HC Deb 06 March 1987 vol 111 cc1202-10

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Scansbury.]

2.31 pm
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North)

My debate is about the treatment by the British Government of asylum seekers, from wherever they come in the world.

When I first applied for the debate, it was at the height of what the Minister and others call the "Tamil crisis". As the saga unfolded, we saw first the arrival of a considerable number of asylum seekers, all Tamil people from Sri Lanka. They arrived at Heathrow airport in the normal way, applied for political asylum in the normal way and were interviewed and then told that their cases would not be accepted. Then, through contacts in London, they sought the assistance of hon. Members, who placed stops on their removal, and they were duly placed by a number of hon. Members, including myself.

Two days later, we were told that the Home Office was not prepared to accept our stops on those removals. Subsequently, the Minister was challenged legally and at the very moment when he knew that this challenge was being made on his right to remove these people, who were seeking judicial review of the case of Sivakumaran and others, he sought to remove them from the country by having them taken to an airplane at Heathrow airport. It was only after the departure of the plane had been delayed that word came through that the judicial review had been granted, and an initial hearing subsequently took place.

After private notice questions from my hon. Friends the Members for Battersea (Mr. Dubs) and for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist), the Minister finally accepted that the case had to be fully heard in the courts, even though he would challenge it, and finally, on 3 March, a further statement was made by the Home Secretary. He said that the Home Office would not proceed with the contested judicial review of this case but would be introducing new legislation, and on Monday week we are due to debate the Immigration (Carriers' Liability) Bill.

I find the Bill as distasteful as I find the atmosphere surrounding its introduction. The Minister and the newspapers have sought to build up a case against Tamil asylum seekers, who have been accused, first, or being bogus refugees on the ground that they are not fleeing from personal danger, and secondly, of coming here through immigration rackets and for economic benefit. Time and again, hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South-East have asked the Minister to examine the situation in Sri Lanka before making such statements because it is important that that situation should be examined with great care.

Early this morning, I received a phone call from Sri Lanka from someone working on a fish farm there. He described graphically and with considerable emotion an incident that happened in Sri Lanka not long ago when there was a dispute some miles from his farm between the members of an army patrol and someone else. The army patrol headed straight for the farm, took out 26 farm employees and shot them, in the same way as thousands of other people have been shot in Sri Lanka. The amount of communal violence and murder that exists not just in the northern and eastern regions but in other parts of Sri Lanka, makes the description of the country as being in serious turmoil something of an understatement.

Sri Lanka, however, is just part of what we are discussing. The Government claim that the Tamils are not genuine asylum seekers, but there is a great deal of evidence that people deported to Sri Lanka by the Government have faced persecution, either from the armed forces or from Sri Lankan gangs. The Government's relationship with the Government of Sri Lanka also merits examination. This Government enjoys close diplomatic relations with the Government of Sri Lanka. They help to train the Sri Lankan army and have offered training facilities in Britain. They sell arms to the Sri Lankan Government which are used in the dispute between that Government and those seeking a Tamil Eelam state. I hope that no one will be sent back to Sri Lanka and that there will be a proper examination of the relationship between the British Government and the Government of Sri Lanka. In the London Daily News of 4 March there is a report which, as far as I am aware, has not been disputed by the Government. The headline states : Sri Lankan torture claims reveal new Whitehall links with mercenary row firm. The report says: Security sources say the men, most of whom are ex-SAS, were sent with Whitehall's approval. They will work as mercenaries for the Sri Lankan Government. The House requires an answer to that claim.

In this debate I should like to raise a number of other equally important and perhaps wider matters. I have here a copy of the provisional arrangements about the status of refugees from Germany. It was initialed in Geneva on 4 July 1936 and was presented to Parliament shortly afterwards. This is from a League of Nations treaty about the treatment of victims of Nazi violence in Germany who sought refuge in other European countries. In many ways it is an inadequate document and the record of the treatment of victims of Nazi oppression is not a good one. Nevertheless, it is instructive to note that in 1936 countries engaged in serious discussions about the protection of victims of Nazi oppression. The Government claim to support the 1951 Geneva convention. The Minister has frequently said that they support that convention, yet the Government are still deporting genuine asylum seekers. It is important for the House to consider the Government's record. The Government say that they support the United Nations Convention on Refugees which was signed in 1951. The preamble to that convention says: The High Contracting Parties Considering that the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights approved on 10 December 1948 by the General Assembly have affirmed the principle that human beings shall enjoy fundamental rights and freedoms without discriminations. Considering that the United Nations has, on various occasions, manifested its profound concern for refugees and endeavoured to assure refugees the widest possible exercise of these fundamental rights and freedoms. Considering that it is desirable to revise and consolidate previous international agreements relating to the status of refugees and to extend the scope of and the the protection accorded by such instruments by means of new agreement. Considering that the grant of asylum may place unduly heavy burdens on certain countries, and that a satisfactory solution of a problem of which the United Nations has recognized the international scope and nature cannot therefore be achieved without international co-operation. Expressing the wish that all States, recognizing the social and humanitarian nature of the problem of refugees, will do everything within their power to prevent this problem from becoming a cause of tension between States. Noting that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is charged with the task of supervising international conventions providing for the protection of refugees, and recognizing that the effective co-ordination of measures taken to deal with this problem will depend upon the co-operation of States with the High Commissioner,". We should compare that with the statement by the Home Secretary on 3 March. During a lengthy series of exchanges, he said that there were many disputes and wars taking place between Third world countries for which European Governments could not be responsible and that they could not be expected to receive the victims of those wars. It is important that we consider what the United Nations High Commission for Refugees is saying and doing on these matters compared with what the British Government are doing.

The right of appeal and review of a case heard in this country is especially important. I can only compare the attitude that the Government took towards the application for asylum from the Vietnamese refugees in 1985 with their present attitude. I shall quote from the Government's reply to the third report of the Home Affairs Committee entitled "Refugees and Asylum with Special Reference to the Vietnamese". The recommendation was that The Home Office should decide in principle to extend the right of appeal to all asylum applicants. It continues: The main category of asylum applicants without such a right of appeal is those refused entry at the ports. For this category of applicants there are other safeguards: representations by Members of Parliament, judicial review and the UKIAS referral procedure. That may be so, but it seems from the Minister's statement last week in the House and the terms of the Bill that is to be debated on Monday week that a number of things have changed. First, by resolution of the House last year, it was agreed that Members had a right to place a stop on the removal of people from this country pending consideration of the case by the Minister. The Home Secretary has since said that he will no longer accept that right automatically and that he will excercise his own judgment. He has said also that the application for judicial review or the commencement of legal proceedings will no longer prevent people being removed from the United Kingdom. Lastly, he has said that referral to UKIAS is no longer automatic. In short, by the statements made last week and the Bill that is to be introduced, the right of a proper hearing for asylum seekers has been removed by Government decision.

The report of the 34th session of the Executive Committee of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in 1983 states : "Recognized the substantive character of a decision that an application for refugee status is manifestly unfounded or abusive, the grave consequences of an erroneous determination for the applicant and the resulting need for such a decision to be accompanied by appropriate procedural guarantees and therefore recommended that". The third recommendation is that an unsuccessful applicant should be enabled to have a negative decision reviewed before rejection at the frontier or forcible removal from the territory. Where arrangements for such a review do not exist, Governments should give favourable consideration to their establishment. That was in 1983. Four years later, the Government, having said that they supported the recommendation, have failed to consider it and, indeed, are moving in the opposite direction. It is important that the Minister responds, perhaps today, to the need for an independent appeals system within this country for those who are refused the right of asylum.

We are not dealing with a new issue. I have a legal decision of 1893 in Regina v. Justices of the County of London. which states: In a free country the very essence of a system must mean that there should be an appeal to somebody who can say whether those officers are doing what is just. If no appeal were possible, I have no great hesitation in saying that this would not be a desirable country to live in, where every parochial officer might do as he likes in this matter. In some ways, that judge was quite far sighted.

We are now moving into an era of Euro-xenophobia, which is being pursued and encouraged by the Government by the disgraceful statements made by the Home Secretary and the Minister over the past few weeks while dealing with the Tamil case, and by the general feeling that refugees are someone else's responsibility and problem. I hope that before we debate the Immigration (Carriers' Liability) Bill, we give some further thought to it.

I will give some examples of what happens when people are removed from this country and of the conditions under which people apply for asylum here. Under the precedures that the Minister has announced, he is, in effect, saying that the only people who can have a case for political asylum heard in this country are those who have come here openly and legally, who have an exit permit from their own country if that is appropriate and a visa to enter this country if that is necessary. Only those people have the right to come here and have their application heard. If the Minister considers the history of asylum seekers, from victims of Nazi oppression in the 1930s to people fleeing the horror of the Iran-Iraq war, fascism in Chile or any oppressive Government anywhere in the world, he will find that those people are often poor, desperate and alone. They often resort to all sorts of methods, including the use of bogus documents and forged passports and travel on airlines and ships that have been provided by various immigration racketeers. It is no solution to the problem for Britain to say, "Those people are nothing to do with us." We are closing our doors on those people in exactly the same way as the Minister is encouraging other European countries to do.

I ask the Minister to consider the case of a person from Iran who applies for political asylum here and who is deported back to that country, where Khomeini's holy war is killing God knows how many thousands of people every year. What chance do such people have of a fair hearing in Iran? What chance is there of a fair hearing in Chile for a political refugee from the Government of General Pinochet, or for people from South Africa or so many other places? In the current atmosphere, I find the deliberate misquoting of the numbers of people involved surprising. The Minister was apparently able to decide on the validity of asylum for the 58 refugees who applied from Sri Lanka in a few hours, when he could not even have mastered the names of those concerned in that time yet many cases take one to two years or even longer to decide. I have before me the statistical report for 1985 on applications for refugee and asylum seekers. The largest number—even larger than that of applications received —is that of applications outstanding at the end of the year. In 1985, 5,780 applications were outstanding at the end of the year and only 4,899 were received. Only 836 people were granted refugee status that year. That is not very many and it shows how difficult it is, to achieve political asylum under the old procedure, let alone under the procedure that the Minister now has in mind.

In addition, we must consider the general attitude towards asylum applications. A person who makes an application has the right to have it determined within a reasonable period of time, but I see no reason why people should be kept in detention during that period or kept for a long time on the string of "exceptional leave to remain". It is important that people are given a good and fair hearing as early as possible, within the terms of the 1951 Geneva convention that the Government claim to support. I hope that the Minister will reconsider the whole issue more carefully, not just that of the 64 Tamils which he has said that he will consider carefully, but the entire attitude and atmosphere of the statements that he has made.

We live in a world in which, tragically, many people are forced to seek political asylum from oppression. Down the decades, British Ministers have prided themselves on the liberal record of Britain in respect of asylum seekers, as indeed have other European countries. Only two years ago, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Mr. Poul Hartling, was critical of European Governments as a whole for their attitude to refugees and asylum seekers. He said that their record compared very badly with those of poorer, Third world countries. I hope that the Government will reflect that we are working in entirely the wrong way in telling people seeking to flee from oppression that we are not prepared to consider their case or to give them the asylum that is necessary. The Minister is deliberately stirring up feelings of racism and xenophobia, encouraged by the media's refusal to report the real cause of the asylum seekers. People fleeing Sri Lanka are seen as the problem today, but if the legislation is passed and the Minister's proposals become our law and practice, refugees all over the world will be the losers and it will set a precedent for other European countries.

2.49 pm
The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. David Waddington)

We have always adopted a most generous policy towards asylum seekers. We have observed punctiliously our obligations under the United Nations convention, and often those who have not shown that they are refugees in the terms of the convention have nevertheless been allowed to stay on an exceptional basis.

The facts speak for themselves. Since 1979 more than 8,000 individuals from all over the world have been granted asylum and over 6,000 more who failed to qualify for asylum have been granted exceptional leave to remain. In 1985, 907 Sri Lankan Tamils were granted exceptional leave to remain on an annual basis, and in 1986 about 1,600 Sri Lankans were granted exceptional leave to remain. Add to those figures the 20,000 Vietnamese refugees who have settled here since 1979 and the more than 1,000 Poles who have been allowed to stay following events in Poland in 1983, and no fair-minded person can argue that British policy has been other than generous.

Furthermore, it is ironic that those who accuse the British Government of a lack of generosity are often Socialists, like the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn), with a hankering to turn Britain into an Eastern European-type state.

It is worth remembering that countries in Eastern Europe do not have any problem of people trying to enter, pretending to be refugees when they are not. Eastern Europe has a refugee problem, but the problem is trying to stop people leaving, not trying to stop then getting in. Sane people do not volunteer to enter a prison.

It is important when people criticise Western countries for not being sufficiently generous to refugees that they know that not a single country behind the iron curtain —not one Socialist country, so much admired by Opposition Members — has even signed the refugee convention, which the hon. Gentleman now chides us for not observing properly.

Furthermore, I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman has the faintest idea how Tamils, for example, are treated in a Socialist country. I came across an article in the Sri Lankan Saturday Review of 7 February headed "Socialist Humanism." It is interesting reading : Twenty Sri Lankan Tamils were deported from Romania on 27th January after being held for six days in Bucharest's freezing airport with almost no food, Western diplomatic sources said here today, according to Reuter. The British Consulate intervened out of humanitarian concern and sent bread, fish and meat out to the airport for the Tamils" who had almost no money and were not given food or bedding by the Romanian authorities. The diplomatic sources said, the Sri Lankans were not able to contact any consular authorities for help but they received assistance from a British consular official who discovered the drama by chance when visiting the airport. Britain, unlike Socialist countries, has a proud record of giving refuge to people fleeing from persecution.

The United Kingdom helped formulate the United Nations convention and was among the first to accede to it. We were then among the first to ratify the 1967 protocol, and we have been scrupulous in its observance. But in Western Europe, Canada and America there has been a growing problem in the past year or so. There have been more irregular movements, to use the language of experts in refugee matters, more forged documents and more abusive applications. In 1985–86 there were 150,000 irregular movements in Europe. In 1986 almost 100,000 people sought asylum in West Germany alone. Both the Germans and the Danes have been forced to introduce legislation to stem the flood.

We would be grossly irresponsible if we allowed matters to develop in a similar way. We have acted to prevent that happening. Clearly, we must strike a balance between protecting the genuine refugee and preventing abuse of our generous procedures. We believe that the action that has been taken achieves that end.

In theory, a genuine refugee might come here with false documents. One certainly must not assume that a person who comes here with a forged passport or with one that has been mutilated on the journey cannot be a refugee. On the contrary, one must look at each case individually on its merits — the person's circumstances, not the circumstances in which he came here. Those who imagine that normal genuine refugees just turn up at our ports without papers do not have the faintest idea of what they are talking about.

First, most applications for asylum in this country are made by people who have come as visitors or students and have been here for a long time. They come to the end of their legitimate stay and say that, because of changed conditions in their own country, they do not wish to return.

Secondly, applications can be made at any of our embassies or high commissions. In Sri Lanka a person can get to the high commission just as easily as he can get to the airport at Colombo. As an illustration of some of the absurd allegations that are being made, I am told that, on television the other night a Tamil said that an intending refugee could not get to the high commission because it was ringed with soldiers. I checked that matter yesterday. There is precisely one policeman outside our high commission in Colombo—no impediment whatsoever to anybody who wishes to go in.

Thirdly, if a person is a genuine refugee, the natural thing for him to do is to go to the nearest safe place. Afghans go over the border to Pakistan. Sri Lankans go to southern India. It seems odd that anyone who is just fleeing from terror should not stop at the first place of safety.

I shall say a word about people who wish to get out of Eastern Europe. We could see the hon. Gentleman's political colour. He did not mention the persecution on the other side of the iron curtain. It was countries other than Socialist countries that he had the impudence to mention. Without permission from the authorities, a person in a country such as Russia has little chance of getting anywhere near an airport or an aeroplane. People from Russia get here not as a result of getting on to a plane, with or without documents; they get here as a result of our issuing a visa promise letter and the authorities giving them an exit visa. Without an exit visa, they are lucky to get out, unless they are prepared to risk getting shot crossing from East Germany to West Germany.

I shall give two recent cases. The poetess, Ms. Ratushinskaya, obtained a visa to come here. She did not come here on false documents. Mr. Scharansky, who was mentioned by the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), the Opposition spokesman on Home Affairs, did not come here as a result of getting forged documents. He crossed from East Berlin to West Berlin and eventually came here on an Israeli passport, having become an Israeli citizen. A great deal of nonsense is talked about the way in which people normally come here and apply for refugee status.

The hon. Member for Islington, North talked about events that took place over a fortnight ago. When the 58 Tamils were put on the plane at London airport, we were eventually told that an order had been made that they should not be removed. In observance of that order, we took them off the plane, just as people would have expected us to do. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary in his statement said that he would look at the cases again, and that has brought the legal proceedings to an end. More than two weeks had already gone by when my right hon. Friend made that statement. Two weeks had gone by since they had been taken off the plane as a result of the court order. The legal tangle was no nearer to being unravelled, and the litigation was likely to drag on and on.

ne of the bones of contention was whether the cases should have been referred to the United Kingdom immigration advisory service. My right hon. Friend decided that the sensible thing to do was to refer them. The UKIAS had been asked to make its representations within a fairly small time scale. One of the important points to recognise in this debate is that, unless we process cases quickly, we often lose the opportunity of returning people abroad who quite clearly are not refugees. The countries from which the refugees come say that they have been in Britain for far longer than they have been in their countries and that therefore it is Britain's responsibility, not theirs.

The hon. Gentleman failed to mention that Sri Lanka is a democracy and that Tamils are entitled to seats in the Sri Lankan Parliament. Also he entirely failed to mention that the chief justice of Sri Lanka is a Tamil and that the principal cause of the trouble there is undisciplined troups often reacting to attacks by Tamil tigers and Tamil tigers attacking as a result of action by undisciplined troups.

Many parts of the world are gravely disturbed, but that does not make all the inhabitants who live in disturbed parts of the world refugees. It would be quite absurd if we were to give the impression that the West has an obligation to take every person who lives in Sri Lanka because of the troubled state of affairs there.

The hon. Gentleman referred to Germany before the war. I have made some inquiries about that. In 1938 the British Government imposed a visa requirement on Germans and Austrians. From that time onwards, Germans and Austrians fleeing from Nazi persecution came here with visas, having satisfied the British authorities that they had the wherewithal, or that they had people here who were prepared to look after them.

As for rights of appeal in this country, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said the other day that all we are saying at present is that not everybody can expect his case to be referred to UKIAS. There are bound to be exceptional cases when it will not be possible to do so—

The motion having been made at half-past Two o'clock. and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned accordingly at one minute past Three o'clock.