HL Deb 29 June 2004 vol 663 cc209-19

7.34 p.m.

Lord Avebury

rose to move, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the regulations, laid before the House on 13 May, be annulled (S.I. 2004/1313).

The noble Lord said:

My Lords, the regulations abolish the six-monthly single additional payments of £50 to NASS-supported asylum seekers. When the SAPs were introduced, the argument was that support was provided largely in the form of vouchers with only a small cash element, making it difficult for the recipients to save for larger purchases and limiting where they could shop. At the end of the six months, the £50 was to make up for that disadvantage.

The scheme was ended in April 2002 when the vouchers were replaced by cash payments equal to 70 per cent of income support—£38.96 for a single person over 25, and £61.11 for a married couple—plus their accommodation and utility bills. When the order abolishing the vouchers was debated in March 2002, my noble friend Lord Dholakia asked the noble Lord, Lord Bassam—I am glad to see that he will reply this evening—to explain the arithmetic. The Minister then said: The calculation has been made that the discount, the 30 per cent, is approximate to the value of housing accommodation which is fully furnished and has all the necessary utensils and furniture in place. It is felt that 70 per cent is a fair reflection of the true cash needs of asylum seekers and that the 30 per cent covers utility payments such as rent and so on. It is assumed that that is all included".—[Official Report, 14/3/02; col. 1018.]

The Minister was evidently confused by the difference between utility payments and rents, so can we get that straight from the start? From the initiation of the voucher scheme in the 1999 Act, both the rent and the furnished accommodation were provided, and the utilities were paid for separately. It was calculated that the support provided was equivalent to 90 per cent of income support, as was explained by the Home Secretary at the time, Mr Jack Straw, in another place on 16 June 1999.

When the vouchers were scrapped in 2002 because the Government finally conceded that cash benefits did not after all provide an incentive to come here for non-genuine claimants—as Mr Straw said that he strongly believed less than three years before—the value of the package remained unchanged. Therefore, people on NASS support still received 10 per cent less than if they had been entitled to ordinary income support and housing benefit. For a single person, that comes to £434 over the six months before which he becomes entitled to the SAP £50.

In response to the representations made by my noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby about the hardship felt by people who had been on NASS support for more than six months, Lord Williams of Mostyn explained that the Government had, decided to introduce a discretionary payment to asylum seekers who stay in the support system through no fault of their own for more than six months".—[Official Report, 2/11/99; col. 824.] It was acknowledged that long-term asylum seekers would not have the money to replace essential household durables, or buy expensive replacement items such as children's shoes. In that respect, they were different from natives or persons settled here, who were entitled to income support. No one suggested, as the Government do in the Explanatory Memorandum attached to the order, that the £50 would actually make asylum seekers better off than UK citizens. That is a specious argument worthy of the Sun or Daily Mail.

Utility bills were always paid from the inception of the national scheme in 2000. It was that, together with the value of fully furnished accommodation, that took the NASS-supported asylum seeker up to 90 per cent of the level of those on income support. Now the Government come along and say—as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, did on 15 June when we debated the ending of back-payments𠅅that the value of those items comes to 30 per cent, not the 20 per cent of the income support with which it is compared. NASS pays for the bare necessities, and the model contract does not specify, as some malign commentators have suggested, that telephones, TVs, new cookers or washing machines would be provided. For a married couple, it is assumed that basic utilities and household durables will come to 30 per cent of income support of £87.30 a week or £681 over six months, the difference between the NASS payments and income support.

I want the Minister to listen carefully to my arithmetic, because it is the basis of my challenge to the regulations. Comparing the £87.30 with the detailed household expenditure figures for the bottom 10 per cent of households by income in table 1.3 of Family Spending—a report on the Expenditure and Food survey, for 2002—03, published this month by the Office for National Statistics, household goods and services less routine maintenance, such as cleaning materials, came to £9 per week and electricity, gas and water to £11.80 per week. The total of those items for six months was £540.80, compared with the difference of £681, which I have calculated before, between NASS payments and income support. So the payments made on behalf of the asylum seeker couple leaves them short of £140 at the end of the six months, compared with their counterparts on income support. The continuation of this payment of SAP 𠄔£50 to each—would still leave the couple out of pocket to the tune of £40.

In the debate on back payments, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said that, on the basis of the number granted asylum and the average wait for decisions of six months, the cost of back payments came to about £11 million per year. I worked out a cost of £1 million on 16,000 successful appeals and on an average wait of three months. I took the number of successful appeals dealt with by the IAA in the first quarter of 2004 and multiplied that by four, which is likely to be an overestimate given that the rate of appeals is declining and will be reduced still further as the backlog is cleared and non-suspensive appeals kick in.

Regarding the wait, the Government are to be congratulated on speeding up initial decisions so that 80 per cent of cases are now dealt with inside two months. In 2002–03, 87 per cent were dealt with within six months. If one took 13 per cent of the 575 favourable decisions on initial applications in the first quarter of this year, it would come to 75 per cent. If those 4,000 successful appellants had been waiting for an average of six months, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, suggested, it could be assumed that half of those would have qualified for that payment. That is also an overestimate, given that the average figure is weighted by the small proportion of appellants whose cases take much longer to resolve. The total cost would then be about £100,000 per quarter and falling. That is a small amount, but not insignificant in the budgets of people who have been trying to exist for the previous six months on levels lower than income support.

Another way of looking at the 30 per cent claim made by Ministers in recent months would be to examine the number of people who receive support from NASS, the length of time that each recipient is supported and the total cost. Unfortunately, NASS does not maintain its accounts in a way that would enable such an assessment to be made. The independent review of NASS, submitted to the Government in May 2003, but published only recently after a nine-month delay, said that the authors found, a worrying lack of financial discipline permeating the organisation, stemming … from the fact that NASS has never had a meaningful three-year budget to work to". Two months after beginning of the financial year, NASS did not even have a budget for the current year, 2003–04. That was because the IND was still engaged in discussions with the Treasury about its own budget. A figure of £35 million as its running costs was mentioned in the review, but that did not include payments to the asylum seekers.

The review gave some statistics on the applications for NASS support and the numbers receiving subsistence only and, respectively, full support, but there was no indication of the length of time for which they were receiving that support. If the original targets in the White Paper are reached, the majority of asylum seekers would not be in receipt of NASS support for more than six months; and a diminishing number of SAP claims would then be made.

I hope that the Minister can assist the House, first, by telling us what the NASS budget is for 2004–05 and, secondly, by telling us the calculations on which that budget is based. There are no figures whatever on the NASS website, which is one of the least informative that I have looked at of any public sector organisation. In the past year I must have looked at several hundred websites relating to local and national government. How many people, is it assumed, will be on subsistence-only benefit and how many will be on full support during the year and for what average time? The Minister must have had those figures, otherwise it would have been impossible to construct the budget. If we knew the figures we could assess the Minister's claim that the value of utility payments and household expenses amounted to 30 per cent of income level and not to the 20 per cent originally stated by Jack Straw.

7.45 p.m.

Two further reasons were given by the Government for abolishing the SAPs in an e-mail to stakeholders on 11 May. First, the Government said that it would be difficult to continue to make the payments given that UK citizens receiving income support had no access to additional payments. That is wrong. In fact, people on income support have access to Social Fund payments, which depend on individual circumstances and needs; and they may also apply for community care grants if, say, they have an unsettled way of life or their households face exceptional pressure. That grant could be used to pay for the same article or service every 26 weeks, which is the same interval between successive payments of SAP. Asylum seekers have an unsettled way of life, by definition, and face exceptional pressure. Unlike most people on income support, they left behind them when they fled their countries a lifetime of possessions and usually arrived in the UK with few clothes, household items or standard belongings, such as radios and TVs. Secondly, it was said that the administrative costs of processing the SAP claims was disproportionate. I do agree with the Government in that matter. The solution is to make the payments automatic, like, say, winter fuel allowances for pensioners. Even if the Government's 100 per cent claim was correct, it would not apply to those who opt for NASS subsistence-only support or who receive cash payments amounting to 70 per cent of income support. That was confirmed in a Home Office fact sheet, published in May. Nor does the 100 per cent claim apply to asylum seekers who fail to apply within three days of arriving in the country. Whatever the reasons for the delay, they receive nothing at all and have to live on thin air while they wait for their applications to be decided.

This is a mean proposal to save taxpayers a small amount of money at the expense of some of the worst-off people in this country and I am sorry that the Government brought it forward. I beg to move.

Moved, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the regulations, laid before the House on 13 May, be annulled (S.I. 2004/1313).— (Lord Avebury.)

Viscount Bridgeman

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for bringing this matter before the House for due consideration and discussion. While I am grateful to the noble Lord for highlighting this highly topical issue, we on these Benches cannot support the line that he is taking, although the noble Lord has, at least, given us an insight into the disorganised state—or the not "joined-up" state, to use the current phrase—of the asylum legislation in this country. Somewhat vicariously I look forward to seeing whether the Minister and the noble Lord can settle their arithmetical differences.

I should like to take this opportunity to raise other grave concerns about the state of asylum in this country. We how have a situation where, on the one hand, the Government are withdrawing single additional payments to asylum seekers, while at the same time we read in the press that approximately 25,000 properties rented to asylum seekers are empty due to a lack of tenants, allegedly costing the Government £110 million a year. My noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour raised this matter yesterday at Report stage on the re-committal of the Asylum and Immigration Bill, to which the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, in cols. 38 and 39 of Hansard, gave a spirited, but not wholly convincing reply. In a period of acute housing shortage and at this huge cost, this is a failure of resource management on the part of the Government on a massive scale and I hope that the Minister can give us some more information on how the Government propose to address the problem.

It appears that the Government have never been able to develop a proper system of asylum that benefits both the applicants and the country at large. Apart from the well-documented difficulties in processing applications and tracking their progress, it is becoming increasingly difficult to remove failed asylum seekers due to the implementation of the Human Rights Act. Currently the Government face a major court defeat over a ruling that a policy denying shelter to asylum seekers breached human rights law. This is yet another example of the chaotic asylum situation that we have in Britain today.

On these Benches, we would urge the Government to think through the implications of their policy instead of pushing through asylum Bill after asylum Bill and ending up with challenges in the courts due to their ill thought-out policies. We all know that the Home Secretary does not like challenges in the courts.

Once again, I thank the noble Lord for introducing this interesting debate. I look forward with interest to hearing the Minister's reply.

7.50 p.m.

Lord Bassam of Brighton

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for raising this issue. I congratulate him on doing so with his customary charm and precision. He is good at following up these points and it is right and proper that we, as the Government, are held to account for what we seek to do with the asylum process and the improvements and changes we make.

It is worth reminding ourselves where we have come from and put on record how the Government see the position changing. On 3 April 2000, we revised the system of support for asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute. This provided that support would mainly be provided "in kind", through vouchers. These were exchangeable for goods at shops affiliated to the scheme. They were issued to supported asylum seekers. A small amount of the support entitlement—£10 for each supported person—was issued in cash.

Vouchers were unpopular with many asylum seekers and their representatives and many working in the voluntary sector who give aid to asylum seekers. Concern was expressed that the use of vouchers was socially divisive and demeaning. Asylum seekers complained that the limitations on the number of outlets affiliated to the scheme limited their choice. Asylum seekers could not, for example, purchase food from markets or use low-budget and charity shops to obtain necessary clothing.

The Home Secretary ordered a review of the voucher system and published its findings on 29 October 2001. At the same time, he announced that all asylum seekers would be issued with application registration cards— ARCs, as they have become known to the trade. The voucher scheme was to be superseded once these cards were introduced. The Home Secretary said that, by the Autumn of 2002 we will have established a robust but less socially divisive scheme". Application registration cards were introduced much more quickly. Goods vouchers ceased to be issued in March 2002 and from April 2002 all regular support payments to asylum seekers have been made in cash.

The purpose of paragraph 2 of the Asylum Support (Amendment)(No. 2) Regulations is to remove the now obsolete references to vouchers in the Asylum Support Regulations 2000. That has been broadly welcomed. This amendment is solely aimed at tidying up the regulations as vouchers have not been issued for over two years. It is therefore appropriate to remove references in the 2000 regulations to voucher support and to replace them with terms relating to the provision of cash support.

Paragraph 4 of the same regulations revokes Regulation 11 of the Asylum Support Regulations 2000. This provided that asylum seekers and their dependants in receipt of support for a continuous period of six months could apply for a single additional payment of £50. That has caused the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, to table this Motion.

As the noble Lord acknowledged, asylum support is set at 70 per cent of the income support levels for adults and 100 per cent for children. The level of asylum support is intended to reflect the fact that NASS-supported asylum seekers do not have to meet the cost of accommodation, furnishings or utility bills. Single additional payments have previously been payable to asylum seekers after six months if their claim was still outstanding and thereafter at six-monthly periods to asylum seekers whose claims were awaiting a final determination.

On 25 March this year, Beverley Hughes, the then Minister, announced in a Written Statement that single additional payments to asylum seekers and their dependants supported by NASS were to cease. Single additional payments were introduced when support was provided mostly in the form of vouchers exchangeable for goods, with only a small cash element. The six-monthly payments of £50 in cash were intended for the purchase of renewable items such as clothing. Now that support is provided entirely in cash, asylum seekers are no longer limited to where they can shop and can get better value for their money by visiting markets and charity shops. That point was argued in discussions and debates on the need to replace vouchers.

The payment of support in cash gives those who receive asylum support a greater amount of flexibility and choice in how they spend their support and allows them to shop at a wider range of outlets. As a result, they can budget more effectively and shop at the most competitive retailers.

Asylum seekers can still apply for a ?300 maternity payment and since March 2003 additional support for pregnant women and children under three has meant that the level of asylum support has increased overall for these more vulnerable groups.

We intend to phase out these payments over six months following their abolition to ensure that final payment is received by all of those eligible up to the date of abolition. The changed effected by the Asylum Support (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2004 are intended to improve the Government's system of asylum support.

Some concern has been raised about the difference in the way support is paid to asylum seekers as opposed to income support and jobseeker's allowance, which is payable to UK residents. There is no direct comparison between asylum support and income support or jobseeker's allowance, which are intended to serve different roles in supporting people.

Asylum support is paid to eligible asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute and is intended to provide a safety net for those who are in need of help while deterring those who may attempt to abuse our asylum system for the economic benefit it may bring. The level of financial support paid to adults is, as commonly agreed, set at 70 per cent of income support levels. Children receive 100 per cent of the personal allowance paid for children and families in receipt of income support. This level of support is intended to reflect the fact that NASS-supported asylum seekers do not have to meet the cost of accommodation, furnishings or utility bills.

Lord Avebury

My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord can help the House. I gave some calculations based on recent statistics published by the Government showing that the value of the accommodation, furnishings and utility bills paid by the state on behalf of the asylum seeker did not come to 30 per cent claimed by the Minister or by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. They came to 23 per cent and therefore the asylum seeker was out of pocket to the tune of 7 per cent as compared with someone receiving basic income support. Will the noble Lord address that part of my arithmetic?

Lord Bassam of Brighton

My Lords, in his earlier contribution, the noble Lord said that he wanted me to listen carefully to what he had to say and I did. The noble Lord has given us statistics and his own calculations and I should like to have the opportunity to reflect on them. I am more than happy to write to him going over the points he has raised because it may be a more useful and constructive way of dealing with the issue. The noble Lord knows that this has been a rough-and-ready approach, but we have provided improvements. I have previously argued the case from the Dispatch Box—and I am happy to do so again today— that we are providing a safety net for those who are destitute. I believe that the noble Lord understands that.

In developing the asylum system, we are trying to drive up the efficiency and effectiveness of the support system. We now have through NASS 12 established offices in the regions of the UK. Staff already deal with "outreach" work, involving visiting newly arrived asylum seekers to help them access services, housing management and investigations. Regional management teams liaise closely with local authorities and others to ensure an effective system of support. That is particularly helpful in continuing the improvement of community relations and in ensuring that we preserve community cohesion, which is an extremely important part of their work.

It is worth putting on the record that we do not see this as the end of our plans for NASS to have a greater presence in the regions. We are now working on decentralising to the regions some of the NASS casework which is carried out in Croydon. We are approaching that with care and sensitivity because it is important that the processes that are in place enable the work to be done well and effectively. NASS is also working on procuring new contracts for accommodation—a matter about which I know the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, is concerned —post 2005 when the current ones expire. Again, NASS is working closely with local authorities on that as it is vital that we take account of local issues in determining where to place asylum seekers.

Budgetary pressure has encouraged NASS to make efforts to reduce its costs, and it is estimated that the abolition of the discretionary single additional payment will save approximately £4 million in the next financial year. The Government are also proposing to abolish back-payments of income support to successful asylum seekers and to replace that with a refugee integration loan, which will be available on application to those who qualify. We want the asylum process to be as efficient, as timely and as effective as possible. Therefore, we believe that it should be forward-looking and that we should look to move away from retrospective payments that, in effect, reward time spent as an asylum seeker.

It is important to remember that no scheme directly equivalent to the single additional payments scheme is available to United Kingdom citizens who receive income support or jobseeker's allowance. Therefore, we intend to proceed with the Asylum Support (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations as implemented.

There were a few other points which I do not think I covered in my commentary on the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. I want to reiterate that I do not believe that I was confused when debating these matters earlier. It is our contention that asylum seekers receive roughly the same amount as those on income support when payments in kind are taken properly into account. I know that the noble Lord disputes those figures. I am not saying that they add up exactly; I am saying that they are broadly the same.

Lord Avebury

My Lords, if we can prove from the statistics, as I think I have done with the figures that I gave, which, after all, are the Government's own figures, that the asylum seeker is worse off to the tune of 7 per cent of the value of income support compared with the native who is on the basic rate of income support, will the noble Lord reconsider what he said? He said that the objective of the Government is to put people on broadly the same footing as those on income support. If it can be proved that they are considerably worse off than someone on income support, will the Government take action to correct that?

Lord Bassam of Brighton

My Lords, that is not the kind of commitment that I intend to give from the Dispatch Box. But, of course, the Government always keep carefully under review the levels of support that are provided through schemes. We can argue the finite detail of these matters, but I believe that we are providing a scheme which is effective, which covers the fundamental needs of asylum seekers and which I think many would say is generous in the way in which it works and in its application.

We have to stick to budgets. NASS now has a budget. I am happy to provide the noble Lord with some more details and I shall be happy to write to him on that point. We are working to achieve a better level of prediction in terms of the demand for asylum support in the context of the 2005 accommodation strategy.

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his questions. The noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, asked a further question, which I believe concerned the denial of support to late applicants and whether that had been the subject of litigation under human rights law. In our view, Section 55 has played its part in reducing the asylum intake. The Court of Appeal has granted leave to appeal to the House of Lords and the Government are preparing their case further. I hope that that clears up the point raised by the noble Viscount.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for raising this issue and I appreciate the sensitive nature of it, but we in government believe that we have a responsibility to the nation to provide proper systems of support. However, those systems of support must be effective and efficiently organised and must also keep to budget.

Viscount Bridgeman

My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, can he give an assurance—if he is not able to answer it tonight, perhaps we can have something in writing—about the large stock of houses which remains unoccupied at great cost to the taxpayer?

Lord Bassam of Brighton

My Lords, I shall be happy to write to the noble Viscount. I think that his point relates to an article in the Sunday Times. I can furnish him with some additional details and perhaps it would be better if I dealt with that matter in correspondence.

Lord Avebury

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the information that he has given to the House but, as he will realise from my last intervention, the fundamental point I made still remains. I say that it is wrong to withdraw the £50 single additional payment (SAP) because the asylum seeker who has been on NASS support for six months, and who would otherwise have received that payment but for the order now before us, would have been worse off if he was on full NASS support, to the tune of 7 per cent; if he was on subsistence only he would be worse off to the tune of 30 per cent; and if he was one of the Section 55 cases to which the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, referred, he would be worse off to the tune of 100 per cent.

So someone who has been a victim of Section 55 of the 1999 Act who has been living on thin air for six months would then receive this small amount of £50 and the Minister proposes to remove that. He proposes to remove the £50 from people who, by definition, are worse off to the tune of 30 per cent because they were on subsistence only. As the Minister and everyone else has acknowledged, that amounts to 70 per cent of income support. The Minister has not produced any alternative figures to contest my basic calculation that someone on full NASS support, living in NASS provided accommodation and getting his utility bills and household expenses paid for is still 7 per cent worse off than a native or a person who has indefinite leave to remain and who is receiving normal income support.

The Government say that it is their objective to put the asylum seeker on broadly the same footing as if he was on income support. I have demonstrated from government figures that that is not being achieved. Irrespective of what is decided tonight—clearly, we shall pass the order and the £50 single additional payment will disappear—I beg the Government to look carefully at the figures that I have provided. If they think that there are alternative figures, either from the NASS accounts, which I have not been able to access or from any other source, which will show that the accommodation and the utility payments on behalf of the asylum seekers are worth 30 per cent and not 20 per cent as Mr Jack Straw said originally, then we should get together and discuss this.

There is a dispute between us. We have produced some figures. The Government have not produced their calculation and it is a rather unsatisfactory way to end this debate for me to have shown my arithmetic to the Government and for them not to have satisfied the House with any alternative. In the circumstances, there is no more I can do this evening than to beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Lord Bassam of Brighton

My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn until 8.35 p.m.

Moved, accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

[The Sitting was suspended from 8.9 until 8.35 p.m.]