House of Commons Hansard Debates for 11 Jul 2001

Westminster Hall

Asylum Seekers

Mr. Neil Gerrard (Walthamstow):

While the debate has focused mainly on prisons so far, I want briefly to raise some other issues. I recall debates on the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. It struck me then, and still does, that the fundamental problem with our treatment of asylum seekers is that the system established by that Act was designed to be punitive. It was quite deliberate. The Act was about deterring people from making applications. To that end, a tough regime was introduced, which applies equally to every asylum applicant, whether genuine or not. What is happening now with the voucher system and detentions is an inevitable consequence of the Act.

I am glad that the Home Office is bringing the applications backlog down at long last, and making progress, but I have never changed my view that if we are serious about dealing with asylum applications we need to make decisions efficiently and quickly, and enforce them. I know that that means that some people must be removed. We must face that. However, it is far and away the best approach.

I would like to make some brief points on several separate issues. I apologise if I become a little disjointed, but there is not enough time to go into detail. First, I would like to deal with the operation of the National Asylum Support Service. I spent the best part of a day at NASS a few weeks ago and what struck me when I talked to people there and saw what they were doing was that there were a lot of people working hard to make an impossible system work. The voucher system has been reviewed, and I do not want to go into that this morning because I hope that when that review is published there will be some fundamental changes.

However, there are still some problems that need to be tackled. There are delays in processing applications at NASS. As a London Member of Parliament, I tend to see people who are not being dispersed but are applying for vouchers. I cannot understand why people who apply for vouchers only are waiting six, seven, eight, nine, or 10 weeks to get decisions on their applications. What on earth are they supposed to live on during that period? If they are applying for vouchers they are, by definition, claiming to be destitute and in most cases they genuinely are. The issue of how to deal more efficiently with applications for voucher support only must be tackled.

Then there is the question of who gets dispersed. There is an ongoing discussion about what happens to unaccompanied asylum-seeking children when they reach the age of 18. Before that age, they are in the care of local authorities, but when they turn 18 they become the responsibility of NASS. Just because they are asylum-seeking children does not mean that they are not covered by the provisions of the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000, which refers to the continued responsibility of the local authority. Arguments seem to be going on between the Department of Health and NASS about how those children should be treated. NASS, having originally drafted some guidance that said that 18-year-olds would be treated as exceptional cases, now says that it will "consider" treating such children as exceptional cases. That needs resolving.

Another dispersal-related issue is that of people with health problems. I have been contacted more than once by medics in London who deal with people with HIV. Such people are dispersed and then find that they do not receive treatment. That raises serious public health concerns. Figures have been quoted about detention. The figure of 1,800 people detained is a snapshot. The last set of figures that I saw for a complete year showed that something like 15,000 people had been detained at some point during the year. In the past couple of years the Home Office has said that it is unable to answer parliamentary questions on the matter and does not have the figures for people detained whose cases have not been determined. When those figures were supplied, a year or two ago, such people were in the majority.

How many of those people who are detained are then given refugee status or exceptional leave to remain? Some of them certainly are, but I suspect that the Home Office does not know how many. Probably, if one examined the figures, one would find that the rate of acceptance of those detained was not very different from the rate for people who were not. Detention generally has no rational basis and is often more connected with the nationality of the person than with anything else. The bail provisions of the 1999 Act have already been mentioned. It is important that they should come into force.

My final point is on decision making. Huge numbers of people are now being refused asylum on grounds of non-compliance. All that we are doing is shifting many of those cases into the appeals queue instead of having a proper first look at their case. We must give people longer to put the forms in—or, at the very least, ensure that the forms are translated into appropriate languages. There are notes to go with the forms, but they do not always get to people when they have to fill them in.