be possible to point to problems that have arisen from its operation, but I am not aware of any argument that such problems have been created. I am convinced, however, that problems will be created by the reversal of the policy. It is disingenuous to say, as the Home Office has said in correspondence, that the change is not intended to prolong the uncertainty and instability faced by refugees, because that is exactly what it is guaranteed to do.

John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab): My hon. Friend said that we have not identified any problems that gave rise to a review of the policy. In many of our constituencies, we have witnessed the benefits of the policy introduced in 1998, which has provided the certainty and security sought by families who previously experienced the direst circumstances across the world.

Mr. Gerrard: I agree. The arguments for the change are contradictory. The five-year plan said that refugees

"may be joined by their immediate family and will be encouraged to find work and participate in local communities during their period of temporary leave. This will ensure they make a full contribution to the UK while here".

Leaving someone uncertain about how long they will remain here or what their future is militates against their being able to integrate and make a contribution. It cuts across the good things that have been done in the past five years. This Government were the first to produce a strategy for integration with the publication of "Full and Equal Citizens" in 2000. That document is still extremely valid, but things have progressed. Integration loans have been introduced, and there have been projects to help refugees integrate into society, many of which have been funded by the Home Office and have produced encouraging results. I do not see how our good work on integration accords with a step that will introduce greater uncertainty to people's lives.

May I draw the Minister's attention to a letter to the Home Secretary from a group of psychologists who work with refugees and asylum seekers? The points that it makes were confirmed by a worker in my local mental health trust, who spends a great deal of her time working with refugees and asylum seekers. The psychologists stated that they had grave concerns about the effect of the change on people with serious mental health problems that result from the circumstances of those who have become refugees. The psychologists viewed the granting of refugee status as signalling a phase of safety that allows them to begin work in earnest on tackling some of the symptoms that people are suffering. They went on to say that the prolonged uncertainties that people face when they are seeking asylum can have a serious detrimental effect on existing mental health problems, and that making refugee status conditional and temporary will make it much more difficult to work psychologically to improve the mental health of many of their clients.

The psychologists cite guidelines produced last year by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence on post-traumatic stress disorder, which specifically referred to the situation of refugees and stated that trauma-focused therapies were typically inappropriate and ineffective while people do not have the security of refugee status. These are important and powerful points. We are dealing with people whom we have recognised as refugees. We acknowledge that they have suffered persecution. Some of them have been through very traumatic experiences. Some of them have serious mental health problems that need prolonged treatment. Everyone who is dealing with the matter, such as NICE and the psychologists, is giving us the same message—that leaving those people with such uncertainty about their future will make it much more difficult to tackle post-traumatic stress, get them stabilised and deal with their mental health problems and the symptoms from which they have been suffering.

I recognise that the 1951 convention does not demand that we provide permanent protection, but experience shows that when conditions change in their countries of origin, people granted refugee status often go back voluntarily. There are voluntary returns going on all the time. Past waves of refugees—people whom I remember meeting 20 or 30 years ago, who had come to the UK from Chile or Argentina, and who had been political activists in those countries—wanted to go back when they saw that conditions had changed.

The change will affect another aspect of integration by making it much more difficult for people with temporary status to gain employment, which would help them to settle and to make a contribution. There will not necessarily be a fixed period of time. It is proposed that at the end of five years there will be a review if nothing has happened in the meantime, but in some cases that review could come within a year, 18 months, or two years of their being granted temporary status. If a decision is made that there has been a significant change in the country of origin, that will lead to a review of all the individual decisions regarding people from that country. How many employers will be keen to take on people whose status is uncertain? We know now that many people who have been given exceptional leave to remain, even though that carries with it permission to work, have difficulty in persuading employers that that really is the case. I do not want to get into a debate this evening on the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill, but one or two of its provisions will make matters much more difficult, to the point where exceptional leave runs out.

There will be disagreements about whether conditions in countries of origin have changed sufficiently and—another important factor—whether such changes are permanent. The five-year plan and the statement referred to a change of conditions in the country that was regarded as sufficiently permanent. I am not sure how that judgment will be easily made. In the past 12 months we have seen some of the arguments that have cropped up about the returns to Zimbabwe, and now the possibility of forced returns of failed asylum seekers to Iraq. There will certainly be disputes about whether there have been genuine changes of condition, and that will lead to a clogging up of the appeals system, because anyone who is told that their leave is being withdrawn will have the right of appeal under the Bill that we are now considering.

In time it will also lead to the clogging up of Members' advice surgeries, because we will frequently be dealing with families with children who are in school and who have grown up here, and I am sure that I do not have to remind the Minister about how difficult it is now for the Home Office to deal with such removals. Those are the sort of people who will be told that, after three, four or five years of temporary protection, they will have to go back to wherever they came from. I do not know anyone who works with refugees who is supportive of the change. No legislation would be required. The measure was brought in without legislation and I urge the Minister to have another look at it.

Another matter that has been drawn to the attention of a number of hon. Members today concerns the situation of some British citizens who are married to failed asylum seekers. I would not necessarily expect answers this evening, but perhaps the Minister will consider what I have to say and perhaps write to me. Their husbands—it is often husbands—are told that they have to return to their country of origin. I understand the policies on marriage that have been applied in the Home Office for some time, going back to 1996 and DP3/96, and the reasoning behind that. Obviously fake marriages have been used to avoid immigration controls, but the Home Office is not questioning the genuine nature of the marriage of the people whom I and a number of other hon. Members met today. Nevertheless, it says that, because a marriage took place after a failed asylum claim, the person concerned must go back to their country of origin, or their spouse can accompany them. To tell a British citizen that they can accompany their spouse to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran or Iraq, and make an application from there, is hardly credible when the Foreign Office advises British citizens not to set foot in such countries.

The way such cases are being dealt with needs to be looked at. I understand all the arguments about the need to deal with fake marriages—I have seen some fake marriages, as I am sure others have—but I am referring to marriages whose genuine nature is not in question yet we are asking either British citizens or their spouses to go to countries that the Foreign Office regards as dangerous. I am sure that the Minister will be approached by hon. Members about this and I hope that he will consider such cases with some sympathy and see whether we can adopt a rather more humanitarian approach than we are at present.

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