HC Deb 11 January 1993 vol 216 cc672-7

'Notwithstanding anything in any asylum or immigration rule, the credibility of an asylum-seeker may not be judged by reference to any of the following grounds—

  1. (a) a failure to make immediate disclosure of all material facts;
  2. (b) the destruction of documents;
  3. (c) a failure to apply forthwith;
  4. (d) political activities in the United Kingdom.'.—[Mr. Allen.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. Allen

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

The new clause refers to the credibility tests that will apply to people applying for political asylum. It is another example of law being made outside the parliamentary process. It is deplorable that the draft immigration rules do not appear on the face of the Bill. They are important to people applying for political asylum and it should not be left to us to devise ways of discussing them in the House. They should be in the Bill, so that those who want to can ask questions about them.

7.30 pm

The rules list the criteria that can be taken into account when dealing with asylum applications. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees office has made its position quite clear. It is of the opinion that the draft provisions do not ensure the full implementation of the 1951 Convention [relating to the status of refugees] in the United Kingdom and some of them appear to vary from internationally adopted principles relating to asylum and the protection of refugees.' That is a clear warning to the Home Office that its proposals may not meet international standards. It is not even clear why the Home Office thought many of these proposals necessary in the first place.

Earlier, the hon. Member for Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor) referred to the moves towards European harmonisation, although he did not seem too keen to introduce an element of European accountability to this matter. It appears that the United Kingdom is adopting a tougher line than are many of our European partners. In an interesting exercise the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants compared the text of the draft immigration rules with the text of the resolution adopted by the ad hoc group of European Immigration Ministers. There are a number of revealing comparisons between the allegedly hard-line attitude of some European countries and the actual words used by the ad hoc group of Ministers—words with a softer ring to them than many of the phrases that appear in our immigration rules.

The ad hoc group resolution mentions an asylum seeker who has deliberately made false representations about his claim. either orally or in writing, after applying for asylum". The words "deliberately" and "after applying for asylum" do not appear in the English text. Throughout the ad hoc group's document one is aware of more qualifications and greater sensitivity in what is, after all, a brutal political area. Far from harmonising our rules with those of Europe, it seems that we are bringing our European partners down to our level—that level being the lowest common denominator.

One of the conditions in the rules is that the applicant has made false representations, either orally or in writing". That provides no safeguards for asylum seekers and does not mention the motivation that may have been behind untrue statements. So the Home Office could decide to refuse an application merely because of its own misunderstanding that a false representation had been made. Further, there are no time limits on this, so it would mean that the person who had sought entry as a visitor because he did not understand the procedures for claiming asylum, and who had therefore maintained that he would leave the country after a visit, could be refused on credibility grounds.

The Home Office notes to the rules also state: Self-evidently, if the applicant has been shown to have lied on specific points there will be more general doubt about his story", but there is no explanation of the reasons why many asylum seekers do not feel secure enough to reveal all the details of their suffering immediately after meeting an official.

The second criterion is that an applicant has

destroyed, damaged or disposed of any passport, other document or ticket relevant to his claim". That needs further examination. As it stands, the rule means that if a passport has been accidentally damaged, that can be held against the applicant. There is no requirement to show that the damage occurred deliberately. The Home Office notes assume that such damage is always deliberate so as to make it more difficult to remove people if their applications are refused. The other assumption is that passports may be re-used by agents helping other people to escape. Some asylum seekers are badly advised by agents before reaching the United Kingdom.

The third criterion reflecting on the credibility of an application is that the applicant has lodged concurrent applications for asylum in the United Kingdom or in another country". An interesting example of recent pedigree would be that of someone who has lodged an application in Germany and whose close family members have either reached another country or been granted asylum there because of the dangers that they faced in their first country of asylum. Such people may have been persecuted by racist gangs in east Germany, for instance. How might such cases be dealt with in practice?

Another criterion concerns failure to comply with a notice issued by the Secretary of State requiring the applicant to report to a designated place to be fingerprinted". My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Central (Mr. Watson) may want to comment on that shortly. The rules go on: or failure to complete an asylum questionnaire, or failure to comply with a request to attend an interview concerning the application". At first sight these last criteria appear relatively innocuous —but a requirement to be fingerprinted has nothing to do with the substantive nature of an asylum claim. The Home Office frequently writes to the wrong address or gives inadequate notice of interview or fails to provide an interpreter. Such circumstances should not be held against applicants. The rules will mean that asylum seekers will be penalised for factors unconnected with the strength of their claims; and people who have followed bad advice or who have genuinely lost documents will find their cases prejudiced and may be returned to danger.

It is therefore vital that the rules be amended at least to provide the minimal protections suggested in the ad hoc group's resolution. At best, these restrictions should be removed altogether so that each claim can be considered on its merits.

The UNHCR suggests that it is not advisable

to list … the factors which should be given special consideration when assessing an asylum-seeker's credibility. Evaluation of credibility is a process which involves the consideration of many complex factors, both objective and subjective, which are impossible to enumerate. Since all these may be equally important, singling out any of these factors will, by necessity, be incomplete and arbitrary. New clause 5 is designed, in short, to make it clear that we should not attempt to define applicants' credibility by such arbitrary means. We believe that these are questions of judgment and that if we introduce such rules, mistakes can be made and people will be excluded. Given that these are matters of life or death, the significance of such exclusions must be plain for all to see.

Mr. Corbyn

I rise to support my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) and to ask the House to think seriously about what he has said. It is often not understood in this House—and certainly not in most newspapers—what it is like for someone who seeks political asylum. Many such people feel a sense of defeat because they have had to flee from their own country to seek a new life elsewhere and transfer their energies into a different society. Many of them have to travel in great danger.

The history books record the heroic deeds of people who sought asylum and those who escaped from religious persecution in the middle ages in western Europe. Many people fled from Nazi Germany in the 1920s and 1930s and from Fascist Spain in the late 1930s and 1940s. More recently, people had to leave South Africa or flee from oppressive regimes in central and south America or Africa. People have had to flee from the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. There are numerous other examples. [Interruption.] Perhaps the Home Secretary would listen to the debate on the new clause rather than gossiping with his hon. Friends. Presumably he is discussing football results. He should take seriously my description of what it is like for people who seek political asylum because he makes the decisions and he framed the legislation.

The new clause seeks to remove the destruction of documents, failure to disclose all material facts, failure to apply immediately or political activities in the United Kingdom as bases upon which an application may be refused. Let us consider the case of someone who has been consistently opposed to the regime in Iran. He is forced to live and work underground and to change his name and identity. He manages to flee the country, often paying people to guide him at night, and arrives in Peshawar in Pakistan. He then seeks to buy an identity and to travel to a place of safety in another part of the world. That example is based on an actual case.

When that person finally arrives at, say, Heathrow, he would be loth to reveal all that information. He would seek to enter Britain as a visitor before considering with friends the next step and would apply for political asylum. The fact that such a person does not make an immediate application and has destroyed all evidence of his identity on the way here would be detrimental to his case. He would have destroyed that evidence by throwing documents away, flushing them down a toilet, tearing them up or burning them. People do such things because they are frightened and want to get away to a place of safety. If someone carried such documents during his night time journey in Iran, he would be liable to arrest, detention and possible execution and his family, relatives and friends could suffer a similar fate.

I mentioned political activities in the United Kingdom. The hon. Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) and others represent a rather curious lunatic element in the Conservative party. The hon. Gentleman is not here, but I shall later tell him what I have said about him as I am sure he would be interested to hear it. Political activity in Britain is detrimental to a person's chances of gaining political asylum. Is it so wrong for someone seeking political asylum from a repressive regime to undertake peaceful political activities against that regime? I see nothing wrong with that if he had been consistently opposed to that regime throughout the time that he lived under it.

I know people who have been asked by the immigration service what they had been doing in this country to oppose the regime from which they had fled. They said that they had not done much because they were worried about their position. That was counted against them. The new clause seeks to make clear and specific what can or cannot be used in forming a judgment of an asylum seeker's credibility. I hope that no hon. Member will ever have to seek political asylum.

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Many refugees have made enormous contributions to science, art, literature, politics and medicine. Many such people hold senior positions in the health service and in universities and other places both here and in the United States. Many of them sought political asylum, but if the judgments outlined in the Bill had operated in the 1930s, many would not have been granted political asylum. If such judgments had been used against people fleeing from Chile in 1973, they would not have gained asylum. There are many other examples.

The new clause would make the legislation more credible and would lead to a greater understanding of the needs of people seeking political asylum because it would ensure that decisions were based on the entire experience of the asylum seeker. Many people have grown up in a society in which people have been taught to mistrust officialdom in any form because it does not work for their benefit and to mistrust anyone in uniform because he may have taken part in attacks or murders of family members. Political asylum seekers with such experiences are unlikely to reveal their entire life story at the first point of entry; such people are often psychologically disturbed and would be incapable of doing so anyway.

We seek to ensure that all such factors are taken into account and that officers conducting interviews do not try to extract all the information at the first point. People must be given a chance to recover from the nightmare of the journey and the reality of the escape. They should be allowed to consider their situation and their safety and that of their families and friends who may still be living under a totalitarian regime. Unhappily, the world contains far too many such regimes and many countries in western Europe and the United States support them economically and militarily. We should think of the wider implications of what we say and do. I hope that the Minister will recognise the force of the arguments for the new clause.

Mr. Charles Wardle

I do not disagree with the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) about some genuinely harrowing cases to which he has alluded in the debate and raised more than once in Committee. I hope that he appreciates that the Bill will enable us to move more swiftly through unfounded cases so that we can deal more rapidly with precisely the sort of harrowing case that he describes. As I said earlier, about 75 per cent. of those who apply for asylum have already established themselves here as visitors or in some other way.

As the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) will appreciate, the rules that he criticised have to be laid before Parliament and if prayed against can be debated and, in theory, can be disapproved. The new clause is misconceived and impractical, as I shall seek to explain. It would undermine the provisions of the draft rules relating to credibility. There are several reasons for the way in which the factors are set out in the rules.

First, the rules make clear to applicants and advisers and to those determining the claim the factors that may be considered important. In Committee, Opposition Members frequently asserted that an asylum seeker arriving here may be unfamiliar with our procedures and may not know what is important and what is not in presenting his case. The rules form a useful guide to the points that may be deemed of interest. Secondly, the rules are drafted to address quite specific problems of which we have become aware through vast experience of processing claims.

Let me give one or two examples. The first is of a person who applies for asylum only after several unsuccessful attempts to extend his or her stay in some other capacity and having exhausted all other rights of appeal under the normal immigration laws, or where there has been no change in the situation in the country of origin. Another is of the person whose story changes markedly when he is confronted with a rebuttal of part of his original story, which changes several times more with each successive interview. Another is of the person who destroys identification documents en route to, or after entering, the United Kingdom in order to delay removal. I understand that that will happen for other reasons, as the hon. Member for Islington, North has pointed out.

We fully appreciate the importance of an asylum claim and of making the right decision. For those reasons, it is vital that all the relevant factors of a case are examined. The general credibility of the applicant is crucial to the eventual decision. Therefore, it is somewhat unworldly to suggest that certain key factors should be taken entirely out of the frame and should play no part in reaching the final decision. It is surely natural to question why a person who has been here for two years suddenly makes an asylum claim in the absence of any obvious changes in his circumstances.

I have stressed on many occasions, and I am pleased to do so again, that the draft rules are framed in conditional language. Some factors may count against an applicant if no reasonable explanation is given. If a credible explanation is forthcoming, applicants may considerably enhance the strength of their claim to asylum. However bizarre the behaviour may have been, if there is a credible explanation, that will be taken into account, and so it should be.

However, it is simply not an option to ignore the fact that someone has deliberately sought to hide his identity or the fact that he has taken part in political activities in which he has never previously taken an interest and thereby placed himself in a particularly difficult situation. It is not unreasonable to explore such behaviour and seek explanations of it as part of the overall assessment of the case. That is what the draft rules provide for. For those reasons, I urge the House to reject new clause 5.

Question put and negatived.

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