Clause 7 - Failed asylum seekers: withdrawal of support
Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill
2:45 pm
Ms Beverley Hughes (Minister of State (Citizenship and Immigration), Home Office; Stretford and Urmston, Labour)
My hon. Friend is entirely right. Provided that we had at that time the documentation to enforce a removal, that is what would happen if a family were not co-operating with a voluntary removal.
In conclusion, I am grateful that the majority of Members, whatever their view about the principle—there is a difference there between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives—have approached the issue constructively.In speculating on how the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Malins) and his colleagues are going to vote on the measure, I point out that he has said in Committee that the Conservatives support the intention and the measure itself. I do not see how they can with any face do otherwise, given the measure introduced in 1996, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow alluded, by the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), now the Leader of the Opposition. It took support away from every claimant, not when their claim had failed but at the point of claiming. Had that measure not been overturned by the courts, that would have meant large numbers of families being destitute throughout the process of their claim, and not simply, as we are proposing, the withdrawal of support at the point at which a return home is the right course of action and the family becomes returnable because their claim has failed.