Unfounded Asylum Applications (Hansard, 10 February 2003)

§ Lord Filkin

The Government are fully committed to maintaining effective immigration control and ensuring that access to the asylum process is restricted to those who are in need of protection, as demonstrated by the series of fundamental reforms to the immigration, asylum and nationality system over the past 12 months.

Intelligence has shown that an increasing number of people who have been accepted as refugees elsewhere in the world are coming to the United Kingdom and making asylum applications in false identities. This undermines the integrity of the asylum process, places an unacceptable burden on the system and diverts valuable resources from those in genuine need. This abuse of the system is made easier as under the provisions of the Council of Europe Agreement on the Abolition of Visas for Refugees the holders of refugee travel documents issued by some 21 countries may travel to the United Kingdom without a visa. We have therefore decided to suspend the operation of that agreement. This will mean that from 00.01 hours on Tuesday 11 February all holders of refugee travel documents will require a visa before coming to the United Kingdom.

This measure will bring the holders of refugee documents issued by the 21 countries into line with those who hold refugee documents issued by all other countries. This change will not prevent refugees who are settled in other countries and who genuinely wish to visit the United Kingdom from doing so. They will simply he required to obtain a visa before coming here. What it will do is act as a deterrent to those whose sole purpose in coming to the United Kingdom is to abuse our asylum system.