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Extract from House of Commons Hansard, Debates for
4th February 2002
Asylum Policy
Mr. Neil Gerrard (Walthamstow):
I had not intended to speak in the debate, but I
have been tempted to do so by the fact that, in the main, it has been
constructive. That makes a pleasant change from some of the asylum and immigration debates that I have sat through here
over the past few years. The debate has not been 100 per cent. constructive. I
know that the hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) did not say that
everything that had gone wrong had been since 1997, but he got close at times. I
think that I am the only Member who served on each of the Committees that
considered what became the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act 1993, the Asylum
and Immigration Act 1996 and the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. On every one,
the Minister concerned told us how the legislation would provide all the
solutions to the asylum system. I treated the Bills in the same even- handed,
objective way: I voted against all three of them. It looks as though I might
have the opportunity in a few weeks to consider my attitude to the 2002
legislation.
It has sometimes been implied in the debate—and, to
some extent, the motion implies it—that the United Kingdom shoulders an unfair
burden in comparison with other European Union countries. As the hon. Member for
Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) pointed out, that is not so.
Between 1997 and 1999—the last complete set of figures across the EU that I have
seen—there were twice as many asylum seekers in Germany as there were in the UK.
Certainly when measured against population, we come nowhere near the top of the
league. Figures obviously vary from year to year, but in most years we are
probably eighth or ninth in the number of asylum seekers per head of population.
To suggest, as has been frequently suggested in the
debate, that a bilateral approach with France would go a significant way towards
making big changes is to take a very narrow view. I understand the arguments
about closing Sangatte, but let us look back at why it opened in the first
place. It was because there were large numbers of people on the streets of
Calais and neighbouring towns who, exactly like those now in Sangatte, had every
intention of trying to make their way to the UK.
We perhaps ought to have learned some of the lessons
of the past 10 or 20 years, in that policies that are simply based on putting up
barriers will not work. Each change that has done that has not worked. I know
that numbers fell between 2000 and 2001, but it has been claimed today that
since 1997, there has been an increase in the number of people coming to the UK
from France who could otherwise have claimed asylum in France. However,
that change is just one that has occurred since 1997.
At the same time, we have changed carriers'
liability and put airline liaison officers in many overseas countries whose
specific job is to stop people getting on to planes to come directly to the UK.
As I said, when one route is closed, people try to find another. We should not
assume that putting up ever higher barriers will solve the
problems.
In the past couple of years, significant changes
have taken place within the EU, involving not only Britain and France, but other
EU countries. Moves have been made toward a common asylum policy across Europe.
The 1999 Amsterdam treaty made immigration and asylum policy an EU competence
for the first time. There is provision enabling the UK to opt out, but I think
that we should be closely involved in those discussions, because it is foolish
to think that if common asylum or immigration policies were achieved across
other EU countries, the UK could stand outside with different procedures and
standards.
I appreciate that the hon. Member for West Dorset
would encounter problems with some of his Back-Bench colleagues if he tried to
suggest that EU-wide agreements were desirable. He therefore tries to limit the
debate to France.
Mr. Letwin: I hesitate to strip away an illusion,
but the Conservatives would be delighted with a more EU-wide agreement. We
welcome Dublin II and the prospect of the shared burden being distributed more
evenly. The problem is that it might take years. The question is not whether
multilateral agreement is a good idea, but whether it might be worth trying in
the meantime to reinstate a bilateral agreement as one helpful approach.
Mr. Gerrard: I am not sure that all the measures
would take as long as the hon. Gentleman suggests. I am glad that he agrees that
we should seek wider agreement—most people welcome in principle moves towards
harmonisation of asylum policies across the EU.
There is danger in the fact that the debate so far
has focused on harmonisation rather than on the more important issue of
standards. We have focused far too much on how to get policies to converge,
rather than on what the policies should be and what the aims of EU-wide policies
should be.
Despite the fact that the tone of today's debate has
been mainly constructive, I am worried. If the attitude of every EU country is
to say, "We want common standards, agreement and harmonisation, but we also want
fewer people coming to our country to claim asylum", we will never reach
agreement, and no progress will be made. The debate is couched in terms of
wanting harmonisation and agreements—bilaterally with France, and perhaps
multilaterally involving other countries—but at its root is the desire for fewer
people to come to the UK to apply for asylum. If every EU country adopts a
similar attitude, we will either get nowhere or end up with a policy that does
not work.
I was interested in some of the suggestions of the
hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey about how we might examine the
issue of applications made from another country. I strongly agree with the
intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon),
although it was greeted with scepticism by some hon. Members. Factors such as
knowledge of a particular language, or family connections, or friends who are
already asylum seekers or recognised refugees, have a great influence on an
asylum seeker who is deciding the appropriate point at which to make an
application.
There are so many complex factors of that nature
involved in the process that I find it difficult to envisage the "first safe
country" concept ever really working, whatever arrangements along the lines of
the Dublin agreement are reached. There are those who flee wars and end up in a
neighbouring first safe country but when people travel halfway round the world
to come to the European Union, I seriously doubt whether a policy based purely
on first safe country will achieve the results that some people wish.
Mr. Lansley: I recognise the hon. Gentleman's great
experience in these matters but is he not falling into the trap of confusing
asylum policy and immigration policy, as if they were not separate matters? At
the heart of asylum policy must be the concept that those who seek asylum are
genuine refugees. Therefore, the first safe country principle must have a role
to play in that when someone has left a place where he is in fear of persecution
or risks losing his life, the first safe place that he comes to is a valid
country in which to claim asylum, even if it is not his final place of
residence.
Mr. Gerrard: I hope that the hon. Gentleman's last
couple of words are an acknowledgement that there may be family connections and
family ties, which presently are not recognised. I recently met an asylum seeker
from Sri Lanka who had been given exceptional leave to remain in the United
Kingdom. He has family members who have been given refugee status in
Switzerland. However, it is impossible in the EU for that family to come
together. That strikes me as ludicrous. Different countries have recognised
different members of the same family, but there is no mechanism to bring them
together within the EU. We need to go beyond saying that the first safe country
is the only thing that matters.
It is highly unlikely that any of us in this place
will have to seek asylum. However, if I were in that position, I am not sure
that France would be the first country to which I would want to go to live. That
is not because I have anything against the French. I would think about language
and where I might have a friend or relative whom I might want to reach.
We shall have to consider gateways from other
countries. During the Kosovo crisis, the humanitarian evacuation programme
brought people who had gone from Kosovo to Macedonia to the UK and other EU
countries. But only in major crises have we tried to operate mechanisms to allow
approaches through an organisation such as the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees in another country. We must think about such situations if we want
seriously to deal with traffickers and cut their routes.
As long as we erect barrier after barrier, someone
will always be trying to find their way round them. He or she will try to make
money by doing so and bringing in people illegally. I hope that we shall start
to think about mechanisms that will allow people from other countries to make
applications rather than causing them to try to smuggle themselves through the
channel tunnel, for example.
We must remember that the UN convention on refugees
does not let us say that we must regard someone as a bogus asylum seeker or
failed asylum seeker because he has come to this country illegally. The present
position is that it is virtually impossible to come to the UK legally to make an
application.
When my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary
publishes his White Paper, I hope that that will allow us to have a sensible
debate on some of the wider issues. The debate must not focus on a narrow
bilateral question but consider what happens throughout the EU. We must consider
the links between asylum and immigration policy and economic migration. We have
started to have that debate today. I hope that we can develop it when the White
Paper is published in the same constructive tone that has characterised much of
this afternoon's debate.
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