§ Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney, North and Stoke Newington)At the beginning of the new millennium, millions of people are criss-crossing the globe, seeking asylum from war, disease, starvation and economic collapse. That is the context in which all western European countries are experiencing a rise in the number of asylum seekers. The majority of asylum seekers find asylum within their own regions, whether in Africa, the middle east or the Balkans. Only a minority find their way to western Europe, America or Canada.
The number of asylum seekers has risen as a result of civil war and economic problems around the world. A fair, efficient, transparent legal system must be at the heart of meeting the challenge of that sad army so that asylum claims can be dealt with. Hon. Members and perhaps even Ministers may believe that a more punitive line is in order. Whatever one's views on asylum seekers, fairness, efficiency and transparency must be at the heart of the system for dealing with claims.
My hon. Friend the Minister will not need to be reminded that we inherited an extremely bad position from the Conservative party. However, I do not want to detain the Chamber on the iniquities of the previous Administration. Three years into a Labour Administration and with a general election in sight, it is appropriate and necessary to examine our stewardship of the issue.
Ministers have addressed the matter and done many good things, as my staff and I have seen for ourselves. For example, we welcome the Members' hotline, and are grateful for the helpfulness and enthusiasm of those staffing it. Sadly, however, it cannot deal with asylum cases. We welcome the fact that a backlog squad has been set up, which, as we have seen, is enthusiastic and well led and managed. Unfortunately, however, it does not deal with asylum cases.
We welcome the reforms of the initial consideration unit, which, as we have witnessed, is enthusiastic, well led and doing good work. However, I remind Ministers that more than 100,000 asylum seekers are waiting for their application to be processed. That figure may not be exact, but I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will provide me with the most up-to-date figure.
I remind Ministers that the backlog of asylum seekers has risen under the present Government. Last May, when the Immigration and Asylum Bill was in Committee, the backlog stood at about 70,000, and it is distressing that it continues to rise. It is important to put on record the problems for individuals and communities caused by delays in dealing with asylum cases. Uncertainty about what people are to do with their lives sometimes continues for months and years. This morning, I interviewed a series of asylum seekers, many of whom have waited for months and even years for their case to be resolved.
Practical problems are also caused by such delays. People cannot get driving licences, have difficulty claiming benefit and cannot travel abroad to study or for a family funeral. The Minister's constituency adjoins mine and its population is similar, so she will be aware that people experience many practical difficulties as a result of the delay in dealing with asylum cases.
110WH Furthermore, the biggest incentive for people to make an unfounded in-country asylum claim is the long delay in processing such claims. People have known for a long time that at the end of the road—they may have applied as a student and many times subsequently—making another asylum claim will effectively give them several more years in the country.
Ministers have much to say about unfounded cases, so one of the most effective actions that they could take would be to choke off unfounded in-country applications, often made in good faith on advice from solicitors. I know that Ministers have acted against the worst immigration-advising solicitors. One of the most effective weapons against ill-founded in-country claims would be to deal with delays.
Next week we expect—the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—the implementation of the system of voucher-based support for new asylum seekers, and forced dispersal, which were debated at length in Committee and on the Floor of the House. The Minister and her officials who have read Hansard will know that I contributed extensively to those debates. Over and over again, we were reassured by Ministers, "Yes, the voucher system amounts to less in total than income support"—that means people living below subsistence levels—"but only for two months initially and six months if there is an appeal." The argument behind the voucher system and forced dispersal is that people will be in the system only for short periods. Ministers promised that on the Floor of the House, and it provides another reason to focus on delays in dealing with asylum cases.
As I said earlier, the backlog of asylum cases has increased—almost doubled—during the Government's period of office. There have been some improvements. I understand that the most recently available monthly statistics show that the number of cases successfully dealt with increased from about 2,000 to 8,000 per month. The greater speed in dealing with new cases is obviously welcome but it does not help people who have been waiting in this country throughout the 1990s for their asylum cases to be dealt with.
One way of increasing the speed of dealing with new cases is to dish out a 14-page standard evidence form and not give people enough time to fill it in. When it is not filled in properly or gaps are left, a technical refusal is made. That amounts to pushing up the numbers by sleight of hand. I shall be interested to hear the Minister's comments about that.
Let me remind my hon. Friend the Minister, who is new to her position, of the commitment made by her predecessors to clearing up the backlog and reducing the time of decision making. Her predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien) said on 4 May in the Special Standing Committee considering the Asylum and Immigration Bill:
Our target is to reduce the time … to two months for an initial decision and a further four months for an appeal.—[Official Report, Special Standing Committee, 4 May 1999; c. 1245.]He later said:The Government have committed themselves to reducing the time taken to process asylum applications. We have set the target of bringing that time down to six months and below.—[Official Report, Special Standing Committee, 18 May 1999; c. 1601.]111WH The Minister will also be aware of the report signed by management consultants brought in by the Home Office, which was published last year. It states:At present, delays occur at each stage of the asylum process. These are primarily caused by; process inefficiencies, a lack of resources and a lack of cross directorate prioritisation. If there were no backlogs and adequate resources were available, we consider that process inefficiencies alone would prevent IND from achieving the two month target.I now want to ask the Minister some specific questions. If she is unable to reply to them in our debate now, I would be grateful if she would write to me.
§ Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North)Does my hon. Friend share my concern that, in the rush of dealing with cases, there is an overwhelming presumption against many asylum applicants from countries that are democratic on the face of it—they have independent legal systems—but in which the reality on the ground is different? I am thinking of the treatment of Roma people in the Czech Republic, which is a democracy on the face of it, but allows Roma people to suffer constant race harassment and attacks. I am worried that hardly any Roma cases have been granted asylum because of the presumption to which I referred.
§ Ms AbbottI agree with my hon. Friend. I, too, am deeply concerned. This morning, I met one of my constituents, a Jewish gentleman from Georgia—one of the former Soviet republics—who has applied for asylum here. He is an Orthodox Jew and wears the full costume of that religion. He has lived here for eight years. When he went back to Georgia, he was subjected to appalling harassment because those ex-Soviet republics have a history of antisemitism. However, technically, Georgia is a democracy. It issues statements declaring that it is against antisemitism, so the Minister has refused to grant this man asylum and he does not know what to do. He is being sent back to a society that has a history of persecution of Jews going back to the 19th century, but, on the basis of the technical nature of the state of Georgia and the statements of its Ministers, he is going back to certain persecution. I personally brought his case to the Minister's predecessor's attention and was extremely disappointed by the response.
We were promised in May last year that the backlog of cases would be cleared by April 2001. Is the Immigation and Nationality Directorate on target to clear the backlog by spring 2001? When we debated the subject of backlogs in waiting lists, and delays, we were promised by my hon. Friend's predecessor in Committee that the Immigration and Nationality Directorate was recruiting new staff. When I asked him how many new clerical staff would be recruited, he could not tell me. Can the Minister now say how many clerical staff have been taken on since May last year, which was the last time I raised the matter? If not, will she write to me? I should also like to know how many new decision makers have been recruited?
I would welcome any information about the position with the computer system. Many past delays have been connected with Siemens and the computers. Is it true, as my staff and I have been told, that new applicants for asylum will not be given a full interview until 2001? If so, that makes nonsense of the promises given to hon. 112WH Members a year ago that the processing time for new claims would come down to two months. Are 29,000 asylum files to be sent to Glasgow? It seems extraordinary—given that, in the coming weeks, my colleagues and I will be asking questions about asylum seeker cases—that, during that time, the files will be somewhere on the Ml. If they are to be sent to Glasgow, when will they be returned so that work on them can begin?
The burden of my comments has been about the backlog of applications because I and other hon. Members know that an increasing number of asylum seekers have been waiting for some years for their applications to be determined.
I want to ask about the situation with travel documents. There used to be a same-day service for people seeking travel documents, but as far as I know it no longer exists. We hear constantly from constituents who have applied for travel documents. Recently, relatives of Turkish earthquake victims were unable to travel because they did not have documents. People who have to study, take jobs or attend funerals abroad have the same problem.
We have been told off the record by IND staff that the number of travel documents that are lost is a disgrace. Why, then, when departmental staff suggested that, as part of the process, people applying for travel documents be charged an extra fee to cover their return by recorded delivery, management turned it down? There would have been no cost to the IND and it seems a very practical suggestion that would have got round the problem of documents being lost, but management did nothing. When will the Government introduce an effective system for tracking lost travel documents? Staff have suggested to us that a bar code could be used. Each week in my advice sessions I see people who may have a family emergency or illness but are unable to travel because of what is happening in the travel documents section.
I have to touch on the general question of the ministerial case-working team. We understand that the team is only now dealing with letters sent to them in October and November. Members of Parliament have a democratic responsibility to take up issues on behalf of our constituents. It really is not good enough that the IND is only now dealing with cases that go back to October. We believe that there is no monitoring in the ministerial case-working team and that individual case workers have no targets. I think that I speak for every colleague who deals with nationality case work when I say that something must be done about the number of staff and, more importantly, about management, monitoring and targets, to enable Members of Parliament to obtain replies to their letters within a reasonable time.
When we write to the Department, we have to wait four or six months, or longer, for a reply. People come back to us week after week, but what are we to tell them? When a member of my staff asked a member of the ministerial case-working team, "How long is it taking you to deal with our letters?" he or she replied, "How long is a piece of string?" I put it to the Minister that that is not a satisfactory response to Members of Parliament who are trying to carry out their democratic duty.
113WH My final point concerns the work-in-progress queue. The majority of the work with which my office currently deals relates to immigration and nationality matters, most of which involves asylum cases. We often find when we ring the Members' hotline that work is in the work-in-progress queue, so when my staff visited Croydon, we asked to see that queue. Let me tell hon. Members what the work-in-progress queue is. It is a basement in Croydon in which thousands of files are piled up. We were told that all work that was unfinished at the time of the move to C block from Lunar house—we know that the location has recently changed—was dumped in the basement. My members of staff saw those dumped files with their own eyes.
It is not good enough to tell Members of Parliament and their staff on the telephone that cases are in the work-in-progress queue when they are merely in a basement. If the Minister did not see those files on her recent visit to Croydon, she should return and ask to do so. We saw them.
Although I have expressed my concerns—which are shared by many other hon. Members—about what is happening, to the asylum backlog in particular but to immigration and case work generally, I pay tribute to the hard work of many of the members of staff involved. The Minister should encourage staff to make suggestions. We visited Croydon a week after she had been there, but staff told us that they were not encouraged to speak to her and that they felt that they could not make practical suggestions. Attitudes vary from team to team, but the teams to which I have specifically referred are well led and have enthusiastic and motivated staff. However, that was not true of all the staff who we encountered in Croydon.
During past months, there has been rising hysteria in the popular press about asylum seekers. Such hysteria sheds more heat than light on the subject. I could not leave the debate without putting on record my distaste for the tone in which politicians and the media discuss economic migrants. I entirely accept that many people who apply for asylum are not asylum seekers under the Geneva convention rules. However, to talk about people who have left collapsing economies, disease, dislocation and chaos and who are trying to do the best for their families as if they are a criminal underclass does no credit to the acute fears and pressures that sometimes force people to cross the globe to Europe to seek a better life for their children and families.
The Minister's family still lives in my constituency. With our background, she and I should have no truck with people who say not that asylum seekers do not meet the terms of the Geneva convention—we know that many of them do not—but that economic migrants are a sub-species of human being. Many asylum seekers have to be turned down at the end of the day, but their demonisation and the extent to which Ministers seem to think that they have to outbid the Conservatives on this issue cause great distress to many people. I suspect that those people include many of our supporters and constituents, who do not expect to hear Labour Ministers adopting the tone of Tony Ministers when speaking about asylum seekers.
The issue is complex. Next week, the Government's new support arrangements will be introduced, involving the voucher system and forced dispersal. I shall keep a 114WH close eye on those arrangements; not only do I believe that they will cause unnecessary suffering, I am not persuaded that they will work. I wanted today to talk about the processing and management of claims in Croydon. The situation is not new and is not unique to this Government. Minister after Minister has investigated immigration and nationality and has been reassured by senior officials who say that this or that is being done. Year on year, myself and other hon. Members who deal with such case work see increasing chaos.
It is not too late for Ministers to tackle the problems. Some good initiatives have been started, but more are needed. It is unfair to asylum seekers, whether they are Geneva convention compliant or not, to engage in rhetoric about unfounded claims when the core function of Government—to deal with claims quickly, transparently, fairly and within the law—is not being carried out.
I await with interest the Minister's response to my specific questions, but she may rest assured that this is not the last occasion on which I shall raise the subject.
§ The Minister of State, Home Office (Mrs. Barbara Roche)I will start off on a note of agreement with my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), whom I congratulate on securing today's short but important debate. However, I take issue with the context in which she placed her concluding remarks. The Government want to honour our international obligations under the convention to those who flee persecution and seek asylum. The concept of asylum is an honourable and ancient one, which I, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and the Government want to preserve, but in order to do that we must say that those who make unfounded applications will be swiftly returned.
My hon. Friend omitted from her speech any reference to the worldwide criminal smuggling of people, which is helping many people to make large sums of money from others who are especially vulnerable. It is a pity that she did not mention that.
Ms AbbotI did not mention worldwide smuggling because, as far as I understand, Ministers have no responsibility for that, so it would have been pointless to raise it.
§ Mrs. RocheI believe that we have a responsibility for the consequences of smuggling and should try to combat it, along with other like-minded Governments. Perhaps my hon. Friend will be lucky enough to secure another debate in which to raise that issue, on which occasion I shall give her my full and considered response.
My hon. Friend is right to say that delays and perceived delays in the system encourage people to make unfounded claims, which is why certain measures have been implemented. She is also right to mention the role played by unscrupulous advisers and solicitors and to emphasise the need to eradicate backlogs from the system. I put on record my thanks to her for speaking about the hotline staff, and I am pleased about the visit that will take place. Let me assure her that I visit Croydon frequently; my route there is well worn. I am 115WH virtually not only immigration Minister, but Minister for Croydon. I assure her that I encourage staff to speak to me and I visit all the teams. I recently attended the forum that has been set up to enable staff to speak to management. I also recently attended a meeting of the unions there, and I meet them regularly. There are no difficulties in that area.
My hon. Friend mentioned the Vantage point report. That report is fairly old, but we have recognised its recommendations. She also mentioned some recent cases. I believe that it is invidious to mention individual cases in this sort of forum, but I say to her and to my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) that such cases do not involve only a decision by the Home Office. A case goes to an adjudicator and to a tribunal both independent bodies set up by Parliament.
§ Mr. CorbynThe issue of the perception of the human rights situation in various countries frequently arises. The Home Office was due to set up its own evaluation unit. I should be grateful to know what progress has been made on that and what assessment is made of newly democratised countries in which there are still human rights abuses.
§ Mrs. RocheAs my hon. Friend will know, we publish our country assessments, so they are available for everyone to see. We do not rely only on reports from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. We also consult non-governmental organisations, Amnesty International, Oxfam and a range of organisations.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington spoke about dealing with Members' asylum cases. She and my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North will be pleased to know that we are setting up a case management unit specifically to deal with such cases. That will be warmly welcomed.
In the short time left to me, I shall deal with some of the difficulties. My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington is quite right that the debate is about the present Government's record. However, we are still suffering from the plans made by the previous Administration to reduce the number of posts by a total of 1,200 in anticipation of the efficiencies that will result from the introduction of a computerised casework system. She will know that the Public Accounts Committee criticised that as an overambitious project. We are recovering from those plans. I know that much remains to be done by the present Administration, but we have done a lot already.
Last year, we began a substantial programme to increase the number of staff. That has already resulted in hundreds of additional staff, and more are planned. New working processes have been developed to speed up the time taken to decide applications without compromising quality. Those processes seek to obtain the maximum amount of information from applicants 116WH at the outset. Pilot exercises at Heathrow and Dover are testing new procedures for port applicants. Substantive asylum interviews are conducted on the day of arrival, and an e-mail link to the Croydon computer system enables case papers to be sent electronically, which enables quick decisions to be taken.
Partly as a consequence of those changes, but also as a result of the massive intake of staff, the number of initial decisions has increased enormously. I do not know that only because I am a Minister. The profile of cases in my constituency is similar to my hon. Friend's, so I know the problem from my own case work. In February, 7,840 decisions were made—the highest monthly total ever recorded. As a result, the number of decisions now exceeds the number of new applications. The backlog of cases is therefore beginning to reduce.
The February total of just over 103,000 is still too high but, for the first time since March 1998, it has reduced. I am not complacent about that. There is much more still to do, but it is an improvement. We expect to make significant inroads into the backlog by late spring, and we aim for a substantial reduction by April 2001. We have all but cleared the backlog of pre-1993 cases, and we expect to clear the backlog of 1993–95 cases by the summer.
I reassure my hon. Friend on one point. She spoke about asylum cases being transferred to Glasgow. They are being transferred for recategorisation. That is necessary to allow us to reorganise about 29,000 cases in the case allocation unit so that we can identify work screens for them. However, that exercise will last for only three weeks; the files will be back in Croydon by 17 April. We want to speed up the work as much as we can.
My hon. Friend mentioned the targets for new cases, particularly new family cases, under the new scheme, which will be introduced on 3 April. We started using targets for new family cases at the beginning of November 1999, and we are already meeting those targets for new applications from families with children. The new processes and the increase in the number of staff are designed to ensure that, from April 2001, most new claims are decided within two months, as envisaged in the immigration and asylum White Paper. We are already doing exactly what we said that we would do.
There is a great deal of work yet to be done. I am grateful for what my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington said about the commitment and enthusiasm of the staff, who are working incredibly hard against a difficult background. We are making progress, which is shown by the record number of decisions. We are beginning to deliver a policy that is firm, fair and fast, a policy that recognises the needs of genuine claimants while deterring those who would seek to abuse the system. Those who make unfounded claims are the enemy of the genuine asylum seeker.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at Two o'clock.