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Asylum Seekers (Leeds)

Volume 400: debated on Tuesday 4 March 2003

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3.30 pm

I am grateful for the chance to debate this issue of great humanitarian importance and current controversy. The debate centres on section 55 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, which reads:

"(1) The Secretary of State may not provide or arrange for the provision of support to a person under a provision mentioned in subsection (2) if
(a) the person makes a claim for asylum which is recorded by the Secretary of State, and
(b) the Secretary of State is not satisfied that the claim was made as soon as reasonably practicable after the person's arrival in the United Kingdom."
I want to concentrate on the phrase
"as soon as reasonably practicable"
this afternoon. Before going any further I want to stress that the debate is not intended to be a swipe at or indeed a criticism of the Government. My aim is to be helpful by pointing out that that phrase has had unintended consequences on genuine refuges fleeing persecution in their native countries.

I represent a highly multicultural constituency, as my hon. Friend the Minister will know. In the eight advice surgeries that I hold each month around north-east Leeds, I see many asylum and immigration cases. From time to time I come across cases where the asylum system has been abused by those who fail to have visas extended or, as the Home Secretary has said, have tried to use the asylum system to gain financial support when they have run out of other options. I support the principle that Parliament should discourage those who seek to exploit this country's hitherto generous support for asylum seekers for their own dishonest purposes. I know that that was the intention of the Act.

However, the reality has been somewhat different. I believe that that is because the phrase

"as soon as reasonably practicable"
has sometimes been unreasonably interpreted by officials in immigration centres throughout the country, and especially in Leeds where my sample cases are based and where I am a parliamentary representative.

The immigration centre to which I refer is in Waterside, Kirkstall road, west Leeds, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle). In that centre, as in many others throughout the country, the interpretation of section 55 of the 2002 Act, since it came into force on 8 January this year, has forced destitute new asylum seekers on to the streets of Leeds. Were it not for the generosity and humanity of church members who are involved in the refugee education, training and advice service in Leeds, many more people fleeing persecution in their own countries would be homeless and freezing on the streets of Leeds. As of yesterday, 73 such persons were destitute without support from the National Asylum Support Service.

I understand that there has been a temporary relaxation since Mr. Justice Collins gave his judgment on 19 February and that many of those who were destitute are now in official centres. However, there is deep concern about what would happen if the Home Secretary won his appeal and those people had to be ejected from their accommodation. The judgment was on the cases of six asylum seekers who had been refused support under the 2002 Act and who made a claim under the European convention on human rights. The judgment angered the Home Secretary who, not unreasonably, felt that it was the job of Parliament to make the laws of the land and to debate those laws and that it was not the job of the courts to undermine that legislation. The Home Secretary appealed and we await the outcome of that appeal, which was heard yesterday.

Section 55 was introduced as a Government amendment to the Bill in the House of Lords and was not mentioned in the preceding White Paper. Introducing the Government amendment, Lord Filkin said:
"The new clause ends the presumption of support for those who apply for asylum in country unless they can give a truthful and credible account of their circumstances and how they arrived here and can therefore demonstrate that they are claiming asylum at the earliest possible opportunity."—[Official Report. House of Lords, 17 October 2002: Vol. 639, c. 978.]
On 5 November, the Home Secretary said:
"The question is how reasonable we are regarding the people who come here but do not claim asylum at the port of entry. We need to be reasonable and to take into account the trauma that people experience. We need therefore to allow a reasonable period before we presume that people have come into the country for another reason and have been sustaining themselves and that when they could no longer do so they decided that the asylum system would sustain them, being far more generous than the equivalent something-for-something, welfare-to-work system."—[Official Report, 5 November 2002; Vol. 392, c. 199.]
Following Royal Assent on 7 November 2002, my hon. Friend the Minister made a written statement to the High Court about section 55, in which she said that it would come into force on 8 January 2003. She said:

"It will not be acceptable for an asylum seeker wanting NASS support to postpone making an asylum claim unless there is a very good reason for doing so. Even if there is a good reason for not claiming asylum immediately on arrival at the port, the person must then claim asylum as soon as possible thereafter."
She went on to say that the Secretary of State must be satisfied
"that the person claiming support has made the asylum claim as soon as reasonably practicable after arrival in the United Kingdom."
I now want to demonstrate that a number of individuals who, for one reason or another arrived in the city of Leeds, made their asylum claim as soon as was reasonably practical after their arrival in the UK and yet were denied any support under the 2002 Act.

As my hon. Friend the Minister knows, often the only way for someone suffering extreme persecution to flee their country is to use what we would call people traffickers; men and women who make a living out of supplying forged documents and enabling those desperate to leave their countries to go to places where they will be safe and can find refuge. Historically, Britain has offered refuge to so many people who have suffered persecution, yet the problem is reaching an unmanageable proportion and the Prime Minister has pledged that the numbers of applicants will be halved by the end of the year.

I will not give the real names of the individuals whose cases I recount. Marie is a 33-year-old French-speaking woman from Cameroon, which is officially listed as a safe country. She was held in prison for 12 years as an opposition activist, along with her husband, who has now disappeared. While in prison she was tortured; she was finally released in autumn 2002. She believes that her husband is probably now dead but has no way of finding out what happened to him.

Shortly after her release, she received a police summons ordering her to appear at the local police station. Not unnaturally, she was very frightened and her mother advised her to leave the country as soon as she could. She sold her family home and paid the money to a trafficker—often called an agent by refugees—to get her to French-speaking Quebec in Canada. Although she is not Muslim, she was told by the Libyan agent to dress as a Muslim woman and wear a burqa, and she was brought to London via Algeria. She was told that she had arrived in Montreal and was not allowed to keep her false passport. She was virtually imprisoned in London for two weeks by the agent's wife, after which she was brought to Leeds on a train.

While they were walking through the station concourse in Leeds, the agent told her that he had left his wallet on the train and ran back to fetch it. He said he would be a few minutes but, surprise, surprise, he never returned, leaving the woman stranded in Leeds city station without even knowing what country she was in. Marie cannot read or write; she speaks no English. After two hours she found some French-speaking people who told her she was in the north of England. She was taken to the refugee council in Leeds and then to Waterside, where she registered her application for asylum. Support was refused; either because officials did not believe her story or because she had not registered "as soon as was reasonably practicable". Currently, church members in Leeds are looking her after.

I would argue that Marie could not have been expected to claim asylum any earlier. She had genuinely believed she was in Canada until her arrival in Leeds. She had been told that she would not reach Quebec if she left the house in London, which she thought was in Montreal. I do not believe that her delay was unreasonable.

Rezgar is an Iraqi Kurd who has a serious speech impediment and is illiterate. He finds it hard to communicate, even in his own language, because many Kurds think that he is mentally ill when they hear him speak. He was deposited in Leeds from the lorry that brought him illegally to the United Kingdom, without being told where he was.

Rezgar spent three days sleeping rough on the streets of the city before finding a road sweeper who was a Kurdish speaker and took him to the police station, from where he was able to report to Waterside. It took him more than three hours to give the most basic information, after which he was told that he was applying too late to receive NASS support. I am glad to say that that decision was reversed three weeks later and Rezgar now receives that support but, in the meantime, he had to rely on the charity of local people. Was his delay really unreasonable?

My third case is that of Camille, who came to Leeds from the Democratic Republic of Congo—formerly Zaire—to find her mother, who had last been heard of in Leeds. Again, she came illegally on forged documents, because she was being persecuted for her political opposition to the regime in the Democratic Republic of Congo. That regime is known for its cruelty and persecution of the opposition. She was accompanied through immigration at Heathrow by her so-called agent, and then taken on the underground to central London, where she was put on a coach to Leeds.

Camille is educated, articulate and intelligent. I met her three weeks ago and heard her story at first hand. I speak French; she speaks no English. On arrival in Leeds, she asked for directions to Waterside. It took two hours for her to walk there, and once she had registered for asylum she was told that she had registered too late to be given any support. She was told how to find St. George's crypt, a church project for the homeless and destitute in central Leeds. She walked there, only to find that there were no beds available that night. She was given some food and a sleeping bag, and told to sleep on a park bench. It was a Friday night.

After three nights outdoors and being fed by the St. George's crypt project during the day, Camille managed to contact the refugee education, training and advice service, whose volunteers took her in and looked after her. The story has a happy ending, because her new friends managed to locate her mother in Coventry, where she now lives, having been given refugee status herself. However, I would argue that Camille's delay in registering was not unreasonable.

The response of the church network of volunteers to the growing number of asylum seekers on the streets of Leeds is, "We will do better than our Government." If people with genuine stories such as those are made destitute by section 55 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, it is frustrating that a measure designed, quite reasonably in my view, to deter those who attempt to exploit our system, is forcing refugees with the most harrowing histories to become beggars on our streets, whether in Leeds or any other major city in the United Kingdom.

My reason for this debate is to ask the Minister to reexamine the guidance given to NASS officials. The guidance already says that each case must be considered on its merits, although none of the cases of which I have spoken appears to have been so considered. It also says that a person's circumstances must be taken into account.

Christopher Mace, the deputy director general of the immigration and nationality directorate of the Home Office, said in his statement, submitted by the Home Secretary to the High Court last month:

"If those arriving at ports know that they must apply for asylum at the port then it will deter facilitators [so-called 'agents] from bringing asylum seekers to the UK and thereby significantly reduce the incidence of this serious offence."
He said that the most frequent reason for failing to claim asylum at a port is obedience to the facilitator's instructions. However, as we have seen from the three cases that I mentioned, such a measure has made no difference to the people traffickers. As for the refugees themselves, how can they know what the rules are, if many cannot read, write or speak English?

My contention is that the Act, designed, rightly, to deter dishonest asylum seekers, is being unreasonably interpreted so that it ensures the complete destitution of many genuine asylum seekers. Even if a case subsequently fails, surely the UK can be more humane in the way in which it treats such people? The most important issue is to ensure the speedy processing of claims, rather than starving successful and failed asylum seekers alike or aiming to prevent them from coming here in the first place.

Finally, I hope that the Minister will be able to issue new guidance to officials, requesting that an interpretation of the phrase
"as soon as reasonably practicable"
is not made unreasonably.

3.44 pm

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Hamilton) for introducing this sensitive subject and inviting me to say a few words in support. I also thank the Minister for her close attention to this complex and difficult issue. I hope that my remarks and those of my hon. Friend will help her to move forward rather than be obstructive.

Waterside is in my constituency, as are Leeds' main reception centre and a significant number of NASS agency houses for asylum seekers. I deal with individual cases every weekend, but the circumstances are much more difficult to manage if those who arrive by any means—many do not enter via our ports—are cut off from the customary systems with no options, no income, no home, no resources and no real friends, and forced out on the streets in the city centre at precisely the time that the Government and Leeds city council have done so well in tackling and reducing street homelessness.

During the Christmas recess, my hon. Friend and I spent a night out with the police, examining rough sleepers in the city centre. We found young people with homes to go to—many, tragically, drug addicts—out on the streets to acquire drugs or just for company. However, one city centre church voluntary project, which has provided a crypt facility with night hospitality for nearly 70 years, was recently refurbished and relaunched to tackle the problem of those remaining on the streets. The aim is to connect people back to the support systems to enable them to restart their lives.

The services of the St. George's crypt voluntary project are now overwhelmed by homeless asylum seekers who are sleeping rough and completely locked out from access to other support systems. Such people, if they are deemed not to have applied immediately, cannot be referred to social services or receive the income assistance of social security. The project now feels undermined in its objectives. It needs to be able to tell these people where they can go and who will be expected to support them, but it cannot.

Good-willed individuals, desperate to help the excluded asylum seekers, are put into an incredibly difficult position, receiving no assistance in the task of deciding whom to help by taking them into their homes, or, subsequently, how to help people on to the support systems. Adhering hard and fast to the rules causes problems; there seems to be no way out for anyone in this position.

I appreciate that we need a fair and firmly applied rule system with rules that are clearly understood by all parties, but I wholly support my hon. Friend and gently ask the Minister whether we can re-examine the unintended consequences that are so clearly undermining other social objectives and social inclusion in our cities.

3.48 pm

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Hamilton) on securing the debate and on the way in which he expressed his concerns this afternoon. Before I respond, I pay tribute to his diverse constituency work, and I want to assure him that I understand his problems; I am a constituency Member, too. My hon. Friend raised legitimate concerns that he is wholly free to express.

I should also like to thank the Yorkshire and Humberside consortium, which works in a strong partnership with us in trying to provide services and coordinate the work that we do together with the immigration and nationality directorate. This strong consortium does a great deal of good work.

As my hon. Friend said, the interpretation of section 55 is currently under consideration by the Court of Appeal, so it would not be appropriate for me to comment in detail on the way that we have operated the policy since it came into force on 8 January. Notwithstanding that, I hope that I can respond to some of the important points that he raised today.

I remind the Chamber that when Mr. Justice Collins handed down his judgment in the High Court on 19 February, he did not find that section 55 was unlawful or incompatible with the Human Rights Act 1998 or with any of our obligations under international law. His findings were that the circumstances of each case should be investigated in greater depth than he understood had been the case so far and that there should be more detailed questioning to give the claimant the opportunity to explain himself convincingly if he could. On the challenges to section 55 under the ECHR, he found that inquiries should be made to try to establish whether any support was likely to exist. Otherwise, there will normally be the risk that to leave someone destitute would violate articles 3 and 8.1 of the convention. Of course, all findings are subject to the judgment of the Court of Appeal.

I should like to explain briefly some of the background to the Government's decision to introduce section 55 during the passage of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. It is one of several measures in that Act designed to overhaul fundamentally the immigration and asylum system. The aim was to tighten the process by getting claims considered and decisions made at a much earlier stage, and to ensure that support goes to those who need it. The real point of section 55 is to try to change people's behaviour so that asylum seekers make a claim immediately on arrival in the UK and, partly through that, to try to crack the power and control that some of the traffickers—to whom my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East referred—have over people.

There is a clear difference between economic migrants and those fleeing persecution, and I am grateful that my hon. Friend acknowledged that it is not acceptable for people to claim asylum after being in the United Kingdom for some weeks or months simply as a way of staying here at the taxpayers' expense or of delaying removal. It is reasonable for us to expect people who flee persecution to claim asylum as soon as they get to the UK as a safe country, so section 55 prevents the Home Secretary from providing support to asylum seekers who have not made their claim when they arrive at a port in the UK or, if that is not possible for any good reason, as soon as possible afterwards. The provision is not retrospective, so those who applied for asylum before 8 January are not affected, but it applies to those who arrived in the United Kingdom before 8 January but did not make a claim by then.

My hon. Friend referred to my written statement of 28 November, which attempted to clarify the way in which section 55 would be implemented. I will not say that it is not a tough policy; it is a tough policy, and is meant to be. However, it has been applied fairly and there are important safeguards. Families with children are exempt, as are those who can show that they suffered treatment contrary to the European convention on human rights. Those with special needs continue to be supported by local authorities under the National Assistance Act 1948.

Before I turn to the specific points raised by my hon. Friend, it might help to explain briefly the way in which section 55 decisions on the timeliness of asylum claims have been made by caseworkers since 8 January. That is at the crux of his concern. Each case has been considered on its own merits, and decisions have been based on a thorough assessment of the individual circumstances and the credibility of the case as presented by the applicant during the screening interview. I accept that that involves caseworkers making a judgment on credibility, but there is no way around that. As my hon. Friend acknowledged, some people make up stories while others tell the truth, but we have to make a judgment about that credibility to take a decision. However, all section 55 decisions to refuse support are referred to the central NASS team in Croydon to ensure fairness and consistency in the decision-taking process. All decisions taken by caseworkers are reviewed at a senior level before they are confirmed. I stress that it is open to individuals to ask for their case to be reconsidered if there is further evidence, a change of circumstances or information that they believe has not been taken into account.

I do not know the identity of the people involved in the cases to which my hon. Friend referred, so I have not been able to review the immigration and nationality directorate's records to examine the caseworker's reasoning. I cannot comment easily on the individual decisions taken, even if it were appropriate to do so in this forum.

My hon. Friend made a compelling case for the French-speaking woman from Cameroon, but it is not easy to accept at face value how someone capable of finding an agent to get her to French-speaking Quebec in Canada, who then got to the United Kingdom, spent a fortnight in a house in London, and travelled by train to Leeds can end up having no idea that she was in Leeds, not in Montreal. I am not making a judgment, but it is unsurprising that, in the circumstances that my hon. Friend described and in the absence of any corroboration, the conclusion was that her story did not add up. That is why support was refused.

Does my hon. Friend accept that one of the main ways in which traffickers do their business is to take the identity documents away from the person who has paid them to bring them to the country in the first place? The individual is unable to produce the evidence that he might have to present to an immigration officer.

I accept that that is the norm, but identity is not crucial to the case. The caseworker would have tried to obtain information about the details of the journey—its course and what had happened—to corroborate the story. I am saying simply that it does not surprise me that the caseworker found that the story did not add up in the absence of any corroborative information to try to verify that journey and the point at which the person entered the country.

I entirely understand my hon. Friend's point about the second case of the Iraqi Kurd. Although the process seems to have taken three weeks, a positive point to make is that the decision was reversed once additional evidence had been presented. I am comforted by the fact that the system that we put in place, which would be amenable to a change of decision, has operated successfully. However, I take his point.

My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) made a very important point about the impact of failed asylum seekers and others in our communities, and how that cuts across some of our other important objectives for community relations and cohesions. It is difficult to resolve. Section 4 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 provides for accommodation-only support, especially for people whose application failed but who cannot return because there is no route through to, say, northern Iraq. People are often offered accommodation, but they do not take it because it is not exactly where they want it. However, I am happy to reconsider his point if there is anything that we can do to help the voluntary organisations dealing with this problem.

Finally, my hon. Friend asked me to re-examine the guidance given to NASS. We must wait for the judgment in order to do that but, subject to that judgment, we may well have to do it.