Clause 14 - Establishment of centres
Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill
10:30 am
Mr Simon Hughes (North Southwark and Bermondsey, Liberal Democrat)
I support the hon. Gentleman's amendment, which is unsurprising as I tabled a similar amendment. We must get the strategic policy right before we get site specific. The Liberal Democrat party was, I believe, the only party in the previous Parliament to argue expressly for accommodation or
reception centres as a first point of contact for those seeking asylum, where their initial needs would be met and their applications processed. Such centres would also provide a range of services, which we will discuss later. As far as the Liberal Democrats are concerned, the concept is not original, and we support it in principle. We had two views about the centres: first, that people should stay in them for a limited time; and, secondly, that they should be a reasonable size. I share the hon. Gentleman's view that all the arguments stack up in favour of centres being smaller rather than larger—250 places rather than 750.
At the beginning of the year, I visited the camp at Sangatte, which holds 1,500 people. It is an enormous cavern of a place, and its size depersonalises the whole institution. A centre with 750 places would be only half that size, but even with half the number of people in Sangatte, we are still talking about a centre getting on for the size of one of our larger comprehensive schools. All the people in the centre will suddenly have been placed together. They will not know one another, and will have different cultural and language backgrounds. In a centre of that size, it is unlikely that we could give people the reception and accommodation that we should and to which they are entitled under international law.
The centres are not meant to be the equivalent of a Red Cross holding camp for people whose applications are not being processed. This is about Britain fulfilling its duty under international law to process people whose applications have been made. Whatever the outcome of an application—we all want judgments to be correct and based on the facts—we do Britain, our values and the standards of public life no good if we make these centres so big that they cannot accommodate people's needs.
There are huge numbers of asylum seekers in my constituency, and probably no surgery goes by without asylum seekers attending. Some may not have horrific stories to tell, but others do. I have had people from Kosovo. A mother was raped in front of the family, and the father is hugely traumatised and mentally ill as a result. They are trying to bring up their children here, in decent circumstances. People Sierra Leone have witnessed family members having limbs chopped off and being killed. We must ensure that people's needs can be met personally and individually, and not just as part of a processing line.
I also have three simple practical suggestions. First, the Government have identified a few sites, but there will not be many sites that can accommodate 750 people. If they are considering ex-military sites, they are usually found in the country and away from conurbations or communities. By and large, disused airfields and military accommodation are not found near communities. A smaller site, for 250 people, would not have that disadvantage, and there would be many more places where 250 people could be accommodated.
Secondly, if people are not to be locked in the centres, and if the aim is to let them have some sort of life while they are awaiting adjudication, it would be more convenient for them to use local facilities, such as the supermarket, cinema or post office. However, if people have little money and are living outside a village, a long way from a town, that will not be so easy.
The third issue, which we will all be exercised about, is the need to be careful that we do not aggravate racial and community tensions. The Government are mindful of that. My judgment--indeed, the logical conclusion--is that large holding centres for large numbers of people will be perceived by the community, rightly or wrongly, as more intimidating than a small place.
That simple argument reflects the attitudes of all people who see new communities moving into their areas. I was brought up in villages, and the infilling of two or three houses was never seen as a great problem, but when there was an application for a new estate, people would protest. Such a protest may often have been unreasonable, but people perceived a new estate as changing the character of their village.
Over the years, applications have also been made for nuclear waste dumps. Again, the community responds entirely differently to a proposal involving low-level waste and only a small processing job than it does to the building of a large reprocessing plant or nuclear reactor. We must be sensitive, because size matters, as it affects people's perceptions. Whether the length of stay is three or six months, and whether or not the families use local schools and local GPs from the start or after a while, smaller numbers must be better.
The Government made it clear that the proposal is only a trial, which is the right way to proceed, and that it will not cater for the majority of asylum seekers. It should therefore be a trial that is less likely to pose difficulties and more likely to produce alternative sites and to meet the needs of the individuals involved and those who look after them. I hope that the Government will be sympathetic to the amendment, and if they do not accept it as drafted, that they confirm that they are working towards that principle. The hon. Gentleman and I would be willing to work with the Minister to draft an acceptable proposal for smaller-scale accommodation centres to be the norm, rather than the much larger ones proposed by the Government.