The Committee in considering this amendment is concerned also with Amendments Nos. 170 and 171 in the name of myself and my noble friend.

I have to differ from the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby. Amendment No. 170, although identical in wording, appears in a different place in the Bill! That is the only difference between us. Whether it is inserted before Clause 84 or after Clause 88 I am content to leave others to decide. But it is important that asylum seekers should have the possibility of legal advice.

The Committee has the great advantage of the Minister giving us legal advice at frequent intervals during these debates. We have learnt to appreciate it even more than before. But we have also appreciated in the course of the debates the incredible complexities—to which, sadly, we add by these debates. None of us is in any doubt about the value of legal advice. That is reinforced in the case of those who are asylum seekers who by definition come from other countries, from traumatic situations, often speaking no English, and so on. I do not need to labour the point.

Amendment No. 171 is closely related to the other two amendments. I am glad to support them.

I support the thrust of all three amendments. It occurs to me that the amendments might be too narrowly drawn. They refer to legal advice and not also to legal representation.

The noble Lord, Lord Cope of Berkeley, makes the point that many asylum seekers have poor or non-existent English, and will need to be represented before an adjudicator or an appeal tribunal. In addition, they may be totally unfamiliar with our legal systems. For that reason, again, they require representation.

One cannot impose a lawyer upon a client. It is one thing to offer him access to legal advice. It is important that that is done, but I do not think that the provision needs to be included in a statute. Advice may be given. There are various ways of offering that advice. I speak as a solicitor and I do not want to deny the opportunity of work to my colleagues in the profession. But this provision comes very close almost to insisting that someone should be legally represented, either in terms of advice, or, more particularly, in terms of representation. There may be a very good reason why someone does not wish to have legal representation through a professional lawyer. To insist upon that—the amendment comes very close to insistence—would be dangerous.

I do not demur from the idea that someone should be advised if they want advice. But it should not go further than that. It is not necessary to include a provision in an Act of Parliament. The Minister may differ from me.

The phrase used in the amendment is "have access to". It does not oblige anyone to accept legal advice. It simply says that there should be a duty on the asylum support directorate to make sure that individuals have access—and it is implicit in that—if they wish to use such access. It does not impose any action upon them.

These amendments refer to the granting of legal advice. In my opinion, the genuine asylum seeker should be given legal advice with legal aid, if legal aid is needed. I have been looking at other clauses of the Bill. I should be grateful if the Minister could say to what extent legal aid will be provided to people who turn out to be genuine asylum seekers. It is known that the majority of those who apply turn out not to be genuine. The genuine ones turn out to be the minority. For the bogus ones to be given legal aid, whether gaining advice or legal help in any other way, would seem to me to be wrong. I do not see why the British taxpayer should have to pay for that. But if the asylum seeker is genuine, it is perfectly reasonable that we should have to pay. Perhaps the Minister will be so good as to clarify that matter.

I gave way to the noble Baroness, and then to the noble Lord, Lord Renton, but he has made his own speech, which is fine.

I do not agree with what the noble Lord says. It begs the question of who is a genuine asylum seeker. It may be a matter upon which there is dispute. I hope that I have not misinterpreted the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby. Making available access to a lawyer is one thing, but to insist that someone should be legally represented or receive legal advice on matters may be going too far.

I come back to this point. It is not necessary to include the provision in the Bill. It would be helpful if the Minister could indicate whether some satisfactory explanation stating what may be available could be provided for someone who comes to this country. We cannot insist on legal representation either in the form of advice or representation.

I support the noble Baroness. When we considered the first amendment in Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, chided me gently because I mentioned that in this country we had either professional organisations or trade unions to assist us when we wished to be legally represented. He pointed out that there was a very good scheme of visitors who draw to the attention of asylum seekers the existence of legal advice. I took the point. However, with the dispersal policy, it will be more difficult for such advice to be given. Therefore the noble Baroness's point is important.

The system is intended to be speedier. It is of paramount importance to ensure that a determination is not reached too rapidly without proper consideration of the asylum seeker's case. It is important that asylum seekers realise that they can have access to legal advice. I agree that the amendment refers to access. It is up to an individual to decide whether to make use of that access.

With reference to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Renton, one may be a genuine asylum seeker without being an asylum finder. Individuals may well have a good case which at the end of the day is not agreed by the person making the determination or on appeal. But those people may have a genuine case which needs to be heard. Part of the whole point of the system is that cases should be heard and determined. There will be those who have a good case, but at the end of day it will not be accepted. But they should be regarded as genuine asylum seekers.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, that one cannot compel anyone to have a lawyer. That is why my noble friend's amendment uses the word "access". You can take a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. You can give access to a lawyer; you cannot compel the person to use it. It was in that spirit that the amendment was put forward.

Perhaps the most important and clearly necessary of these amendments is Amendment No. 171 which deals with travel costs. The right reverend Prelate has mentioned the problem of dispersal. It is a specialist field of law and those who are expert in it are overwhelmingly concentrated in a few firms in London. Almost all the great legal victories of which one reads are won by those firms of lawyers. I once had to advise a correspondent from Colchester—not an urea that Christopher Hill used to call one of the dark comers of the land—who had fallen into the hands of an incompetent adviser. My correspondent's case was good, but it was not until I put him in touch with Bates Wells and Braithwaite in London that anyone was able to develop the case for him to any satisfactory conclusion. Once I had done that, the case was strong and successful.

Someone on the level of support that would be given to asylum seekers under the Bill might have to come down from Newcastle to consult a lawyer in London. The vouchers may be redeemable in many places, but I do not think that they will be redeemable at rail ticket offices. If Amendment No. 171 is not accepted, I do not see how deserving clients will be put in touch with competent lawyers. If that does not happen, injustice will. I hope that the Minister, who has done so much to help us already—that is much appreciated—will sympathise with the amendments.

I rise to speak against Amendments Nos. 154 and 170. It seems to me that they are based on a misconceived view. As far as I am aware, in this country we do not give people who may or may not be entitled to social security benefit access to legal advice about their entitlements. The amendments relate to Part VI of the Bill, which deals with support for asylum seekers. They are not about legal advice connected with people's entitlement to stay in this country.

It is a longstanding principle of public administration that the agencies responsible for particular services make explanatory leaflets and materials available to those who might be entitled to their services. That is how the housing benefit system operates in relation to our own citizens, and the same is true for relief from council tax and access to social security benefits. Indeed, for social security benefits, we print the leaflets in different languages so that people have access to them. As far as I recall, before the 1996 Act, asylum seekers did not have access to legal advice about their entitlement to social security benefits. The amendments would be a change of direction that would be out of kilter with the way we run support arrangements for our own citizens.

If the noble Lord, Lord Warner, reads the report of an Unstarred Question of about three months ago on the take-up of social security benefits, he will see that domestic policy is taking a similar change of direction to that proposed by the amendment. It is not as far out of line as he suggests.

May I also add the point that one of the responsibilities of the new asylum support directorate will be to deal with benefits and to handle the dispersal of asylum seekers? The point about access to legal aid is directly related to the dispersal policy. Therefore, it is right that the directorate should bear some responsibility.

I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, will appreciate that the positioning of Amendment No. 154 is precise. It comes before Clause 84, which is the interpretation clause, and before Clause 85, which deals with support. It is a free-standing amendment that deals with legal advice that can determine the whole future of applicants, and whether they are allowed to remain in this country or are deported to another country where they may easily suffer persecution and even death.

It may be that the wording of the amendment does not achieve what we seek. What I had hoped to achieve through Amendments Nos. 170 and 171, and what I believe that the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, has achieved in Amendment No. 154, is access to legal advice on all the issues that arise under the Bill. Money for travelling will be provided under Part VI of the Bill, but the legal advice will not be limited to questions arising under Part VI. The point made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon about dispersal is important.

I point out to the noble Earl, Lord Russell, that not all legal wisdom resides in London. I recall a case that went on for a large proportion of my time as a Member of Parliament. A constituent in Chipping Sodbury took local legal advice that unfortunately did not make the best of the case. He went to a big firm of London lawyers to sue the Chipping Sodbury lawyer and ended up suing the London lawyer. When he acted as a litigant in person, he succeeded where the local firm in Chipping Sodbury and the well-known firm of solicitors—I shall not mention the name—had failed. That demonstrates that one cannot anticipate the outcome of legal actions, even if it seems that the legal situation is clear.

I have made the point before that half the lawyers in the country are proved wrong every day in court, because half of them lose although the other half win.

I am proved wrong three or four times a day. Why cannot this matter be dealt with in the more informal way that I have suggested? Is it absolutely necessary to impose a legal obligation in the Act? Could not the Minister accept my suggestion that the issue could be dealt with by way of ministerial advice to those who deal with asylum seekers to the effect that on arrival at a port or elsewhere, they should be given a document that sets out what they may receive?

I cannot answer that question until I have heard the Minister's reply. Perhaps we should allow that now to happen.

I strongly support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, and spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Cope of Berkeley. I agree with the comments made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon about the problems that will be posed by dispersal. The more that we spread the load of asylum seekers around the country, the more that people will have to travel to centres of excellence to get legal advice. In my years as a constituency representative in Liverpool, people frequently used firms of solicitors in Manchester who specialised in such issues. Even within a region, there are well known firms that specialise in such matters and people have to travel to see those solicitors.

In Amendment No. 171, the noble Lord, Lord Cope of Berkeley, picks up the issue of travel expenses. I make the practical point that although I welcome the Minister's earlier comments about dependants, the position of under 25s remains the same. Under Part VI of the Bill, a person under 25 would receive £27.90 a week, of which £10 would be in cash and the rest in vouchers. As the noble Earl, Lord Russell, pointed out, vouchers are hardly likely to be accepted at railway stations so the person would be left with £10 a week for travel. Put another way, that is £1.30 a day. No doubt many of your Lordships use public transport. It has been much in the news in the past few days, not least in the constituency of Eddisbury, where the Secretary of State, Mr John Prescott, used it. Everyone has been trying to wear their public transport credentials on their sleeve and I welcome that. But a bus ride from Pimlico to Westminster—a route which I know many noble Lords take because I see them on the bus from time to time, will cost £1. If only £1.30 a day was allocated to you, you would not have the money to make the simple return journey from one part of London to another, let alone from one part of the country to another.

In practical terms, we need to improve the level of support. That again relates to the arguments about vouchers and the wider issues which we explored in the earlier debates. I shall not trespass into those territories because I, too, am happy to adopt a self-denying ordinance on that. However, there is a specific point to which the Minister ought to reply and the sooner I stop speaking the more quickly he is likely to do it.

Perhaps I may make one final point. In many ways, Amendment No. 171 supports the Government's policy of limiting the number of legal representatives to which asylum seekers and refugees should have access. That limit is likely to mean that in some parts of the country there will be no one on the registered list. There will be a great temptation for asylum seekers to be approached by some of those we least want to see representing anyone because they give a poor service. But they will be accessible and they will be there.

If the asylum seeker or refugee has no means of travelling to the people on the registered list, or to the refugee legal centre or the IAS, both of which have limited numbers of offices, the temptation to be represented by someone who just comes by, whose name they will not know is not on the list, will be very great. I beg the Minister to bear that in mind when replying to the amendment.

At an earlier stage, we discussed the situation in Northern Ireland and the Minister said that special assistance will be given to the RLC and the IAS to establish an office in Belfast. Will he tell the Committee in what other parts of the United Kingdom special assistance will be given to those bodies to establish offices? Will they have offices in Scotland, Newcastle or Eddisbury? I was interested to hear the noble Lord's reference to that constituency, which was once represented by my grandfather. I dare say that anyone living in Eddisbury will have to travel to Manchester. I do not know how much the fare is, but I am sure that it is more than the £1 which the noble Lord mentioned as being the amount a person will receive for one day.

Even if provisions are made for the establishment of RLC and IAS offices in the principal centres of population in the United Kingdom, unless the dispersal policies of the Home Office ensure anyone sent to the provinces will be within easy reach of such an office, a large proportion of their disposable income will be spent on travelling there.

With respect to the noble Lord and the noble Baroness, I do not believe that any of these amendments is necessary. From the drafting, it appeared that the concern was directed to the fact that the asylum seeker should be entitled to have the legal representative of his choice, m the course of the speeches, that has changed to providing them with legal advice. Legal advice and assistance is already available to asylum seekers in accordance with the provisions of the Legal Aid Act 1988 and will continue to be available under the provisions of the Government's Access to Justice Bill.

In addition, the Home Secretary makes grants under Section 23 of the 1971 Immigration Act to the Immigration Advisory Service and to the Refugee Legal Centre, which are two voluntary organisations which provide free advice, assistance and representation at asylum appeals.

The amendments propose that an asylum seeker should have legal advice from a representative whom he or she has chosen. As the noble and nimble Baroness spotted, that gave rise to problems about unscrupulous immigration advisers, a concern which we all share, so she gave an oral amendment to her amendment—that it should apply to those on the registered list. In that context, at the request of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor—and the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, raised the issue with my noble friend Lord Williams of Mostyn—the Legal Aid Board has published detailed proposals for contracting immigration and asylum work to ensure that asylum seekers have access to good quality legal services. The Government are considering those proposals and will make their response known soon. The proposals are contained in the document Access to Quality Services in the Immigration Category. The proposals will limit the firms able to provide advice and assistance to those holding immigration and asylum contracts with the Legal Aid Board or Legal Services Commission. Contracting will improve the overall quality of advice and assistance provided and guarantee that asylum seekers receive competent advice.

The report also proposes that legal aid funding should be extended to allow contracted firms to provide representation before immigration adjudicators and the Immigration Appeals Tribunal. Therefore, under the existing framework, legal aid and assistance are available. It is a matter for the Legal Aid Board as to how they are provided. In the document to which I have referred, it is consulting on the best way to provide it. The means it suggests would get rid of the unscrupulous immigration advisers and would seek to ensure that the advice is competent and widely available. That deals with the first two amendments.

The third amendment, which was pushed hard by a number of Members of the Committee, relates to travelling expenses. The Government carefully considered that point when at an earlier stage they decided to provide under Clause 94(7) for the reasonable travelling expenses of appellants to asylum support adjudicators. The noble Lord's amendment would extend this to an entitlement to reasonable travelling expenses throughout an asylum seeker's time in the United Kingdom whenever he or his legal representative felt that a meeting was advisable.

We do not believe that such a wide-ranging power is an appropriate use of resources. For one thing, the making of an asylum application does not require legal advice. Asylum seekers can present their cases to the Immigration and Nationality Directorate without the need for any assistance from a legal adviser.

I would draw the attention of the Committee to Clause 86(1)(c), where the power is taken for the asylum support scheme to pay expenses incurred in connection with an asylum claim. The kind of expenses with which noble Lords are concerned—namely, travelling expenses to the legal representative—would fall under this power. The power is there in the appropriate case. It is better that it should be a discretionary power than a power as of right. In these circumstances, I believe that every point has been dealt with. I hope that the noble Lords will feel able to withdraw their amendments.

Before the noble and learned Lord sits down, I should like to raise two points with him. I have before me the advice of the Legal Aid Board, which is of course described as recommendations to the Lord Chancellor. Before this moment, we had no reason to believe that those recommendations had been accepted—I do not know whether they have been. In the document, the Legal Aid Board points out, as we have done, that good quality advice and assistance should be made available at the earliest possible opportunity, but the board itself goes on to say that, in a number of cases, refugees and asylum seekers do not find it easy to obtain legal help and that it is widely acknowledged that individuals tout their services to new arrivals at main ports of entry.

We are anxious to make sure that the individual asylum seeker or refugee is assisted to gain access to the legal advice which will help him, and not to anyone who happens to be cruising around. In that regard we have the Government's own wishes at heart. We simply suggest that the recommendations of the Legal Advice Board be accepted, and made viable for people who have been dispersed beyond the area where they can easily travel to obtain that legal advice.

Finally, I very much welcome the Minister's comments on the refugee legal centres and the AIS, both of which we greatly respect in this Committee. However, the problem still arises that, at the moment, as far as I know, they have a very limited number of offices where the people who work for them can interview and see asylum seekers. I am sure that that is why the noble Lord, Lord Cope of Berkeley, raised the issues that he did in speaking to Amendment No. 171.

The document to which the noble Baroness refers indicates that the Legal Aid Board is addressing the very problems which she raises. We cannot create high-quality immigration services throughout the country, where there are none. The amendments seek to make it a right for an asylum seeker to have the lawyer or legal assistance of his choice. In the course of this debate that has been expressed as the necessity of making legal aid available. It is available; the basis is set out in that document. As I have said, the Government are considering those proposals and will make their response known shortly. I do not believe that much more can be done on the face of the Bill.

I recognise the importance of the point raised on travelling expenses, but would that not be best dealt with by a discretionary power to provide travel expenses where that is considered appropriate by the asylum support group? I am not sure what more one could do.

That point would be met by the earlier issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, who said that it might be dealt with in another way. We are simply concerned about the possible effects of dispersal on some asylum seekers' ability to obtain legal advice. Therefore, we should wish to see whether the matter could be dealt with in some other way. Perhaps the Minister would like to suggest another way, possibly through regulations or guidelines to the asylum support directorate. We shall obviously be concerned if the Minister feels unable to provide any assurance of any kind about what will happen to someone dispersed some distance away from any reputable legal centre. There are indeed such places—I can think of several—where the only advice available was advice that I should not for one moment recommend anyone to take.

The effect of the acceptance of the Legal Aid Board's proposals would be that there would then be a definitive list of those people who were respectable and those who were not. That would go quite a long way towards getting rid of the fly-by-nights by whom no one would like advice to be given. With regard to the asylum support scheme to pay expenses incurred in connection with an asylum claim, which would include travel expenses to see a lawyer, I should imagine some guidelines would be set down and that the question of whether they would be provided would be dealt with there.

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

moved Amendment No. 154A:

I wonder whether I may intervene. I have been silent so far on this matter. Has there been a problem with a young asylum seeker as his or her 18th birthday was "over" and "not under" 18? I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn, explained the matter very well. Does this clear up a problem that has occurred? Is this part of general syntax or good grammar? I was interested in the way in which the noble Lord phrased his explanation to make it clear that it referred to an asylum seeker's 18th birthday. Has there been a problem with definition or is it a case of the noble Lord expressing matters with his customary clarity?

There is no problem at the moment because Part IV, let alone any other part of the Bill, has not yet become law.

One ought to have clarity in an area where there may be difficulty. We aim, on this occasion at least, to benefit an individual. Amendment No. 154A is not the most important in the group. I believe that Amendments Nos. 154B and 154C are more important.

It is a great pleasure to thank the Minister for having listened to what my noble friend Lord Russell and I had to say on this matter. We are grateful to him and believe that the amendment clarifies what could have been a slightly grey area in the Bill. We thank the Minister for having taken notice.

moved Amendment No. 155:

Does it have the support of British taxpayers?

If the noble Earl had been able to contribute to earlier debates, he would have heard me say that I hope that noble Lords will not see all these issues through the prism of the interests of the, taxpayer. Sometimes we should also consider our interests and duties towards asylum seekers and refugees. Those questions have to be balanced one against another.

In the debate on Second Reading I said that less than a quarter of 1 per cent of our entire national social security budget is allocated to all refugees and asylum seekers before we start to deal with anyone who may falsely be claiming expenses.

I believe that we are disproportionate in the terms in which we raise the sort of intervention of the noble Earl. We would do better to concentrate on ensuring that there is justice for people who come from backgrounds of persecution, who may be dependants with children, who may be fleeing appalling regimes and who may have suffered grievously. We have a duty towards them.

The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture says:

"It is wholly unacceptable that any class of people in this country should be left without food or shelter, or any means of obtaining these".

To answer the intervention by the noble Earl, we are not talking about continued support for persons who over-stay and those who have gone to ground. I make that clear. The Minister of State in another place indicated that support may be available through the voluntary sector for some, although not for all, who have reached the end of the process. That is not an adequate or proper solution. It is no answer for the Minister to say, as he said to the Special Standing Committee, that,

"If individuals want their case to be taken further, they will have to reflect on how they can support themselves. They could look to the voluntary sector or to their own communities for support".

That is effectively another punishment that we are heaping upon the heads of people who have already suffered quite grievously. That punishment, once again, is entirely out of proportion to the mischief that it is supposed to address.

I said that I would turn to the four parts of the amendment and shall try to do that briefly. Sub-paragraphs (i) and (ii) in Amendment No. 155 concern further proceedings which either the asylum seeker or the Secretary of State may have the right to bring with the leave of the court. Hunger and homelessness should not be used to block access to justice by asylum seekers who may have good grounds to go to higher courts or to apply for judicial review. The rule of law is nullified if access to justice is denied to the most vulnerable, especially if they are literally starved out of their legal rights by the other party to the legal proceedings in question—in this case, the Government.

As matters stand, there is no power to extend support, even where it is the Secretary of State who seeks to challenge a favourable determination. So an applicant who has satisfied the appellate authorities that he merits recognition as a refugee must choose between the Charybdis and the Scylla—that is, between the country where he fears persecution, or remaining in destitution for however long it takes the Secretary of State to pursue higher court proceedings. That is self-evidently wrong. We should not put people in the position of choosing between that rock and a hard place.

It is no less wrong, and equally a breach of the human rights convention, to impose destitution in an attempt to prevent asylum seekers taking up their legal rights to seek to challenge unfavourable determinations. That aspect of the present proposals is perhaps especially worrying in the light of the 81 per cent success rate in immigration cases where leave to move for judicial review was granted in 1996–97; but the principle will be the same whatever the statistics. It is not just a question of how many were successful. It should not be for the Government to establish a support scheme in such a way as to pre-empt such applications for political reasons, but for the courts to determine their legal merits. So sub-paragraphs (i) and (ii) seek to establish that principle.

Sub-paragraph (iii) concerns the Secretary of State's power to reconsider cases. It is wrong again to fetter the duty and discretion of the Secretary of State to consider an adjudicator's recommendations or further representations following a failed appeal by depriving him of the power to extend support while he does so. There may be changes in family or other circumstances, or non-asylum humanitarian considerations, into which the Secretary of State would wish to make further inquiry, but, as things stand, he may be effectively constrained from taking the necessary time to do so by the fact that the asylum seeker meanwhile has no means of even feeding himself.

Finally, sub-paragraph (iv) concerns the various other circumstances in which unsuccessful asylum appellants may not be immediately removable from the United Kingdom. The asylum seeker may be in an advanced state of pregnancy, for instance, or otherwise unfit to travel; or there may be problems and delays in travel documentation; or the circumstances in the country of origin may be such that removal to that destination is, for the time being, literally impossible or may be dangerous. For example, for the past year or more, UNHCR has advised that failed asylum seekers cannot safely be returned to Angola, with the result that some failed Angolan asylum seekers have been on temporary admission for months, since the dismissal of their appeals, with support where necessary from their local authorities under the National Assistance Act and the Children Act.

What will happen to families such as those unless we put this belt-and-braces provision into the legislation? What will happen to such people in the future if this part of the Bill is passed unamended? They would literally be thrown out of support scheme accommodation in whatever location they might have been dispersed to, with no other means to feed or house themselves. As,

"persons subject to immigrations control",

they would have no access to local authority assistance. What do the Government believe people in that predicament will do? They will beg; they will steal; they will sleep in the streets and do all the other things that we know form part of a begging-bowl culture. In fact, reverting to our earlier debate and the remarks the Minister of State made in relation to people in that position, the truth is that sometimes we force them into that position. Unless we amend the legislation, we will increase the number of people who sometimes intimidate in the way that the Minister of State described earlier.

It would be inhuman and prohibitively expensive to detain individually all those who, through no fault of their own, cannot yet be removed. But unless this amendment is passed, the alternative is the creation of a roaming vagabond class of unknown size and with no incentive to maintain contact with the authorities whatsoever, save that for some a hot meal in a warm cell may actually be a lure to crime and preferable to the position in which they find themselves at that moment.

In another place the Minister of State, Mr O'Brien, said that provision may be made for support through the voluntary sector. I have referred to the evidence that he gave to the House of Commons Special Standing Committee. That is not an adequate response. We shall return later in these proceedings on this part of the Bill to the role of the voluntary sector. But I know that there is deep resentment among many voluntary groups, community groups and Church-based charities which feel that they are being turned into an arm of the state and that they are being co-opted into a role which they have never asked to take on. Often that is done with paltry resources available to them. It is therefore inhumane and a breach of our obligations under the Human Rights Act that such food and shelter should not be approved. In those terms I commend Amendment No. 155 to the Committee. I beg to move.

I believe it would be for the convenience of the Committee if I were to address all three amendments. They are very close to one another in the sense that all of them argue that support should be maintained until the end of the judicial process of appeal and review. That must be right. I was concerned at one stage that in an earlier draft of the Bill there was a suggestion that support would be removed when the process of appeal had been concluded short of judicial review. That cannot be right since an asylum seeker must have the ability to use the facility of the judicial review which is open to him. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, he should not be forced by economic stringencies and distress to abandon his obvious right to make an appeal through a judicial review if that is open to him.

I add one other point. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, has set out in great detail the arguments for this amendment. My own experience of the British citizen is perhaps somewhat different from that of the noble Earl, Lord Dartmouth, in the sense that it has been the case over and over again that the British people have responded with extraordinary generosity when they have seen real need. Whether because of the hurricanes in Central America, the famine in Somalia or distress in Kosovo, time and time again the voluntary bodies and others have pointed to the astonishing level of response. I do not believe that most British citizens would wish to see those trying to get their rights within our judicial and legal process, of which we have every reason to be extremely proud, prevented from doing so by destitution.

As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has pointed out, destitution would be the situation of those for whom there was no support of any kind from any source and who were not entitled to work in order to keep body and soul together. These amendments must be right if we believe in our own system of justice, the fairness of our courts and the right of everyone—"the poorest he among us", as the Levellers would have said—to receive that justice.

I strongly support the noble Lord, Lord Alton. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Cope of Berkeley, and I would fully accept whichever of these amendments appears to be the best drafted and covers the widest range of possibilities. We would rejoice to see that amendment accepted. But it would be quite wrong to end the support system when the right of an asylum seeker to continue to pursue his rights under our legal system was still open to him. I strongly support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and present my own.

The noble Earl, Lord Dartmouth, asked whether this amendment has the support of the British taxpayer. It certainly has the support of this one. The short answer is that the only way to find out would be to carry this amendment in the Lobbies and send it to another place to find out what it thinks about it. If the noble Earl is ready to co-operate in that endeavour I shall be happy to join him, although probably not tonight.

However, the argument goes a little wider. It is the obligation of any British government—and the duty of any king or queen of England before that—to do justice. That obligation goes back to Magna Carta and to the Coronation Oath. We think that this amendment is part of that obligation; and that obligation is one to which the British taxpayer has consented. It is indeed the very essential reason why he has a government. There is no point in having a government if it does not do justice. But you cannot have selective justice. Justice, if it is to deserve the name at all, must be extended, in the biblical phrase, to,

"the stranger that is within [our] gates".

That has been recognised for a very long time and is the underlying purpose of this amendment.

If something like this amendment is not accepted, there is a real danger of refugees being forced back to their own countries where they have been at risk of persecution. In fact, there is a real danger of constructive refoulement, contrary to Article 33 of the UN convention. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, seems to have a doubt on that point. But if people cannot live where they are, they tend to go somewhere else at whatever risk. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, suggested, it is an alternative that they may live in a disorderly way. The threat to public order has long been recognised by Ministers of the Crown as one of the most important reasons for supporting the destitute, including over the centuries a great many who have come from other countries. Most of us have ancestors who have come here from other countries at some stage in their lives in a state of destitution, often as victims of persecution, and who have enjoyed the hospitality of this country. I think that we should pass on the generosity from which our ancestors benefited.

There is also a real risk of legal trouble if something of this sort is not done. I have spoken before about the potential conflict between the powers of statute and the principles of natural justice. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, indicated that he very much agreed with me that it is better for that not to be explored too thoroughly. I said that there were some things which one does not really want to find out, when dealing with the question of which of these has the superior authority. The noble and learned Lord nodded vigorously. I agree with him.

This Bill, seen from the perspective of the courts, might seem like an attempt to interfere with justice. I do not want the supremacy of statute or natural justice to have to be argued out; but we should not lead Her Majesty's judges into temptation. If this Bill is not amended, I think that Her Majesty's judges will be led into temptation. It is not for me to say whether or not they will resist it, but it is a risk that I do not think we ought to take. We ought not to interfere with the course of justice, as will be done if people are deprived of support while they have perfectly valid outstanding claims to a hearing. That is my central reason for supporting this group of amendments.

Amendment No. 157 stands in my name and that of my noble friend, as well that of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby. It is a different drafting of a similar point to that expressed in Amendment No. 155 moved by the noble Lord, Lord Alton. I prefer the drafting of our amendment and, until I have heard the Minister's response, I have no reason to change my mind as regards the detailed differences between the two formulations.

There is a point of principle behind what is proposed, but there is also an extremely practical point as to when the support will stop during the legal process. With due respect to the noble Earl, it is not a point which can be decided solely on the basis of our traditions in this country. Nevertheless, I sympathise with a great deal of what the noble Earl said.

However, the situation has changed in recent years. The world has become smaller and there are more economic migrants. As was said in our earlier debates, many of us would seek to be economic migrants if we did not have the good fortune to live in this or a comparable country. Nevertheless we have to distinguish between economic migrants and the genuine seekers of asylum who deserve it and whom we all wish to assist.

As I say, I have no particular pride as between the two formulations that are proposed. However, a real point of principle and also a highly practical point lies behind both of them.

As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, pointed out, I have not attended the many days of discussion on this Bill. However, I feel flattered that a mere nine-word intervention from me should inspire paragraphs of the words of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and an entire speech from the noble Earl, Lord Russell, to be printed in Hansard. I am a tremendous admirer of the speaking abilities of the noble Earl, Lord Russell. I always enjoy his speeches. Therefore I feel even more flattered that a nine-word intervention from me should inspire an entire speech from him.

However, there is a serious point here. I asked whether the measure had the support of the British taxpayer. I infer from the lengthy address of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the eloquent speech of the noble Earl, Lord Russell, that the short answer to that is "no". Although I have attended few of the proceedings during the passage of the Bill through this Chamber I was present when the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn, introduced this Bill with his customary eloquence. However, he seemed to me to imply that he rather disagreed with that introduction. I do not have his words in front of me but he mentioned a large number of statistics which appear to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt to an objective person that there are a large number of bogus asylum seekers who have come here in order to live off the British taxpayer. That is what the statistics demonstrate.

Bogus asylum seekers abuse our hospitality and exploit our humanitarian feelings. That goes against the grain of British generosity and fair play which the noble Baroness so rightly mentioned. Many people have participated in debates on this Bill during its passage through the Chamber but it seems to me that the interests of the taxpayer have been under-represented.

I wish to make a point of detail on the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Alton. I am not picking on him; it is just the way "the cards break". There is a logical fallacy at the heart of what he said. He said that 81 per cent of immigration applications are granted by judicial review after leave to appeal has been granted. One has to make a separate application to get leave to appeal. The leave to appeal is a screening process. One would expect that to be the case. The amendment states,

"in the event that either party indicates an intention to apply for leave to appeal".

Therefore, however weak their case, they can string out the legal process and live off the British taxpayer.

As I heard the Minister introduce the Bill—that seems many months ago—it seemed to me that the Bill's intention was to rebalance the application of the law as between asylum seékers and the taxpayer. The Government's unexpected interest in the welfare of the taxpayer is very welcome. I urge the Government Front Bench to stand firm against these and other self-interested and unobjective amendments.

The intervention of the noble Earl, Lord Dartmouth, has reinforced the point I have tried to make on previous occasions. We are seeking the highest quality of decision at the first instance when a case is tested. If that can be achieved, it will bring with it considerable savings, not only in legal appeals and tribunal costs but also in social security support.

May I ask the noble Earl to withdraw the word "self-interested"?

Of course; I do not have the noble Earl's felicity of phrase. I shall write to him when I have had a long time to think about it and have come up with a better and more accurate word.

I do not want go down the same road as the noble Earl, Lord Dartmouth. There are no ways in which we in this House can gauge the effect on taxpayers of what we do unless we promote a referendum of some kind on these matters. I remind the noble Earl that it was a Conservative government who undertook the obligation of admitting 28,000 Ugandan Asians to this country. They did not ask for a referendum; they did not ask the taxpayer; it was an act of compassion.

I must answer the noble Lord's point. The Ugandan Asians were genuine asylum seekers; we are talking here about bogus asylum seekers. That is the concern of people in this country. If the noble Lord had stood in an election recently he would know that.

We are not talking about bogus asylum seekers; we are talking about genuine asylum seekers who are being persecuted, who need help, and who have come to this country for help. Those are the people we are talking about. The entire Bill is about how to help genuine asylum seekers to this country. My comments applied not only to the Ugandan Asians but also to the Vietnamese refugees, to people from Kosovo, as was mentioned, and to Hong Kong citizens, as my noble friend has just reminded me.

But let us not be diverted by that red herring. The Government indicated in the Commons that consideration would be given to making funds available to organisations which support asylum seekers who are granted leave to seek judicial review. Obviously, that is a welcome sign. However—perhaps the Minister can help me—the Legal Aid Board's recommendation to the Lord Chancellor suggests that legal aid will be available for applications for leave for judicial review, subject to strict merit and means tests. In cases where leave has been granted, legal aid should generally follow the eligible clients as a matter of course. Only those quality approved organisations with a contract will be able to apply for legal aid to seek leave. It is therefore unclear why asylum seekers who have been granted legal aid to apply for leave for judicial review should be denied subsistence support.

My Lords, this is an important issue. Let me make a preliminary point. Although one of the amendments refers to "dependent children", all of these amendments would affect only asylum seekers without dependent children. Under the provisions of subsection (5) of Clause 84, those asylum seekers who have dependent children will remain entitled to assistance under Part VI for as long as they remain in this country, even where their claims for asylum have been finally determined. So in this range of amendments, we are talking only about adults without dependants.

There are various gradations in the amendments. The most extreme—I do not put that in any pejorative way— is the one that says that support should be provided until the asylum seeker is removed from this country, irrespective of whether any kind of proceedings are continued and irrespective of whether the asylum seeker deliberately seeks to evade removal. The proposals then go down in gradations, seeking to cover various kinds of legal proceedings.

Perhaps I may briefly set out the policy. Under Clause 84, by the time an asylum seeker ceases to be eligible for support, he will have had his claim for asylum considered, first, by the Home Secretary. Assuming that that claim has been rejected, he will have had the opportunity to appeal to the immigration adjudicator, who is independent of the Home Secretary. If that has proved unsuccessful his case may be taken to the immigration appeals tribunal. And if that is unsuccessful, he may also take it to the Court of Appeal. I should say in parenthesis that some of the amendments refer to support being extended pending a hearing in the Court of Appeal. Support would continue in any event, whether there is an application to the Court of Appeal in respect of an appeal from the immigration appeals tribunal.

We are talking about a situation where an adult asylum seeker with no dependants has potentially had his claim heard by four separate executive bodies or independent tribunals: the Home Secretary; the appeals adjudicator; the immigration appeals tribunal; and the Court of Appeal. That is a fair and extensive judicial process for the consideration of a claim.

There may be a small number of cases where there is scope for further examination of the case by the court. I should add that no more than a quarter of applications for judicial review, which is one route that can be followed instead of the process to which I have referred, actually result in the granting of leave. However, I should make it clear that the Government recognise that there is a role for such a challenge. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, rightly pointed out, some of these challenges do succeed. They most often succeed not on the basis of the merits of the claim, but on the basis that there should be some reconsideration by one or other of the bodies to which I have referred.

We recognise the validity of this limited role for further challenge by making available funds to the voluntary sector to provide further support for hard cases who are still pursuing such applications. Indeed, the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, might be a means of indicating which are such cases; for example, cases where leave has been granted, or cases where legal aid has been granted because the Legal Aid Board takes the view that there is merit in the application, although ultimately it must be a matter for the voluntary sector as to where it believes its money should be spent. I should make it clear that the power to give grants to the voluntary sector in what is now Clause 102 was extended in another place to cover support of former asylum seekers precisely to cater for such circumstances.

The concern of the noble Lord and the noble Baroness is to protect former asylum seekers who are seeking further recourse to the courts. The proposal would cover people who are continuing to make representations of any sort, and often without any merit. It would also extend to people whom the Secretary of State has simply not been able to remove for any reason. I remind the Committee that in many cases, sadly, the failure to remove someone reflects that person's lack of co-operation in the removal process.

It is a sad fact that about two-thirds of all applications for asylum are eventually found to be without merit. Some of those are applications by people who believe themselves to have a real claim for protection that ought to meet the criteria of the 1951 convention. Others are made by people who have reached this country in order to benefit from the better life that is available here without having any real expectation that a claim for asylum would be met.

To allow everyone who has made an application for asylum an entitlement to support for as long as they remain in this country—which is what the amendment would in effect do—would encourage such people to prolong their claims for as long as possible and by whatever means or representations they could make. It would encourage them not to co-operate in the removal process. The sums we are making available for the support of meritorious asylum claims is considerable. We do not wish to devote yet further resources to supporting former asylum seekers whose claims have proved to be without merit. In substance, we have made available a long, comprehensive and fair judicial system of dealing with these claims.

With great respect to the noble Earl, Lord Russell, he overstates the case dramatically and unfairly when he suggests that this is a matter where justice would not be done. He also suggests that the judges would be "tempted" to put natural justice before statute. Involuntary movements of my head on a previous occasion should not be taken in any way to indicate assent to any proposition that Parliament is not sovereign. The courts will always strive to ensure that the statutes are construed in accordance with natural justice. But there is no principle in this country that natural justice can overturn statutes. That appears to be what the noble Earl suggested.

The procedure laid down by the Bill, giving substantial rights of appeal and ensuring that there is money for the voluntary sector to deal with the hard case, is a well thought-out process. On the one hand, it makes sure that people can pursue their rights sensibly but, on the other, it does not provide a system where there is encouragement to people to apply again and again for leave to apply for judicial review or to make representation after representation to the Home Secretary to ensure that their support continues.

That is the effect of all the amendments put down by noble Lords. In all of them, the simple act of making an application for leave to apply for judicial review, or further representations to the Home Secretary, prolongs the right to assistance. I do not believe that the balance would be right.

The noble Baroness shakes her head, but that is the effect of the amendment as drafted.

The noble Baroness is involuntarily shaking her head and the Minister should not read anything into it. I wish to draw his attention to one aspect of Amendment No. 155A. The phrase used is:

"and such period shall in any event be extended in the event that either party has been granted leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal or Court of Session, or leave to move for judicial review".

The amendment restricts itself to those who have received such leave. That is not because they are continually pressing illegitimately a demand for appeal, but because a court has decided that there are sufficient grounds to grant that leave. It would rule out a great many of the cases to which the Minister referred. It would place on all fours a right that the court recognised that the appellant had and that should be sustained by offering the appellant sufficient support to enable him to survive until the court has completed its considerations. That is what I understand by justice being seen to be done.

In so far as the application to the Court of Appeal arises as an appeal from the Immigration Appeal Tribunal, support will continue in any event. I do not wish to take a drafting point, although I can hardly resist it. The effect of the last three lines of the amendment is that if there are any proceedings pending it would include a further application for leave and then support continues.

Let us ignore that and take the noble Baroness's point that all we are dealing with is a case where leave has been granted for judicial review. The way it should be dealt with is by the voluntary sector providing support in hardship cases. That can be an emblem to them of when they should provide support.

That is the weakness of the Minister's argument. We all accept that there are hardship cases that fall outside the process of review. Those properly fall to the voluntary sector. I find it difficult, even impossible, to accept that while a court has granted judicial review to an asylum seeker—and in some parts of the Bill judicial review is recognised as being the acceptable route—the Immigration Appeal Tribunal is not open to the asylum seeker though there are parts of the Bill of which that is true. It also covers convention appeals. In those instances it is incumbent on any government to provide adequate support to enable the appellant to be sustained while he completes his legal rights. He cannot misuse them because he is dependent on the court giving him leave to make that further step.

Before we go any further I should like to clear my name from the suggestion that I was arguing that the principles of natural justice overrode statute. I may have inadvertently misled the House because I took trouble not to repeat myself. It seems that I was mistaken. I think that I dealt with the point on Clause 9. The principle on which I was relying was that stated by the Master of the Rolls in R v. Home Secretary ex parte Fayed. If Parliament wishes to confer a power to act unfairly it must say so in express words. That respects parliamentary sovereignty, and it was and is my position.

The Home Office's record in predicting the results of judicial reviews should not inspire us with confidence on whether that will interfere with the course of justice. One cannot know what the result of a case will be before the case is over. One may often vehemently suspect that there will be a particular result, but favourites do not always win, as all bookies know. It is not possible to tell the result of a case without hearing it. The deprivation of support may prevent a hearing and may therefore deny justice. It is argued that we cannot give such people support because it only encourages them. We have all been careful to moderate our language, but I cannot find that acceptable.

The Minister has said several times that the Government intend to grant funds to the voluntary sector for the hard cases that have been discussed. Have the voluntary organisations been consulted on that and have they given their consent to be involved in that way?

I do not know whether I am out of order, but I want to point out that, despite my earlier remarks, I was struck by the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby. If leave for appeal has been granted, a large proportion of the argument that I put forward earlier falls away and there is a reasonable case for support, which the Government should at least consider. It will be interesting to hear the Minister respond to that thought.

The persuasive powers of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, are unrivalled to have secured the agreement of the noble Earl, Lord Dartmouth. It is an unholy alliance, if I may say so.

The noble Baroness has moderated her position. She appears to have accepted that it would be right for the voluntary sector to support certain hard cases. Her argument appears to be that when leave to apply for judicial review has been granted, it is not appropriate for the voluntary sector to be involved, but there should be a right to continuing support.

That is one moderately small category of case, although the amendments are wide-ranging. Even in those cases—which will also be hard cases, but the easiest ones for the voluntary sector to identify—there should not be a right to support. The Government should make such support available indirectly through the voluntary sector.

We have consulted the voluntary sector on the right reverend Prelate's request and we are in continuing discussions on the issue.

In response to some of the points made by the Minister, I should like to draw his attention to correspondence I have received from two groups I met here, along with other noble Lords. They are from the voluntary sector, and it may well be that the Government are still in discussion with them. I hope that the Government will take note of the kind of comments made by the Brentwood Diocesan Commission for Justice & Peace in a letter to me following last week's meeting. It states:

"For many years, the voluntary organisations and faith groups have provided a much-needed safety net for asylum seekers, especially the destitute, and particularly since the Immigration and Asylum Act 1996. The work of this sector is recognised and valued by the Home Office to such an extent that it is now proposed, under the new Bill, to co-opt these organisations directly into the administration of official support arrangements for asylum seekers, and to provide funding for the work undertaken.

This creates a moral dilemma for the voluntary sector. Care of the destitute, and alleviation of their plight, is the main objective of much of the work of the organisations involved and in particular of faith groups. Now they are being asked to administer a system that is inherently biased against the interests of many asylum seekers, and which will operate under very strict guidelines. Co-opted agencies will not be permitted, for example, to assist asylum seekers who fall outside the proposed support arrangements and for whom the future will be bleak".

I will not quote at length from a second letter from the Notre Dame Refugee Centre in London. This letter was sent to the Minister of State and is dated 15th July. The letter states:

"As the director of just such a group, connected with the French Catholic Church of Notre Dame de France, I wish to express the dilemma we face in regard to the new measures proposed".

The voluntary organisations, the Churches and the charities which came to the House for a meeting last week in the Moses Room expressed concerns about the way this is being carried out. For that reason, I hope that when the Minister reflects on the debate he will weigh those questions carefully.

I welcome what he had to say about exemptions, and I am grateful for that. However, it raises an interesting point about the anomalies in the Bill. I am glad that we are showing compassion to families with dependants, who will continue to receive support. But why is it that someone, simply because he does not have dependants, will not have the same access to the judicial system? Is not that in itself discriminatory, and does that not put yet another anomaly into the system? We should be even-handed in this matter.

I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Dartmouth, for his subsequent intervention in the debate. I hope that he will continue to play an active part in our proceedings and will make further interventions like the second one he made. However, I am always arrested in my tracks when people talk of immigrants and asylum seekers as those who want only to take out of the system. In different terms, the Minister spoke of two-thirds coming here without merit. Those people are economic migrants who want to come here for a better life.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, who has spoken in these terms in other debates, I remember my own family history. That makes me feel that you should do to others as you would wish to be done by others. In my case, my mother came here at the end of the war as an immigrant. Her parents had died of meningitis and she left a large family in the west of Ireland. If it had not been for the generosity she was shown when she arrived here, I do not know what would have happened to her. Was she an economic migrant? Was she someone who would have been one of the two-thirds without merit? I do not know. However, I do know that many people who have arrived here for various reasons have made a significant contribution and have put a thousandfold back into the life of our nation.

The noble Earl, Lord Russell, reminded us of our duties since Magna Carta. He also reminded us of our own Judaeo-Christian tradition of treating the alien in the land as you would wish to be treated yourself. It is written in the discourses on the Decalogue, where Jews, Moslems and Christians look to that system of values. We should always treat the alien in the land with justice.

The other side of the coin of justice is the word "mercy". If there is something missing in our debates thus far, I believe that it has been inadequate reference to the word "mercy". People who find themselves in the desperate circumstances described by noble Lords in speaking to these amendments should not only be treated justly but also mercifully. We have had a useful airing of the issues, and we may well wish to return to them at Report stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

moved Amendment No. 155B:

moved Amendment No. 155C:

moved Amendment No. 156:

Some weeks ago I was approached by members of the Rationalist Press Association. They asked me to subscribe to a press release arguing that a reformed House should not include any Bishops. To their utter dismay, I refused point blank to do any such thing. We have heard tonight some of the reasons why I did so. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon has brought to our debates on the subject not only a wealth of pastoral experience but a philosophical position that, because it is oblique to those normally held by politicians, has immeasurably enriched our debates on this subject. We are privileged to have him here and I was delighted to listen to him.

On the matter of the amendment, I am reminded of an occasion when I was new in my lecturing job. The college maintained that it could only manage to pay us once every two months, because it was far too difficult to do anything else. A senior professor who was expert in accountancy was allowed to examine the books. He came back rubbing his hands in glee, saying that he had heard that there was once such a system of accounting but he had never thought to be privileged to see it in operation.

That is very much the way I feel when I look at paragraph 8.19 of the White Paper. It indicates that the Government are committed to providing such a safety net, but they are determined to do so in a way which minimises the incentive for abuse by those who do not really need the support or who would make an unfounded asylum application in order to obtain the provision. That is the myth of our exceptionally generous benefits system. That myth is etched into our national consciousness, but it is about as out of date as the belief that Britannia rules the waves.

A little over 24 hours ago, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Hereford was in the Chamber and spoke extremely powerfully in a debate on an amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Manchester, about the inadequacy of our benefit levels. He and I were among many speakers in every quarter of the Chamber who supported the proposition of the Acheson Report, itself a reputable enough source, that our benefit levels are now too low to sustain good health. If we look at them in a comparative dimension, they are on the low side of the EU benefits. I understand that Eurostat figures create technical problems with which I shall not detain the House, but whichever way we look at it we are somewhere in the bottom half of the EU as regards generosity of benefit levels. According to methods of calculation, we come probably somewhere between ninth and twelfth; either just above or just below Ireland, depending on the method of calculation chosen.

If benefits are acting as an incentive to draw people to one country in the West rather than another, one would expect the flow of applicants to this country to be rapidly diminishing because our levels of benefit are not among those which are particularly generous. I have previously given reasons for doubting how much they know in the back streets of Jaffna about British benefit levels. But if they do know, it is not working. If they do not know, it never will work. In any case, it gives me some apprehension to think of conducting a Dutch auction between the prosperous countries of the world as to which can lower their benefit levels fastest in order to make themselves least attractive to asylum seekers. If it is a Dutch auction, we are near enough to winning it not to need to put in a bid to undercut ourselves!

In the case of China, we have some interesting evidence about how far benefit levels attract or deter. Before the benefit changes, 71 per cent of Chinese asylum applications were at ports. In 1997–98, when only port applicants received benefits, those figures had dropped to 26 per cent and 25 per cent. Clearly, these people are not acting as a classic free-market economic man either because the need to live is more important than the level of benefits or, more likely, because they do not know the information.

Whether it is really a good idea to deter and make less attractive when we are already in the bottom half and people do not know what is happening anyway is a difficult issue. The level of benefits is low enough already, but it appears to me that what is being offered here, whatever the Government may say against it, is lower than the benefit level that is available to other people.

The Government make several points about utensils and so forth, but there is a vital principle involved in the possession of cash; namely, choice. If you are supplied with all your own equipment, as I am sure all those who have rented holiday villas have discovered occasionally the hard way, what is provided is not actually what you need.

Let us take the case of the Chinese asylum seekers to whom I referred just now. How many of them will move into social housing in Newcastle or Salford and find that they have been provided with a wok? I would guess not very many. That sort of problem will be repeated over and over again. Utility costs are quoted, but the percentage of a budget which goes on utility costs varies quite sharply from household to household. The calculation of a standard amount will be wrong in a great many cases.

It is argued that we can have a lower level of benefit because there will be no need to replace items. As the right reverend Prelate touched on, that is true only if the Government genuinely achieve their targets and people are on benefit vouchers in the short term. But in fact, even in the short term, it will not be true anyway. We know that many people who came out of Kosovo came carrying only what they could grab in a few seconds as they turned to run. For those people, replacement costs will be an extremely high proportion of their budget. There is no allowance in the vouchers for any equivalent of access to the Social Fund. That alone would make the figures very far from reliable.

On the first amendment on this part, the Minister said that we must take account of costs. I agree with him. I have often said so in this Chamber. But one of the objections to the Government's proposals is that, considering the cost of administration, the costs of the Government's proposals are actually higher than those of using an existing benefits system which has a well-established administration to run it. The Government are spending more in order to give less. In my book, that is not good value for money. When one considers cost, I believe that that is an argument for deferring what the Government are doing.

The Minister also said that we should take equal account of those who are destitute in our own country, and that we should not attempt a higher standard of provision than we give to them. I believe that that was roughly the purport of his argument. If he said anything like that—it is my recollection that he did so—

I said quite clearly that when discussing the level of different sorts of benefits to be given to those who come from other countries, it must be in the general context of what we provide for our own. I am happy to repeat that.

I entirely accept that proposition. It is to that proposition that I was arguing yesterday. I believe that that provision is itself inadequate. Our provision for asylum seekers should not be more inadequate than that. However, I believe that the Government's current proposals are indeed thus. I take the point already made by the Minister that in this case we are dealing with single people, not with families with children. The concession made on children today is one which I welcome very warmly indeed.

But single people have rights too. The tendency to assume that single people cannot be in hardship is one that I increasingly deplore. Of course one must care for children. But if you are single and your stomach is empty, it hurts just as much.

I put my name down to the amendment, but with all my characteristic ingenuity, I can think of nothing to add to the speech made by the right reverend Prelate or to that of the noble Earl opposite. Therefore, I do not wish to say anything more.

I fear that clapping will break out sharply throughout the Chamber. I should like to add a few words in support of the right reverend Prelate's amendment. I echo the remarks by the noble Earl, Lord Russell, in paying tribute to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon. Many of us know that he will shortly be retiring from the House and indeed will not be here for the Report stage of the Bill.

I believe that we shall be the poorer as a result of that. I also believe that asylum seekers and refugees, who have benefited so much over the years from contributions made on their behalf, will be the poorer as well. We hope that there will be many more platforms on which to advance their cause in the future.

In opening the debate the right reverend Prelate referred to the stigmatising effect of vouchers. I was struck by some remarks made to me by the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, hardly a radical organisation trying to drag down the Government. That organisation took a long look at the voucher system.

I am not sure why the noble Lord is talking about the merits or demerits of vouchers rather than the merits or demerits of the amendment.

I shall refer to their relevance to the amendment in due course, if the Minister will forbear. The right reverend Prelate, in introducing the amendment, referred to vouchers. That was not commented on by the Minister. As this amendment deals with eligibility for social security benefits while awaiting asylum decisions, and the new system will incorporate vouchers into that limited system, it seems perfectly relevant and in order to refer to them. A few moments ago, the noble Earl, Lord Russell, described at some length the disadvantageous effects of the voucher system. I shall simply add a few remarks of my own.

The CAB has stated:

"the voucher system will inevitably lead to social exclusion and discrimination … A system which requires asylum seekers to identify themselves as such whenever they visit the supermarket can only foster these regrettable features of our society".

That may make for unpalatable listening; nevertheless, it is a fact that if people have to produce vouchers in supermarkets when living—if other parts of this legislation are enacted—in dispersed areas, sometimes on sink estates or in areas where there may be considerable deprivation already, they can easily become targets for racism and vicious assaults by people who would resent their presence. Therefore, they will be stigmatised and singled out.

The issue of value for money was raised by the noble Earl, Lord Russell. I agree with him. I want to draw the attention of the Committee to the evidence given to the Special Standing Committee by Kent Social Services that the voucher system was,

"the difference between 4p and 14p in the pound".

That means that the voucher system is three and a half times more expensive than benefits. So where is the value for money? Where is the benefit to the taxpayers about which we have heard so much this evening?

I also want to support the remarks made by the noble Earl, Lord Russell, about the level of these entitlements that will be made available to people in the United Kingdom in future. In a comparison with our European neighbours, we do not appear very high in the league table. Although Germany receives twice as many asylum applications as we do, it provides £38.63p a week compared with our £27.90p a week, of which only £10 a week is paid in cash. Switzerland and the Netherlands, which take about the same number of asylum seekers as we do, provide £41.07p and £46.58p respectively. Therefore, it is clear that we are not over-generous in our provision for asylum seekers, as the amendment standing in the name of the right reverend Prelate recognises.

The voucher system has been tried and found wanting in other countries. In the early 1990s, Switzerland, for example, operated a system that allowed refugees to be given vouchers, but it was found to be administratively cumbersome. The agency that co-ordinates the work of refugees in Switzerland, the OSAR, was not aware, when asked, of any district still using the voucher system. The system has been abandoned because it was demeaning for asylum seekers and impractical to operate.

For all those reasons, I feel that the system that the Bill introduces will fail, that it is ineffective, and that it will stigmatise. For the reasons advanced by the right reverend Prelate, I hope that noble Lords will support the alternative that he has offered.

This amendment contains a major flaw. The speeches seemed to be an attempt to re-open the whole issue as to whether or not the asylum support directorate should be established to run a more comprehensive and integrated system of providing support, including accommodation, to asylum seekers. This does not seem to me to be the place to conduct that debate.

The fundamental problem with Amendment No. 156 is that, if passed, it would effectively require the Government, and the Home Secretary in particular, to organise two systems of support for asylum seekers alongside each other. It would not change the requirement to continue with establishing and putting in place the asylum support directorate and all that goes with it. But it would require the Government to put in place, through the Benefits Agency, arrangements for social security benefits to be paid to asylum seekers in this narrow group of circumstances. That puts further costs on the Government and a further set of arrangements which are unnecessary. I suggest therefore that we do not support the amendment.

I shall limit myself, as was agreed earlier, to the amendment.

This clause is trying to focus on the commitment to reduce the time taken to reach an initial decision. I repeat what my right honourable friend Jack Straw said on Report in the other place. He confirmed that asylum seeker families with minor children would not be taken into the new support system at 1st April 2000 unless he was satisfied that the target of two months for a decision time in those cases could be achieved.

I recognise that that may mean, at the outset of the new support arrangements, that the average waiting time and hence the average time spent on the new support scheme may be a little longer. But continuing with the current support arrangements, as my noble friend Lord Warner indicated a moment ago, is unsustainable. Asylum seekers will receive a fairer deal under the new support arrangements, which is why we want to give effect to them as soon as possible. I cannot agree therefore that it is appropriate to delay the commencement of Part VI in the way suggested.

I am sorry that the right reverend Prelate is to leave us soon. He and I had helpful discussions which we both found productive, in particular on the Human Rights Act. I had not realised that he was to leave until the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said so and I share his personal regret.

Earlier this evening we spent a great deal of time with various Members of the Committee urging that we ought to have a two-track system for those, in particular, with children; that is what it came to. Now the two-track system, as it is alleged to be, is said to be utterly wrong in principle. It is said that vouchers are a stigma. But all this amendment does is put off for a time the intermediate period up to the time when asylum seekers would all be on a voucher system. The noble Earl, Lord Russell, mentioned cost and the level of benefit across Europe was spoken of. I find those comparisons of limited use. Many countries provide more generous benefits to their own citizens, but do not give the same level to asylum seekers. Many countries have quite separate arrangements.

I was asked about delay by the right reverend Prelate. We are putting in an additional £120 million over three years to achieve our targets. We are recruiting 2,000 additional caseworkers. Decisions at the moment, in terms of case resolution, have been running at an average of about 900 decisions a week. We have to invest money in casework. We have to provide funding for support in any event. If we look at the overall arrangements in the Bill, they will be more cost effective.

It is said that benefits are not a magnet. I have to disagree. It is difficult otherwise to explain rationally the large number of applicants from Eastern Europe— I am not talking about the noble Earl's knowledge of those who live in the back streets of Jaffna. A large number of applicants are from Eastern Europe. They have a very low success rate; they make every effort to apply for asylum at port of entry and therefore receive benefits. They generally congregate in the south-east.

If I inadvertently said an additional 2,000 case workers, I am very sorry. I thought I had said 200. If it was heard correctly or misheard as 2,000 I correct myself immediately. I am obliged to my noble friend Lord Burlison for jogging my arm on that.

It is said that changes in application rates in 1996 were not as a result of benefit changes. I believe that they were. It is very difficult to resist the conclusion that the withdrawal of benefits, draconian though it was, did not have an effect.

In summary, therefore, we have come to a policy decision. We have given the undertaking which I have repeated and which Jack Straw made about families with dependent children. Being realistic, as I say, there may be a slightly longer time than average spent when the new support scheme starts. We are intent on starting it. I am not going to re-traverse the dispute about vouchers, whether families with children should be treated differently and whether the cost is going to be affected. I believe that we shall deliver something which is efficient, effective and humane. Therefore, I ask the Committee not to agree to this amendment.

Before the Minister again speaks in that slightly dismissive way about the low rate of successful applications from eastern Europe, I ask him to look at the Refugee Legal Centre's hearings on the claims of the Roma who landed at Dover. I believe he will find that it is not quite as simple as he suggested.

I set the facts before the Committee.

I am greatly warmed by the gracious words of the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool. I particularly liked the way in which the noble Earl phrased his impression of the distinctive contribution which came from these Benches and which we hope that we shall be permitted to continue. I also very much enjoyed the humour with which he made his points about benefit levels. I know the back streets of Jaffna having lived on the island of Sri Lanka for some years. Indeed, it was my perception of the mismatch between what was happening there and the perception in this country of what was occurring there which first drew me to be concerned with these issues. I am glad to support the remarks the noble Lord made about the inadequacy of the support proposed.

The noble Lord, Lord Alton, made points about the exclusion which will be induced by having to produce vouchers and the way in which it will be easy for asylum seekers to become targets for the resentful. As regards the major flaw which the noble Lord, Lord Warner, mentioned, it seems that there will have to be two systems because of the concession which has been made for families with children. 'Therefore, regardless of whether this amendment is accepted, or something like it, we shall be operating with two systems.

The Minister did not address the issue of the Government's confidence in their own ability, even with the additional resources he mentioned, to meet their own targets. It seems to me that in refusing this amendment the Government effectively are having to admit that they are covering themselves in the event of their targets not being realised. I do not believe that it was a satisfactory answer. I hope that we shall return to this matter at Report stage. As has already been mentioned, I shall not myself be present in the House then as a Member. I shall sadly miss not only these debates but those which I have shared in your Lordships' House over the years concerning many matters.

I was encouraged yesterday to train young Bishops in the issues of immigration and asylum. I mentioned to my colleague, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark, that I had received some encouragement to do that. I believe that he was flattered to be considered a young Bishop. In any case, he will be the lead Bishop on the issues of asylum and immigration in your Lordships' House in the future. I know that he will perform that role with great confidence and success. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

moved Amendment No. 158:

Amendment. No. 159, which has been grouped with Amendment No. 158, stands in my name, that of my noble friend and that of the noble Earl, Lord Russell. It seems to me that both of them go together, in the sense that Amendment No. 159 seeks to question subsection (2) of Clause 85, which allows the Government in "prescribed circumstances" to exclude people from this support. If anyone is to be excluded under this subsection, subsection (1) has to say "may" rather than "shall"; otherwise, the exclusion would have no effect and there would be an obligation on the Secretary of State to provide the support. Therefore, I do not think that Amendment No. 158 necessarily has the sort of apocalyptic connotations which the noble Lord, Lord Alton, seemed to suggest in part of his remarks.

However, on the other hand, as will be apparent from the fact that I have tabled Amendment No. 159, I have some interest in who will be excluded from this provision. We obtained some guidance on this matter from the Explanatory Notes that were issued with the Bill. We are all grateful for them. Paragraph 241 states:

"Regulations can be made under subsection (2) to exclude people from entitlement under prescribed circumstances; for example, a person who had previously caused serious damage to property provided under the support arrangements might be excluded".

I understand the wish to penalise someone who has caused serious damage to property, but to exclude him entirely from support in those circumstances may or may not be appropriate to the damage which has been caused. The details of that provision would need to be carefully spelt out.

The paragraph continues:

"or an asylum seeker who was entitled to benefits".

It seems to me that under the normal rule a person should not receive two lots of support from the state. Therefore, I am not sure how the final provision in that paragraph would apply. If one assumes that there are asylum seekers who are entitled to benefit, I do not think that they should receive support under the arrangements we are discussing on top of that benefit. I tabled Amendment No. 159 to probe who will be excluded from support under the prescriptions which will be laid down.

In supporting both these amendments, I should like to say a few words in support of Amendment No. 159 to which I have added my name. The amendment seeks to delete the words,

"In prescribed circumstances, a person who would otherwise fall within subsection (1) is excluded".

This is a Henry VIII clause of a fairly far-reaching kind. It authorises the Secretary of State to remove a right to benefits from such people as he sees fit. I quote only the comments on this clause from the Delegated Powers and Deregulation Committee, which states,

"We question the need for clause 85(2), which would enable the Secretary of State to remove this lynchpin of support from those who, in the words of clause 85(1) are 'destitute or … likely to become destitute', and recommend its deletion from the bill, or at the very least that the circumstances under which the power may be exercised are set out on the face of the bill".

I shall not try to say it better.

When we covered this ground previously, the relevant legislation was in many ways draconian and it appeared likely that many people— many of them with genuine cases—would be left destitute. On that occasion we were rescued by the Court of Appeal which found an earlier statute which could be helpful. There seems to me a strong case for making new legislation certain in the first place. On those grounds, I support Amendment No. 158.

How can an asylum seeker who is entitled to benefits be destitute?

As regards Amendment No. 158, we have in this Bill a clear commitment to establish a proper scheme for the support of asylum seekers. As the Committee will know from the extensive consultations we have already engaged in, we are well on the way to achieving this. There is a clear policy on how we propose to operate the power set out in Clause 85 which will be fleshed out further in regulations covering the operation of the scheme, drawing on the various regulation-making powers that are contained within this part of the Bill.

Amendments Nos. 158 and 159 are, in effect, two sides of the same coin. They seek to raise the following question; namely, in what circumstances could someone appear to be destitute—because that is the test under the Bill—and yet not receive support under the scheme?

There is plainly merit in keeping the powers in this area fairly open and flexible. Legislation such as this will be on the statute book for a good number of years and may well have to address scenarios that we do not currently envisage. I would remind the Committee that the number of asylum seekers has grown tenfold over the past 10 years. We do not know what we will need to cope with in the future or how. I doubt that future governments would thank us for tying their hands with a specific duty rather than a flexible power.

We are committed to ensuring the proper support for people pending the outcome of their asylum applications. The noble Lords cannot be unaware that we are investing considerable resources in establishing comprehensive new support arrangements to be effective from 1st April 2000. We are committed to making these work.

In relation to the kinds of cases we would wish to take out of support, perhaps I may mention three. First, as the Explanatory Notes indicate, there is a small number of people claiming asylum who may be eligible for social security benefits; for example, those already here on indefinite leave or members of countries that are signatories to the European Social Charter or the European Convention on Medical and Social Assistance. They do not need access to this support. They will be removed from the exclusions from benefit contained in Clause 106 by virtue of regulations under Clause 106(3). The power in Clause 85(2) is complementary to that one.

Such people must be deemed to be destitute because, if they are not deemed to be destitute, they do not come under subsection (1).

They would if they appear to the Secretary of State to be destitute. Let us look at the definition of "destitute" in Clause 85(3):

"For the purposes of this section, a person is destitute if—

(a) he does not have adequate accommodation or any means of obtaining it … or … he has adequate accommodation or the means of obtaining it, but cannot meet his other essential living needs".

On the test, he would appear to be destitute, yet he has the means to get benefit and therefore the asylum support scheme should not apply.

That is a bigger admission of the inadequacy of benefits than I have heard from any Minister. The noble and learned Lord might like to reconsider his words.

If a person is here on indefinite leave and has no means of support except access to benefit, he would appear to be destitute under the meaning of Clause 85(1). It seems to me a matter of common sense that he would not there fore be entitled to support both under the benefits system and under the provision of the support scheme under Clause 85. That is all I am saying. It seems to me a short and rather straightforward point. I do not see why he should be supported twice. That would be the effect of the removal of Clause 85(2) and the change of the 'word from "may" to "shall'.

Let me take a second example. There are those who in some way abuse or seek to exploit the new arrangements. Someone who arrives with £50 in his pocket will very shortly become destitute; there is no suggestion that he should not be covered. But what about someone who arrives with £5000 in cash and who, three days later, turns up claiming to be penniless, with no explanation of where the money went? Would the Committee wish that the full range of assistance be automatically available to that person, even where he presents himself as prima facie destitute? That is a case where he could appear to the Secretary of State otherwise to be destitute.

Before the Minister proceeds with his remarks, may I press him a little further. We have already recognised in Clause 85(1) that the person concerned is or is likely to be destitute. We secondly find that the Bill, under Clause 85(2), states:

"In prescribed circumstances, a person who would otherwise fall within subsection (1) is excluded".

It does not explain in any detail who that person might be. It is a very wide power. The Delegated Powers and Deregulation Committee made clear that such a power is inappropriate in a Bill of this kind. I quote the words of the committee:

"We question the need for clause 85(2), which would enable the Secretary of State to remove this lynchpin of support from those who, in the words of clause 85(1) are 'destitute or … likely to become destitute', and recommend its deletion from the bill, or at very least that the circumstances under which the power may be exercised are set out on the face of the bill".

This is a matter of great seriousness. The Government have been responsive to many of the points that we have made. However, it is fair to say that we know of no case where a recommendation expressed in such powerful terms by the Select Committee has been rejected by a government. I think that those Members of the Opposition who represent the Conservative Party will be able to confirm that that is their experience with regard to the government who were in power until 1997.

We beg Ministers to think again about this provision. It would set a very dangerous precedent, one that would enable Henry VIII powers to be widely introduced. Certainly, to disregard the advice of the Select Committee on Delegated Powers and Deregulation without the most powerful arguments being adduced— and with great respect to the Minister they have not so far been adduced—seems to us extremely unwise.

I confirm that it is my understanding that the previous government did accept the recommendations of the Select Committee.

First, I accept that this is a very important issue. I accept that it is sufficiently important for the noble Baroness to repeat the ipsissima verba of the noble Earl, Lord Russell, who quoted precisely the same part of the report of the Delegated Powers and Deregulation Committee. That was a perfectly legitimate response.

With the greatest respect to the noble Baroness, she asked for the circumstances to be explained in which there will be cases where a person might appear to be destitute but would not receive support under the asylum support scheme. I have indicated the first occasion, which is where a person might be eligible for benefit; the person would fall within the provisions in Clause 85(1) but it would not be appropriate to obtain support under the scheme. The second example I gave was where a person may appear to be destitute but the circumstances in which that person has become destitute are so suspicious that the Secretary of State should be entitled, without necessarily having to go behind the appearance of destitution, to say that benefit is not appropriate in this case. The third case is the one referred to in the Explanatory Notes; namely, where a person has previously caused serious damage to property provided under the support arrangements.

One of the two circumstances in which a person is to be treated as destitute under the terms of the Bill is where that person does not have adequate accommodation or a means of obtaining it, whether or not other essential living needs are met. What is the state to do where someone who has been provided with adequate accommodation severely damages that property and does so on a number of occasions? Is the state obliged in those circumstances to go on providing property?

The examples that I give cannot be exhaustive. However, they indicate three perfectly sensible cases where it would not be appropriate to provide support under the benefit scheme provided under Clause 85. If that is correct, it is right that Clause 85 should not be in terms of duty but in terms of power. Secondly, it is right, as a reinforcement or reverse of that, that there should be circumstances in which the Secretary of State can prescribe circumstances in which someone who would otherwise appear to be destitute could be excluded from the support scheme under Clause 85.

Having said that, I should make it clear that we have given undertakings that we will provide a comprehensive new support arrangement, which we are determined should be effective from 1st April 2000. I should also make clear that these arrangements would take the form of regulations governing the operation of the scheme which will obviously come before Parliament again. In those circumstances, there is not much between us. Once it is established that there are circumstances in which it would not be appropriate to provide someone with support under the scheme who otherwise appeared to be destitute, the form of drafting appears to me appropriate. This is about drafting and nothing else.

Perhaps I may take it one stage further. As the Minister argues that there are clear circumstances where the continuation of any form of support would be inappropriate—and one can think of examples—would he be willing to accede to the Committee's proposal that this be set out on the face of the Bill? Can the noble and learned Lord tell the Committee why he believes that, so far at least, that has not proved to be possible?

Because it would be inappropriate in a case such as this exhaustively to set out the circumstances in which someone would not be entitled to support under the scheme. This scheme will last for a considerable time. It must be sufficiently flexible for the benefit of both the asylum seeker and the taxpayer in the sense of what is available and what is not. In determining a whole system of support, it does not seem to me that the details should be on the face of primary legislation.

The Minister responded in terms that many of us assumed he would as regards this debate. It is very much in line with the remarks made by the Minister of State in another place. The noble and learned Lord will not be surprised that some of us found them a little disappointing, although we recognise that he has also expressed his determination to ensure that this does not militate against the most disadvantaged.

The basic proposition in our argument does not question the good faith of the Minister or the Home Office but how it might be interpreted by others if it is not written on to the face of the Bill. The only flexibility that is available by not incorporating the word "shall" instead of "may" in Clause 85 is the flexibility not to provide destitute asylum seekers with food and shelter. I find that extraordinary.

I do not believe a great deal separates us on the need to address the problem. As the Minster has marginally left the door ajar for him to think about the wording of the amendment, I hope that between now and Report stage we will have a chance to see whether there is a form of words which would meet the arguments. I suspect that otherwise Members of the Committee will wish to return to the subject. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

moved Amendment No. 160:

I wonder if I could help the Committee by dealing discretely with the point about the Delegated Powers and Deregulation Committee's recommendation in case others had similar concerns. We are reflecting on the best way of addressing the issue and we intend to return to the matter on Report.

I am sure that the whole Committee is grateful for the Minister's pre-emptive strike. I wish to speak to Amendments Nos. 161 and 164 and I support the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Cope of Berkeley, on his amendments.

The two amendments in my name concentrate on the housing needs and the basic requirements of asylum seekers in the neighbourhoods where they are settled. My noble friend Lord Sandwich and I raised our concerns last week during the meeting with the Minister of State and his officials to which I referred earlier.

Twenty years ago I was the chairman of one of the country's largest housing committees in Liverpool. The committee was well intentioned in wanting to help some of the boat people from Vietnam who were seeking refuge in this country. Along with the other Merseyside boroughs, we put together a plan to assist those asylum seekers and more than 1,000 came to Merseyside. Our experience leads me to question the assumptions on which some of the Government's policies are based, particularly the issue of adequate housing needs rather than suitable housing needs, which is the subject of Amendment No. 161.

We were well intentioned, but hard-to-let accommodation on sink estates was inevitably used. In dispersed areas, mainly around the periphery of the city, people were left without common or familial support systems. They had no access to language facilities to help them. In one way the council was being relieved of the embarrassment of empty properties from which it was drawing no rent.

I was concerned to learn during the recent Kosovo crisis that the same local authority was suggesting that properties that have been vacant for some years might be made available to refugees. I know that that would draw in resources to a local authority that often finds itself short of funds, but the properties were not suitable for our tenants, who had been moved out of them some years before, and would certainly not be suitable for Kosovan refugees any more than the properties that we made available 20 years ago were suitable for the Vietnamese refugees.

Based on that hard experience, I commend Amendment No. 161, which would specify that the accommodation provided must be suitable for the needs of the individual even though it is temporary. The asylum support information document states an intention to make "acceptable" provision for asylum seekers. This amendment in a sense probes the good faith of that statement.

Accommodation, however temporary, which is not suitable to the needs of the individual asylum seeker, and his dependants, if any, is not capable of taking them out of destitution and is thus not capable of fulfilling the basic purpose of the scheme. For example, accommodation that is perfectly adequate in itself may be unsuitable for a wheelchair user if the sleeping and toilet facilities are not on the same level, or someone with a phobia about heights may find that the accommodation he is offered is on the 14th floor.

The point about location suitable for resettlement is crucial to making good the Government's stated intention that new arrangements should not penalise refugees. The particular accommodation offered under the scheme will be temporary, but every effort should be made to locate asylum seekers in areas where they can start to put down roots as soon as possible. It is accepted that those whose claims ultimately fail will then be uprooted. But for those who are recognised as refugees, there should be a realistic possibility of staying on in the area where they first settled, along with all the support systems that surely have to go with the policy of dispersal.

The Home Office itself has emphasised that it wishes to see those asylum seekers who are recognised as refugees, or are otherwise granted leave to remain in the United Kingdom, settle in the areas to which they are dispersed. It would prefer not to see secondary migration, particularly not back to the capital. The cases of the Ugandan Asians and the Vietnamese are examples of the way in which previous dispersal schemes have lasted for only a short time before secondary migration has taken over. If the Government are to achieve their stated objectives, then the factors set out in Amendment No. 161 must be taken to heart.

I would also commend to the Minister a first-hand experience of recent months. I commend to him a report which appeared on Thursday, 8th July, in the Harrow Times, which described how a man set fire to himself after facing eviction from a property. The report states:

"An Iranian asylum seeker who was due to be moved from a Harrow Weald hostel to Devon tried to set himself on fire because he was so upset by the news, a Harrow court heard last week".

The report goes on to say:

"The court was told that the 32-year-old barricaded himself in his room when he was told to leave temporary accommodation … and wrapped himself in a sheet and set light to it while holding a knife to his throat until police broke down the door".

It is cases like that which illustrate my point. What we may regard as being perfectly adequate may not be suitable. Therefore, we should look carefully at these definitions, which have been used in housing legislation over the years. "Suitable" has particular connotations in the context of legislation dealing with homeless people.

I wish also to commend Amendment No. 164. The amendment provides a duty to assist destitute asylum seekers. It would be a way to fulfil the covenant set out in the White Paper. However, as the provision is drafted, the Home Office would be able to refuse assistance, leaving people homeless and without the means of subsistence. I wish to draw to the attention of the Committee the views of Shelter, one of the most highly respected agencies in this country. It states:

"There are complex reasons why such housing is empty including the physical condition of properties; isolation of housing from transport, leisure and shopping facilities and employment; crime and the fear of crime and harassment".

It goes on to state:

"The factors which must be disregarded in deciding whether accommodation is adequate are precisely the factors that describe the inadequacy of the accommodation".

Without labouring the point—I recognise that the hour is late—I commend the two amendments to the Committee.

I thank the Minister for his earlier intervention in dealing with a discrete issue. I apologise to him for failing to respond to remarks made at the end of the debate on Amendment No. 156. He commented on the work that he and I did in the context of human rights. I thank him for his very careful consideration of our concern. My memory is that the concern had been expressed originally by the Conservative Party, but I was also able to express it on behalf of this Bench. That matter gave rise to considerable confusion among the Liberal Democrats at the time. We were extremely grateful for the concession, which was perhaps somewhat unexpected, in relation to that particular Bill. I am grateful to the Minister for his willingness to listen on so many occasions and assist this House in every possible way, and also for his kind remarks about myself.

My noble friend Lord Alton needs absolutely no support from me. Therefore I follow the example of the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, and sit down, having said that the reasons given by the Minister when we went to see him appeared to be rather technical. I hope that he will be able to expand on those reasons, particularly in view of what I am sure will be his general sympathy for the observations that have been made.

I dealt with Amendment No. 166 in an earlier intervention. Therefore, in this debate we are concerned with Amendments Nos. 160, 161, 164, 164A and 165. I respect the concern expressed for the welfare of children in Amendment No. 160. There is no inherent reason why shared accommodation should not be adequate to meet an asylum seeker's living needs, bearing in mind that his stay in this country as an asylum seeker will be for a relatively limited period when we have new support arrangements in place and faster asylum decisions are delivered. Sharing is not the same as overcrowding. Shared facilities may be acceptable, for example where they are shared by only two or three adults. That is by no means uncommon in houses in multiple occupation in the country generally.

I agree that as for families we may need to consider different criteria in respect of such matters as access to bathroom and kitchen facilities. I confirm that the Government would not regard arrangements that prejudiced the health and welfare of a child as adequate for the purposes of Clause 85. To respond to one point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, in my view first-floor accommodation without a lift is not adequate for a person in a wheelchair.

We have not formulated the details of the scheme by which we shall assess people for destitution and then provide the appropriate support. I assure the Committee that we are alive to the questions that have been raised relating to regulations to be made under Clause 85(8). I do not believe that we need to reflect that by way of amendment to the primary legislation. I hope that I am being helpful in acknowledging that within the secondary legislation we may well wish to reflect the need for the welfare of families to be properly taken into account in making judgments about accommodation.

I hope that I have dealt with the spirit of the concerns about "suitable" raised by the noble Lord, Lord Alton. One of the problems is that, as he knows better than I, in the context of housing legislation there is a mass of judicial adjudication. We need to be careful not to confuse the two. Housing legislation is essentially concerned with people who are established in this country. Many of them have extensive possessions and settled lifestyles, and, therefore, their needs are different.

We want to provide asylum seekers with accommodation that is adequate for their needs: shelter and facilities for the proper preparation of food, sleeping and personal hygiene. But that accommodation must also reflect their circumstances. I do not believe that we need another definition that may be inappropriate for the reason that I mentioned. I undertake to consider carefully whether there is a need to use the regulations under Clause 87 to give a more precise meaning to the new concept of "adequate".

I turn to Amendment No. 164. I have already indicated our general approach. I doubt that we need to detail matters in primary legislation. Some of the points may well need to be covered in regulations to be made under Clause 87(1)(c); others will be a matter for the Secretary of State's scheme and the desk instructions that go with it. I undertake that we shall consult on the content of the regulations later this year. We shall also publish a revised version of the process manual which sets out the way in which an asylum seeker's case for support will be processed. We shall be asking asylum seekers whether they have any special needs at the time we consider the initial application. If there are special needs—such as physical disability; to take one illustration further—we should want to take those into account in deciding what sort of support to offer and in what location.

I appreciate the tone of the Minister's reply on these points. Can the noble Lord give us any indication of when the regulations to which he refers might be published? Shall we have sight of even a draft version before Report stage?

I am not sure about the time-scale. I shall write to the noble Lord before we break for the Summer Recess, even if it is to say that my uncertainty remains the same and I cannot give more than an indication. However, I shall do the best that I can by next Thursday.

I said that we should be looking to considerations of safety and welfare; locations where there are others from the same ethnic background or with similar experiences; putting individuals where they will not be subject to racial harassment; and taking full account of the general need for decent, habitable accommodation.

The Home Office has surpassed itself. I now have the intelligence that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, wanted. We shall consult in October, and the regulations should be available in the new year (February). At the end of February, I know that the noble Lord will be asking me where they are, but that is the information I have.

It is important to reiterate what my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer and I have said on many occasions: children of asylum seekers will continue to enjoy the full protection of the Children Act in all essential respects, and their accommodation and essential living needs will be provided under the Part VI arrangements. In particular—I am going further than the point raised this evening—if there is a particular need to protect children—for example, if they are likely to be victims of abuse—I am happy to confirm that they will be able to continue to rely on the good offices of local authority social services departments.

On public health, those seeking asylum at port of entry would normally be subject to a health screening for infectious or similar diseases. We shall consider what other steps need to be taken in the cluster areas (as believe that I can call them) to maintain good public health given the influx of asylum seekers. We expect—it is the point of the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia—that legal services suitable to the needs of asylum seekers will develop in the areas where we are relocating. That is part of the continuing discussions with the Lord. Chancellor's Department which my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer mentioned earlier.

I shall revert in more detail to this point on a later amendment, but touch on it now. A small number of asylum seekers require specialist services to address conditions which result from torture. I pay tribute to the very fine work of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. Where it is clear that someone needs specialised services which cannot be delivered other than through a body of that sort, and the location of that body does not fit in with our normal cluster arrangements, we shall consider the possibility of finding accommodation adjacent to those services. It is a limited number of cases, but that does not make the point any less important. I shall retain for the next amendment the further good news arising out of our conversations so that we can all go to bed content, if not happy.

We have to look to landlords who can provide quality accommodation on a suitable basis and who will be willing and able to rehouse those who have been granted asylum. I stress that we are talking from our experience. The Bosnian resettlements exercise about five years ago showed that if you put enough effort into it, and people are settled alongside others from a similar background, it can be effective.

Amendments Nos. 164A and 165 involve an extremely neat piece of drafting. They turn the point of the Bill utterly on its head. For that reason, if for no other, I am unable to accept them. One of the problems at the moment is that some London authorities and their social services departments just cannot cope. In some London boroughs, half of the temporary accommodation that the boroughs use is now occupied by asylum seekers. That is a great difficulty and we should not close our minds to it.

Other parts of the United Kingdom have a surplus of spare housing. I take the point made by the noble Lord. Lord Alton of Liverpool, that some of it is not good, but some of it is perfectly suitable. In fact, there were more than 75,000 vacancies in local authority housing outside the London area.

We want to try to house people from the same background in the same areas wherever possible and we shall do our best to do so. At the risk of being rebuked for being Mr Scrooge yet again, I may say that the homelessness legislation, which is the nearest parallel in this context, does not envisage any choice of accommodation for the person being assisted. Most asylum seekers being accommodated at the moment by virtue of judicial intervention—as the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, said—under the National Assistance Act 1948 are not given any choice about location of accommodation. If we succeed in our aim of having a relatively short period of accommodation, anyone who is granted leave to remain in this country will have the ability to make whatever arrangements they wish.

I think that I have covered most of the questions that have been raised. I hope that the Committee accepts that I have been reasonably helpful. I stress, as my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton said earlier, that we are having a meeting with interested parties tomorrow. We are willing to approach questions in an open-minded way as long as they are consistent with the general spirit of the Bill. I hope that I have demonstrated that with this clutch of amendments.

I am grateful to the Minister for his reaction to Amendment No. 166 and for his pre-emptive strike. I remain puzzled by the fact that the Government, as the Minister reiterated, propose to ask the supported people what their special needs may be but will include a statutory ban on the Secretary of State taking any notice of any preference they might express about where they wish to live. That is an odd provision.

Amendment No. 160 was the main amendment in this group, and I have been reassured by what the Minister said and by the provisions of Clause 113(3) and (4), to which the Minister, had he wished to extend the debate, could also have referred.

I wonder whether the Minister has said his last word on clusters. Has he responded to the concerns of the Medical Foundation and others about specialised medical and legal services?

Yes, at some length. Indeed, I said that I had one more point to make about the victims of torture. Otherwise, I think that I have dealt with the matter quite fully.

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

moved Amendment No. 162:

My amendment deals with a completely different point to that raised by my noble friend. The only common feature of the amendments is that they are both attached to Clause 86. I should like to preface my remarks with a comment on subsection (1)(b) of Clause 86. The Minister will observe that the Bill states:

"Support may be provided under Section 85—by providing what appears to the Secretary of State to be essential living needs of the supported person".

As a matter of English construction, If do not believe that the Secretary of State can provide for the living needs of a person. He can provide resources to meet the living needs of a person. The wording of that subsection needs to be considered. I should perhaps have tabled an amendment to that effect, but it came to my notice in the course of considering where to put my own amendment, which deals with the question of vouchers.

The amendment attempts to address the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, when moving his amendment a few minutes ago. He emphasised that the use of the vouchers causes a stigma to be attached to the recipient; that he may be subject to racist harassment or abuse as the result of being picked out as different from the rest of the people in the supermarket. My amendment suggests that vouchers should be made transferable to address that problem. I must say as a preface that it is difficult to draft an amendment of this kind when we do not have the voucher scheme before us. We are working blind, as it were. It would certainly have been, and still would be, useful if the Minister could table the regulations which contain the scheme for the vouchers before Report stage so that we can more easily see where such a provision should go.

My suggestion is that the vouchers should be made transferable so that the asylum seeker himself or herself does not need to go into Tesco's or Sainsbury's, as the case may be, to cash them. He can give them to someone else; that person can do the shopping for him; and therefore he does not need to be singled out in front of the whole crowd of shoppers as a person who is distinct from the settled population.

A provision of this kind is essential because some of the recipients may not be able to get to a supermarket. They may be disabled; they may be ill; they may be bedridden, and if they cannot pass the vouchers on to another person, it is difficult to imagine how they will provide for their essential needs.

A situation can be imagined where a number of asylum seekers live together. In response to the previous amendment, the Minister said that it was by no means inadequate for people to live in shared accommodation. If two or more families live in shared accommodation, it would be natural for them to share the burden of the weekly shop by transferring all the vouchers to one person to do the shopping for everyone in the shared accommodation.

I do not need to say much more about the amendment as it is such a common sense provision that I am sure that the Minister will have no difficulty in accepting it.

I speak to the amendments standing in my name on the Marshalled List: Amendments Nos. 167, 168 and 169 which have been grouped in what the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has rightly described as a disparate group of amendments. In many ways, they have little in common with each other apart from the fact that they fall within the same part of the Bill. It would have been better if they had been separated. However, I want to refer to one or two remarks already made and to add some comments about Amendment No. 167.

The noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, when speaking to Amendment No. 169, reminded me why 16 or 17 years ago I gave up several weeks of my life happily campaigning for her in the Crosby area. It has been a pleasure to listen to her putting the case on behalf of refugees and asylum seekers. Although we sit on different Benches, I concur with everything that she has said throughout our proceedings on the Bill. On Amendment No. 169, she was right to raise the issue of the role of voluntary organisations, charities, churches and religious groups to which I referred earlier. Those arguments still stand, without me having to repeat them.

The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, on Amendment No. 163, referred to an earlier debate initiated by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon when several noble Lords mentioned the question of vouchers. I support his comments and refer to some remarks of Oona King, a Member of another place, who gave a good example of how vouchers will reduce purchasing power, and therefore why the value of a package will be worth less. In Commons Hansard of 16th June at cols. 446–447 she referred to the fact that in Sainsburys in Whitechapel, where vouchers are accepted, a pair of new children's socks cost £1.50 while on Whitechapel market, 20 yards away, a pair of children's socks cost only 40p. The same is true of food. Of course, change will not be given for vouchers. I can imagine people becoming involved in arguments in the supermarket as they try, with poor comprehension of English, to sort out all the issues that will arise at the supermarket counter when trying to deal with the vouchers.

For the reasons that I described earlier, this is an ill-thought-out scheme and no doubt one which in future legislation we shall have to rescind. It would be better if we addressed the matter properly now, rather than incorporating it into legislation only to have to revisit it, as we have done with some of the misplaced ideas that have emerged in the previous two pieces of legislation dealing with such issues.

I now turn to the substantive amendment standing in my name. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cope of Berkeley, for his support, to the noble Lord. Lord Clinton-Davis, and to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark, who have also put their names to the amendment. Although many of us dislike the voucher system, I recognise that at the moment that is the policy with which the Government are working. Amendment No. 167 tries, in the spirit of that policy, to address the Government's contention with regard to the value of the package that they have laid out in the terms of the Bill. That was a point that my noble friend Lord Sandwich, along with Mr. Michael Kaye of the Refugee Council, took to the Minister and his officials in the helpful meeting that we had with him last week.

There are four reasons the Government advance against accepting the arguments contained in the amendment. Let me try and deal with them quickly. The first is that the scheme is a short-term basic safety net. Asylum seekers' entitlement to income support has already been reduced to 90 per cent on the basis that they are only supposed to be waiting a short period of time for their decisions. But asylum seekers should not have to survive on less because they are only here on a temporary basis. That is not a plausible argument. Income support is only intended to meet an individual's basic needs, and those needs must be met regardless of whether it is for a period of two months or two years.

Secondly, the argument is put forward that the package is not intended to cover utility costs. But a family of four in receipt of income support, including family premium, would pay 8.8 per cent of their benefit on utility costs. That is calculated from standard, flat-rate fuel deductions for a family at £12.35 which are used when individual fuel costs are not easily identifiable. That calculation was confirmed by the Official Report, Commons, 10/6/99; col. 455, when it was said that it would be no more than 10 per cent. So the payment of utility costs by the accommodation provider will increase to the value of the package by approximately 9 per cent of the asylum seeker's income support.

The third argument is that asylum seekers will not need to purchase replacement items. That assertion also needs to be challenged. Asylum seekers will certainly have to replace items within a six-month period. It is not credible to argue that they will arrive in Britain with clothes and possessions which will last them for six months. Furthermore, when fleeing their homes asylum seekers will have left behind many basic items which they will have to purchase again once they reach the United Kingdom. They may also arrive here without appropriate items, such as the appropriate clothes for the British climate. That was recognised by Mr O'Brien in another place when he accepted that,

"Asylum seekers often arrive with few or no possessions and little concept of how they will cope in this country".

Those remarks were made in the special standing committee on 4th May.

The fourth and final point, dealing with some of the arguments put to us during our meeting at the Home Office, was that basic living utensils would be supplied by the accommodation provider and that must be seen to be part of the package. But currently the vast majority of private rented accommodation is furnished and many also provide basic utensils. However, British people living in furnished accommodation do not have their income support reduced as a consequence. To suggest, therefore, that asylum seekers should have a lower level of support because accommodation is furnished is not acceptable. The Government said that accommodation would include kettles, bed linen, light bulbs and other items which are not normally provided in housing. That is true. But the value that that would add to the package would be more than offset by the fact that the voucher system will effectively prohibit asylum seekers from getting the best value for money, as described by Oona King in another place. They will not be able to buy cheap food and clothing in markets or discount stores, which is where most people on low incomes do their shopping. Furthermore, even if the vouchers are issued in small denominations of 50p or 25p, asylum seekers will not be able to obtain change and will therefore lose some of the package. That is another reason for looking again at the overall value of the package that the Bill outlines.

No allowance has been made for the fact that many asylum seekers have to purchase essential items on arrival, replace items during the six months that they are here or may be in poor health when they reach the United Kingdom. That was certainly the case with many of the Kosovars who arrived here recently.

Based on that assessment the package of support offered is approximately 10 per cent short of the 90 per cent of income support, and therefore 20 per cent below what is normally considered to be the poverty line. After all, we are not talking of vast sums of money. None of us would wish to try to survive and eke out subsistence on the sums of money that we are dealing with. Asylum seekers will clearly be forced to try to survive well below the breadline and that will lead to more begging, which is an issue raised during our debates tonight. It will lead to illegal working, petty crime and the negative impact on race and community relations which will follow in its wake. Those are the consequences. We should go into this situation with our eyes wide open. Unless we are as generous as we can afford to be—to use the language that has been used consistently throughout this debate—those will be the social consequences. The noble Earl, Lord Russell, was right when he warned us earlier on of the consequences of social breakdown if we deliberately create those circumstances.

The Government state that the value of the package should be 90 per cent of income support. Therefore, Amendment No. 167, which increases the package of vouchers and cash to 80 per cent, is consistent with their policy and I therefore commend this amendment to the Committee.

As the Committee will have noticed, I have added my name to Amendment No. 167. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about it particularly in view of what he trailed a little earlier on this point and on assistance where children are involved. He also led us to believe that he has a few more favourable things to say. We look forward to that.

I did not take part at the appropriate place in earlier debates so perhaps I may use this moment to associate this Bench with the compliments that were paid to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and express our regret at his pending departure from our debates. However, I note in passing that, although he will be retired from this House, he will still be able to use some of its facilities. We look forward to seeing him from time to time on that basis at any rate.

Amendment No. 162 give me the opportunity to clarify our position. I repeat that asylum seekers and dependants will be entitled to the full range of medical and dental services which the general public receive. If they are destitute they can get the appropriate form entitling them to free prescriptions, free spectacles, free dental treatment and free travel to hospitals in the same way as anyone else on income support

Generally, the provision of medical services is good across the whole country. We would expect that medical facilities in the cluster areas will be, with very few exceptions, fully equal to meeting the need for specialist medical treatment. That would be under normal National Health Service arrangements. We would not expect there to be a need for the asylum seeker to receive additional assistance in getting such treatment.

As I said earlier, where there is a clear case for special medical treatment which is only available in a limited number of locations, we shall consider that in deciding on location.

I can deal with legal representation quite briefly because I believe my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer made the position plain in response to the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, on a number of occasions. I repeat what my noble and learned friend said. If the power is required to pay for travel expenses to arrange an interview with a legal representative, that is to be found already in Clause 86(1)(c).

The noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, had a most helpful discussion a few days ago. I said that I would think carefully about what was urged on me. It seemed to me to be well founded. I hope that the noble Baroness will be as pleased as the rest of the Committee to hear that, in circumstances where a general practitioner concludes that an asylum seeker has been the victim of torture and local medical services do not fully deal with the particular nature of the case, so access to the specialised services provided by the medical foundation would be in the patient's best interests, we would arrange to pay the costs of travel by the asylum seeker to appointments with representatives of the medical foundation. I believe that is really what the noble Baroness and the noble Lord wanted. I believe that that is fair reflection of their concerns. I hope that they find that helpful.

Amendment No. 163 concerns matters arising from the anxieties of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. He and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, are quite right. We have come to a policy conclusion which is different from theirs. We have decided on a part-voucher system. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, asked in particular about vouchers and when we might have more detail. I take his point. We shall be looking to issue a consultation paper in October on the regulations to be made under these powers. The fine tuning of the exact form of the scheme will be later because it depends on the outcome of the contract to be awarded.

The noble Lord also raised the question of "essential living needs" under Clause 86(1)(b). The provision is drafted in that way because it is intended to encompass the idea of support in kind—food, pots and pans and utilities— as well as cash or vouchers. I take note of the noble Lord's concerns about user-specific vouchers. The benefit of them is quite clear: they provide asylum seekers with security of ownership. If they can only be redeemed by the asylum seeker to whom they are issued, they are of no value to a thief; indeed, they are useless. Similarly, they are of no value if someone attempts to bully or, as it were, blackmail the asylum seeker to sell the voucher in return for cash at a discount. Therefore, a new, discounted, black market is prevented. Those are important considerations.

However, I take the noble Lord's point that there may be occasions when, for example, the principal recipient is ill and where it may perhaps be necessary for another member of the family to use the vouchers. In specific response to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, I can tell the Committee that we are looking now at a means of introducing desirable flexibility into the scheme. I do not think that that will go as far as the noble Lord wants, but at least we will be looking for a degree of flexibility. Therefore, in exceptional circumstances, we could perhaps have a proviso that vouchers could be redeemed by a nominated person on the asylum seeker's behalf.

I turn now to Amendment No. 167—

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister, but as I have attached my name to this amendment perhaps I may have the opportunity to say a few brief words. As I mentioned earlier, I believe that much of the Government's proposal assumes that there will be co-operation from the voluntary sector. As we have drop-in centres for refugees in half of the London boroughs at present, we have a certain experience to feed in the debate on this amendment.

I should like to say a few words about the argument that the level of support for asylum seekers needs to be less because they will not need to replace items during the limited time in which they will be covered by these support provisions. We had the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury for three weeks last year. During that time, I had to return home twice in order to provide more sweaters and coats for Bishops and their wives from Africa, India and other parts of the world who were battling with the rigours of an English summer.

Our drop-in centres for refugees are constantly supplying clothing and household items all the year round. If noble Lords wish to see a voucher system working, we could perhaps visit a drop-in centre such as the one in Croydon. Each person who goes there is supplied with a colour-coded ticket, or several such tickets. One ticket is for food, one is for household utensils and one is for clothing. If the volunteers running that centre were asked whether or not asylum seekers, especially those with children, need to return for further items within a six-month period, they would witness to the fact that such people in a strange land, with a variable climate, need to return constantly for appropriate items of clothing and support.

In an earlier intervention, I asked the noble and learned Lord whether the voluntary sector had been consulted about being involved in hard cases of support and whether it had given its consent. The Minister answered "yes" to the first part of the question but I did not hear him say "yes" to the second part.

I believe that the voluntary sector is willing and wants to play its part in helping to bridge the gap between the support package on offer and the provisions that we feel are necessary for a civilised society. It is generally felt by those who are most closely involved with helping asylum seekers that the gap that is being created is just too wide.

Amendment No. 167 would in no way conflict with the Government's stated aims and I believe that it would make the support gap a little more manageable. It would enable those of us who are involved in the voluntary sector better to enter into the partnership which the Government desire.

I believe that I have dealt with the observations of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, on vouchers.

I turn to Amendment No. 167. I shall try not to repeat what I said earlier. We are looking to provide a package of support that is appropriate to the needs of particular people. As I said, most asylum seekers have few possessions and limited knowledge of the requirements of daily life in this country. However, they will be in need of support for a few months only. We are trying to provide a focused package that addresses particular needs.

As I said earlier, for some single people that will comprise full board and lodging in a hostel with a cash allowance. In other cases, it will comprise fully equipped self-catering accommodation. We recognise that in the overwhelming majority of cases these people will not have brought with them domestic equipment such as bedding and pots and pans which we provide—we also provide gas, water and electricity—partly because they will be in the accommodation for a relatively short time and partly because they will not be familiar with the minutiae of arrangements in this country.

Single adults in receipt of income support currently receive about £45 a week. Under our support proposals, the intention is that they will receive spending power in vouchers and cash of about £35 a week. We are looking to be more flexible as regards the number and nature of retail outlets—to take up a specific point made by the right reverend Prelate—which are willing to accept vouchers. As I say, income support for a single adult is about £45 a week. We believe that with spending power in vouchers and cash of about £35 a week, it is not unreasonable to say that the difference of £10 is accounted for by utilities and the provision of domestic equipment which a person in receipt of social security benefits would normally need to provide and pay for himself.

I repeat what I said earlier this evening: we have listened carefully to the concerns about children. I said quite plainly earlier tonight that we have now indicated that children under the age of 18 will have a support level set at a level equivalent to income support personal allowances. We propose that the provision for adults should remain unchanged for the reasons I set out earlier; namely, the in-kind provisions.

Amendment No. 167 seeks to increase the value of the new support arrangements to at least 80 per cent of income support levels for adults, and to 100 per cent for children. I shall say no more about children. As regards adults, the provision is designed to provide a short-term safety net, whereas income support is designed to provide support on a long-term basis with all the costs that that implies. Some Members of the Committee take a contrary view, but having looked at all the arguments I think that that is a perfectly legitimate conclusion. A short-term safety net regime is different, and ought to be different, from a long-term basis of support. One has to bear in mind that we are developing a better position than exists at the moment as we shall provide a degree of advice and assistance provided by voluntary sector bodies working in the "cluster" areas. The asylum seeker will be relieved of the responsibility, which must be quite considerable in a strange land, of finding his own accommodation.

We want to work in close partnership with voluntary associations. Normally the criticism that I have to meet on these occasions suggests that we do not work closely enough with the voluntary sector or provide it with sufficient grants. Here I am wanting to work more closely with it and am talking about government funding for it—and the reception that I receive is not perhaps entirely overwhelming.

Amendment No. 168 seeks to delete subsection (6) of Clause 87 which would prevent support given under Clause 86(1)(c) from being taken into account in comparing support given under Part VI with income support levels. Clause 86(1)(c) is a supplement by allowing support to be provided for specific costs which an asylum seeker may incur in connection with his claim for asylum, such as paying for postage stamps, telephone calls and possibly travelling. We do not envisage a separate allowance for such expenses but we wish to retain the option to pay travelling costs in individual cases to enable asylum seekers to attend interviews at IND. We are still considering the basis on which to fix the level at which support is to be given.

We should look at all the heads of assistance that we give to an asylum seeker and we should consider the possibility of taking into account Clause 86(1)(c) support. By virtue of subsection (6) of Clause 87, such expenses are to be taken into account when comparing expenditure on essential living needs with income support levels, as is permitted by subsection (5).

I shall be as brief as I can because I realise that the hour is now very late. Amendment No. 169 would prevent the Secretary of State taking account of support available from faith groups in the voluntary sector. I have already said a word or two about that. We are looking to continue and build up the excellent work in this field, to which I pay ready tribute. We do not expect charities to deplete their resources assisting asylum seekers. However, where there is assistance and expertise it is sensible to take them into account.

There are many specialist groups set up precisely to assist the refugee community. They attract charitable donations for that specific purpose. It would be wrong to ignore what asylum seekers may receive from these sources. It is not necessary for an asylum seeker to be able to reject support offered by a third party and then look to the Home Office instead. We will not treat a charitable source as though it was available in its totality to every asylum seeker. We shall take it into account, as is proper, but it will be simply one factor among many; it will not be a determinative factor.

There is no intention of assuming or presuming that asylum seekers can avail themselves of particular sources of assistance where this could be in doubt. The drafting is quite clear; it is support which is or might reasonably be expected to be available. If there is a dispute, the asylum seeker can put his point of view to the asylum support directorate or appeal to an asylum support adjudicator where he has been refused support.

I see a developing, continuing partnership between the Home Office and the voluntary sector in providing support. We respect and value the charitable sector—not least because it brings a degree of independence and a degree perhaps of wider responsiveness than those who are engaged on a daily professional basis. So the daily professional basis has its virtues and value, as does the assistance we get—which we regard as complementary assistance—and with which we hope to work.

Perhaps the Minister will deal a little further with his final point about the independence of the charities. One of the points made very powerfully to us last week by the groups which came here is that they feel that if they were increasingly dependent on income from the Home Office—and I understand that this is a rehearsal of a point that is often made to the Minister—and given that often they have an advocacy role on behalf of asylum seekers and refugees, that independence may be compromised and their ability to speak on behalf of these vulnerable groups of people may be neutered if they are effectively co-opted as an arm of the state to administer services.

I take that point. I think that the independence of the voluntary sector is, and remains, intact. I do not think that it is impossible. The noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and I recently spent a very interesting half day, if not more, at NACRO headquarters. It is my present belief that the Home Office provides some funding to NACRO. I never detected in my dealings with it any lack of independent professionalism. Indeed, quite the opposite was the case. I single out that organisation merely as an illustration Its benefit is that, first, it knows what it is talking about: and secondly, despite the fact that it receives some funding from the Government, it still feels it right—and I agree with that—to criticise us when we have different views. That has been the experience of the past few years; NACRO is not alone in that respect.

It being the witching hour, the Minister has suddenly turned part of the pumpkin into a fairy coach. It would be ungracious not to recognise that final miraculous moment of this long Committee stage. We thank him very much. There is a quotation from Max Weber that politics is the boring of hard boards. That seems to be an excellent description of the Committee stage of this Bill. We are most grateful to the Ministers for sticking it out and for showing such unending patience during what must have been a very hard day for them, and for the concessions that they have made, particularly with regard to victims of torture. They listened closely to what the Committee had to say. We are grateful and we should like to thank them. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

moved Amendment No. 169A:

The noble Earl's amendment seeks to probe the circumstances in which regulations will be made that permit the body not to entertain an application. Perhaps I may give some examples. One example is where a person has made a previous application, it has been rejected by the asylum support directorate, and possibly by the support adjudicator, and there has been no material change in the applicant's circumstances. Processing an application, even when it is without merit, takes time. All the details have to be gone into. Where there is no reason for collecting that information and going through it again, the asylum support directorate should not be required to go through it. One does occasionally receive reports of someone who vexatiously continues to reapply for some benefit in the hope of succeeding not on the basis of the merits of his case, but simply on the basis of wearing down the awarding body.

In making the regulations governing the support scheme, we may also want to rely on this power in stipulating that applications from people who are plainly not eligible for support should not be entertained; for example, because the applicant is not an asylum seeker.

In either of the instances that I have given, it would be open to the applicant to demonstrate that he is entitled to make an application, maintaining, for example, either that there has been a material change in circumstances, or that he is a genuine asylum seeker. If he made out that case, the application would have to be entertained. But it is perfectly sensible in a body of rules such as this that there are certain circumstances where a person should not be allowed to make either an application or another application. If he is allowed to do so, the system becomes clogged and those people who should be allowed to make applications will have to wait longer than they otherwise should.

The noble and learned Lord's answers, like the fortunes of the fictional Bishop of Ipswich, could have been worse. I shall not argue with any of the circumstances that he took up, but he would be a little optimistic to assume that the amendment is necessarily probing. I have considerable misgivings about the conferring of vires quite as sweeping as those entertained here. But, at this time of night, the amendment is probing. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw it.

had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 170:

I beg to move that the House do now resume.