Clause 7 - Failed asylum seekers: withdrawal of support
Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill
2:30 pm
Ms Beverley Hughes (Minister of State (Citizenship and Immigration), Home Office; Stretford and Urmston, Labour)
We have had a useful debate on the clause and have covered a lot of ground and important detail on the implementation of the measure. I want to say at the outset that this is difficult territory for us all. We face the competing imperatives of wanting a fair system that treats all applicants in the same way and having to attend to the possible consequences for the families affected by the measure. I appreciate the spirit in which hon. Members have tried with me to strike the best possible balance between those competing imperatives.
As hon. Members will know, the current position is that failed asylum seekers with dependent children receive asylum support, both cash and accommodation, until they leave the United Kingdom, or fail to comply with a removal direction. In parenthesis, I should respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard). He is right that a power to remove support at that stage already exists. It has not been used, and one reason for that is the difficulty relating to families destroying their documents. Without their assistance in the process of redocumentation, it has been difficult to use the power. Part of our intention with clause 7 is to encourage people not only to return but to help us to redocument them when they are in that position.
Under the clause, if the Secretary of State certifies that such people have failed without reasonable excuse to take steps to leave the United Kingdom voluntarily or to place themselves in a position in which they can do so—for example, by helping us to obtain a travel document on their behalf—asylum support for the family will cease.
In deliberations leading up to this Committee, the proposal was scrutinised by the Select Committee on Home Affairs. It is interesting that the members of that Committee accepted the principle underlying the clause that it is absurd and unreasonable to continue to support failed asylum-seeking families indefinitely. The present removal directions system is both resource intensive and, necessarily for that reason, slow in effecting the increase in the number of departures that
we want to achieve and that members on both sides of the Committee, notwithstanding how they vote today, have said is reasonable for the Government to pursue.
It is constructive that all members of the Committee have accepted that the objective is reasonable and that it must be pursued. Not to pursue it would undermine a fair system and allow those who want to avoid a return home the possibility of doing so, which would be unfair to those who return voluntarily. It is also constructive that all members but one accept that our intention is not to render families destitute or to take children into care and that the Bill says nothing about doing that.
At this point, I must put on record my concern, which was outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Harris), about the information put out by the hon. Member for Perth (Annabelle Ewing) and her colleagues in the Scottish National party. The party website carries two claims, both of which are absolutely wrong. The first is:
''David Blunkett plans to punish refugees seeking asylum by taking their children away from them.''
It is wrong to claim that we intend to punish asylum seekers by taking their children into care, and every Committee member apart from the hon. Member for Perth understands how such children could go into care only in the event of a deliberate choice by their parents not to return home or to help us to return them.
''Scots' law won't let that happen. His writ will not run north of the border.''
It is wrong to say that powers and obligations for children, whatever their circumstances and however those circumstances arise, are different in Scotland from those in England and Wales. The Children (Scotland) Act 1995 gives authorities the same powers and obligations in the event of children being in difficulties, as the Children Act 1989 gives to authorities in England and Wales.