Schedule 3 - Removal of Asylum Seeker to Safe Country
Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill
10:45 am
Ms Beverley Hughes (Minister of State (Citizenship and Immigration), Home Office; Stretford and Urmston, Labour)
The provisions in clause 12 and schedule 3 replace and extend those in sections 11 and 12 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. The amendments to schedule 3 deal with human rights claims in cases where applicants can, without substantive consideration of their asylum claim, be removed to a safe third country of which they are neither nationals nor citizens.
The provisions in schedule 3, and the various groupings that will result in practice, are very technical matters. Basically, however, the provisions in clause 12 and schedule 3 will facilitate the removal of asylum seekers to safe third countries where their asylum claims should properly be considered. The intention is to reduce the circumstances in which removal to safe third countries can be frustrated or delayed by unmeritorious claims about treatment in, or removal from, those third countries.
As regards the potential to make human rights claims, the general effect of the Government amendments is that schedule 3 will more closely mirror the approach taken in the safe country of origin provisions in part 5 of the 2002 Act. However, the amendments also recognise the particular status of those European countries that take part in implementing the Dublin arrangements, under which responsibility for asylum seekers is determined, and the supporting Eurodac database of fingerprint images, which is used to match images and ascertain whether someone has already made an asylum claim in another European country. The Dublin 2 regulation, which is a development of the original convention agreement, has introduced shorter procedural time limits for action on transfers. It does so on the basis of our shared commitment, as European countries, to dealing with the potential for what might be called asylum shopping—going from one country to another—and for the abuse of asylum mechanisms, which are undermined by the unmeritorious challenges that I mentioned.
As a result of the Government amendments, the schedule will contain four categories of country—not three, as originally proposed—and I shall set them out so that hon. Members can understand them. First, individuals who are removed to one of the states listed in part 2, all of which will participate in the Dublin mechanism after enlargement, will have no scope to challenge their removal on refugee convention grounds. Those countries will be deemed safe on refugee convention grounds.
In addition, the listed countries are deemed safe on human rights grounds only in the limited sense that they would not remove an asylum seeker to another country in contravention of article 3 of the ECHR—the narrow, so-called refoulement issue. For that group, any other ECHR challenge to removal will be certified, unless the Secretary of State is satisfied that the claim is not clearly unfounded. Such challenges could be based on article 3, in that the applicant could face inhuman or degrading treatment in that safe third country, or on article 8, in that removal from the UK could interfere with his or her private life. Judicial review is also possible on those grounds.
The amendments create a second, new group, in part 2. If removal is to a safe third country in that group, there is similarly no scope for challenge on refugee convention grounds. However, as states on that list will not be party to the Dublin arrangements, there will be no automatic safety provision relating to onward removal in breach of article 3. Instead, all human rights challenges to removal will be certified as
clearly unfounded, unless the Secretary of State is satisfied that they are not. In other words, the Secretary of State is required to certify on all human rights challenges.
Since the amendments split the first group into two, giving four groups in total, the third group of countries corresponds to the original second group in part 3 of the schedule as drafted. If removal is to a country in that group, there will again be no scope to challenge that removal on refugee convention grounds. To continue the graduated theme, however, there would be a case-by-case consideration of any ECHR challenge, to see whether the claim could be certified as clearly unfounded. That is a different approach to consideration of ECHR challenges. The fourth group, in part 4, corresponds exactly to part 3 of schedule 3 as drafted and provides for a case-by-case consideration of both the refugee convention and ECHR challenges to removal, to see whether they could or should be certified. Finally, the amendments align the order-making powers to add and remove countries with the established provisions on safe countries of origin in part 5 of the 2002 Act.
I appreciate that trying to work out what is in the schedule, what the amendments do to it and what that means in practice is complicated. As I have tried to explain, we are attempting to acknowledge that not all countries are the same in relation to potential human rights claims. We can have a graduated approach on a statutory basis to how we deal with human rights claims from the countries listed in the existing part 2 that are party to Dublin. We can make safe assumptions about how those countries would deal with a person who was removed to them with relation to article 3 and potential removal onwards. In other words, we can assume that they will not remove somebody in breach of article 3. Following from that, we take a progressively more cautious approach, in relation to the other groups of countries, to how human rights challenges may be dealt with under the law. The amendments split the initial first group into two, to ensure that, with the new second group of people, all human rights claims are subject to certification if a non-suspensive appeal is to apply.