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Viscount Bridgeman: My Lords, it is always a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, with his great experience of this subject and his deep commitment to it.
May I start, however, by echoing the sentiment of the House and thanking my noble friend Lord Waddington for bringing this important debate to the Floor of the House? It seems that hardly a day goes by without an article in one of the daily newspapers or an item on the television evening news regarding immigration and asylum. Yet it seems that this Government have still not found a solution to what many feel is a growing problem in society.
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My noble friend Lord Waddington, if I may say so, articulated the sentiments of my right honourable friend Michael Howard, who had the courage to raise this issue and which excited a suspiciously immediate reaction from the government. My right honourable friend's attitude has not been so much about the principle of immigration and asylum but about improving the management of what is a clearly imperfect system at the moment—a point which has possibly been overlooked in some speeches today.
We on these Benches believe that Britain is a great country; that we have a proud tradition of giving refuge to those fleeing persecution, and have always offered a home to families who want to come to this country and work hard.
As so many of your Lordships have noted, Britain would not be the diverse and successful country it is today if such policies had not been in place. This debate has been greatly enhanced by the speeches of several noble Lords who are themselves recent descendants of asylum seekers or, indeed, who have at some stage been refugees themselves. However, as this debate has highlighted, it is time that we looked at the facts and the pressures that Britain is currently facing—this year, this month, today.
The current statistics make alarming reading. Britain has seen an unprecedented increase in immigration since this Government came to power. As has been noted, it has more than doubled to 150,000. My noble friend Lord Waddington has graphically illustrated the problem by comparing English cities.
The cost of the asylum system, both at local and national level, must also be taken into account. Let us take the county of Kent. It receives many asylum seekers through the major port of Dover, and many who arrive at the Eurostar terminal at Ashford or further down the line. In 1996, Kent County Council's asylum budget was less than a quarter of a million pounds; last year it was £53 million. In fact, since this Government took office local authorities have spent £3 billion on asylum. I am sure that this figure would be more acceptable if the asylum system was working. However, the system is in chaos, from top to bottom.
The mice may have been cleared from Lunar House, but the Public Accounts Committee stated earlier this year that it took nine hours' work to process an average application, and that £150 million had been wasted by the Government in moving employees from clearing claim backlogs to removing asylum seekers.
The process of removing failed asylum seekers is another failure. There are currently over 250,000 failed asylum seekers living in Britain today, and the Government have allowed the immigration system to fall into disarray. May I give three examples? Work permits have been given to people whose claims government officials knew to be fraudulent. Companies are rarely, if ever, successfully prosecuted for employing illegal immigrants. In the last three years there have been only nine prosecutions and three convictions. Although it does not refer to the ethics of the subject under debate today, in an age of global terrorism, the Government have no idea who is coming into or leaving the country.
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This poses a serious risk to Britain's security. Failed asylum seekers are rarely removed. Fewer than one in four failed asylum seekers are recorded as being removed or departing voluntarily.
I turn to the rights of appeal for overseas students, to which my noble friend Lord Renton of Mount Harry drew attention. In the House of Commons on 7 February this year, the Home Secretary introduced his five-year strategy, stating:
"Overseas students make a major contribution, economic and intellectual, to our education institutions and many as a result develop lifelong ties with this country".
""We will abolish the right of appeal against refusal of leave to enter the UK for work or study".—[Official Report, Commons, 7/2/05; cols. 1181–83.]
That leaves the expensive and time-consuming process of judicial review. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, took the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill through this House last year, and I should be particularly interested to hear his comments on that.
It has to be said, however, that the blanket removal of appeal rights for students flies in the face of those assurances given by the Government. Applications by students are often refused on a variety of grounds, such as inability to follow the course, lack of funds to maintain the student, lack of intention to leave the UK at the end of study, and so on. These are subjective, not objective, criteria and are often found to have been wrong decisions by entry clearance officers when examined by an independent adjudicator on appeal.
The need for an appeals system is exemplified in the report of the National Audit Office, Visa Entry to the UK, published on 17 June last year. Paragraph 19 on page 9 states:
"Over the last three years, 50 per cent of appeals by applicants intending to visit family members in the United Kingdom have led to the initial decision being overturned. The provision of additional evidence which was not available to the entry clearance officer and the support of the sponsor were often influential in the decision being overturned. But, in some cases, adjudicators raised concerns over the robustness of the original decision. The refusal decision is reviewed again by an entry clearance manager when the appeal is received, and both the initial and adjudicator's decision are based on the balance of probabilities. However, a more rigorous quality review and enhanced staff training would help to prevent borderline cases reaching appeal".
That is a comment on the first stage of the interview process. Removal of appeals will send the wrong message to overseas students coming to the United Kingdom.
It is no wonder that the Prime Minister has stated that people are right to be concerned about immigration and asylum. Clearly, something must be done. Immigration must be brought under control. We believe in firm but fair immigration controls. They are essential for good community relations, the maintenance of national security and the management of public services. It is now time to act.
The noble Lord, Lord Desai, commented on the statistic that in 30 years' time, immigration will have amounted to five times the population of Birmingham. Surely it is reasonable to expect that that huge figure needs to be controlled efficiently and humanely, which is the object of my party.
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For Britain to continue to be a rich, successful, strong and creative country for the people who currently live here and those whom we will welcome in future, changes need to be made to the current asylum system. We believe that there should be an annual limit to immigration, 24-hour security at ports to prevent illegal immigration and an Australian-style points system for work permits, which would give priority to people with the skills that Britain needs. Such measures will ensure that Britain will not have the current asylum crisis that we are experiencing and will mean a better quality of life for the asylum seekers themselves who want to come to live and work here—a sentiment so appropriately echoed by my noble friend Lord Waddington, to whom I once again express my thanks.
Lord Rooker: My Lords, with 19 speakers and 20 minutes allocated, I cannot begin to respond. A minute for each speaker would be an insult. I have been asked many specific questions. Although I shall make some general remarks to start with as quickly as I can to put some issues on record and cover some points, I will ensure—I normally try not to do this, but in this case, as with the prisons debate, I must—that we give specific replies to the specific questions, because they are important. As I say, I shall try to deal with as many as possible.
I missed the final point made by the noble Viscount. His last sentence led me to say, "Here we go", because he talked about an asylum crisis, whereas the quarter's figures published today for 2004 show that there has been a 67 per cent reduction in intake since the peak of October 2002. We can use words like crisis, but they are emotive. Although I do not deny that there has been a big increase, that does us no good. Whatever may be the situation in Lunar House today, it is far better than it was four or five years ago.
I will step out of bounds to say that when the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, referred to receiving that letter when he was a Member of the other place, I was in the other place. I have never had any trouble separating my role as a Member of Parliament, a constituency Member, from being a member of the Government. When I received that letter, I wrote more letters to the Home Office as a result, because I did not want my constituents thinking that I was easing off because we had been asked to help with the pressure. I did that only because I was chasing cases. I was trying to help.
I did not say, "Let sleeping dogs lie. It is so chaotic. Time will take its toll and, by and large, we will get a successful result". I cannot even count the number of letters that I sent. The noble Lord mentioned a 40 per cent increase. I certainly wrote more letters as a result of getting a letter asking me not to write. That may be counter-productive, but in that position, you are the only conduit for your constituents who are worried sick about the lack of reply to their cases which, I must say, were taking 20 months to get a first decision, compared to today, when it is two months. So there has been a
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substantial increase in the flow of decisions. I mention that point because I thought, "That is exactly what happened to me".
The opportunity that the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, has given the House has been very useful. Most colleagues congratulated him on giving the House the opportunity to have the debate, even though they went on to say that they did not agree with everything he said. This is a debate; that is what it is all about; we do not expect to agree. However, the tone of the debate has been positive and helpful. It has made clear that the vast majority of people come to this country perfectly legitimately and lawfully.
Every year, about 90 million people come to this country and the vast majority are visitors, students or returning residents. Clearly, 90 million people are not staying in this country each year, but that is the flow of people coming to this country. We need to maintain the security of our borders and we have radically improved the robustness of controls. Where there are abuses, we seek to tackle them. We always feel as though we are one step behind the crooks and spivs because, as I have made clear before, the profits from people-trafficking world-wide are greater than from traffic in drugs. Let us make no bones about it: this is big business. It involves people's lives, it is true, but it is big business. Therefore, it is not as though we are simply dealing with individual claimants.
In some ways, we have gone a lot further. It is not generally known, but we have moved UK border controls out of the UK into continental Europe—into France and Belgium. For some years, the French have allowed British immigration officers to travel on French internal train journeys with the right to ask people about their tickets and passport arrangements. And yet all we hear is carping criticism of the French over Sangatte. The French allowed us to do that and we have similar arrangements elsewhere.
We have also embraced new technology, such as heartbeat and carbon dioxide monitors, especially at ports. We have tried to put effective managed migration programmes into place in a robust way against abuse.
As an aside, because it has been legitimately raised two or three times, I pay tribute to the decision of the Conservative government led by Sir Edward Heath about Ugandan Asians. I was not even in the other place at the time, but I must say that we cannot compare that with what has happened now. We knew that 32,000 people were going to come here. We knew that they were going to come. It was managed. Recently, it was unmanaged when we reached 70,000 or 80,000 asylum cases a year. We did not know who was coming, when they were coming or where they were coming from. The Ugandan Asian situation was totally different from that. I pay tribute to that Government, because many of those people were massively successful and made a massive contribution to our economy.
I must refer to one other point, which is that controls coming in are one thing but there is a lack of embarkation controls. That has been commented on
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by many people. The fact is that after 1997, we continued the previous Government's policy of scrapping what embarkation controls there were for the good reason that they were not working. They did not actually tell us anything. We need some kind of embarkation control to know who is leaving the country, but the only way we can do that is with modern technology: e-borders and biometric ID cards. There is no other solution. We are stepping up that process and the old system of embarkation controls did not work.
In respect of public services, we do not look on immigration as a burden. In fact, we think that the opposite is the case, generally speaking. Immigration provides more nurses, teachers, doctors and builders who can help deliver public services. I know that there are sometimes pressures relating to the countries from which those people have come. We do not deliberately go trawling in Third World countries to damage their services; we have a policy in respect of that.
We have dramatically cut unfounded asylum claims. That is important. People are entitled to claim asylum, but people who are refused their claim have no right to remain. The latest figures, published today, show that from the peak in October 2002 numbers are down by 70 per cent. We have made the system better and more efficient. Four out of five claims are decided in under two months rather than the 20-month average before 1997. Cases awaiting an initial decision are at the lowest level for a decade. We have removed more of those whose claims have been refused. The removal rate is nowhere near the targets we set but it is twice the level of about 1996-97. It is not the easiest task in the world to remove a group of, let us say, young single men in a block of flats who have no justified claim. There are serious issues. It has to be done with great care and sensitivity.
As regards the dispersal of destitute asylum seekers away from those local authorities which traditionally face greater responsibility, one cannot compare what happens now with what happened in the past. I do not want to bandy figures because that does not get us anywhere. The National Asylum Support Service (NASS) did not exist. Therefore, the situation is different. We reimburse local authorities for the vast majority of their expenditure. I shall give specific answers on some issues relating to that because it is a burden on the local authorities: there should not be an additional charge on their council tax payers.
Other issues have been touched on in passing: that does not mean they are not important. As regards good community relations, if people have confidence that our system is as robust as it can be, fair, open and transparent, they are more likely to be welcoming and tolerant of those who have a right to be here. The point is that people have the right to be here. We seek to ensure more confidence that that is the situation.
On the other hand, issues will come before the House in due course to ensure that we use the law where we have to. They make clear that we will not tolerate hatred of people based on their race or religious beliefs. There is a strong case for that. That is
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why we need that new protection. That is why we have expanded the existing criminal offences in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill. I shall not go into great detail. The House is aware of the arguments.
Immigration and asylum is an issue of our time. I suppose it always is. We are an island nation. It would be vulgar to claim that the subject is switched on and off just before a general election; and I do not do so. There have been a number of pieces of legislation before your Lordships' House on this matter in the past few years. It is not an issue that the Government have saved up. We have sought to meet situations as they arise. Sometimes it can feel as though the authorities are always seeking to close loopholes that the spivs and people-traffickers have exploited. We shall always face that situation in a modern age but we have to use new technology.
Many noble Lords mentioned the economy. The noble Lord, Lord Lamont, took apart the Home Office report published in about 2001—just before I went to the Home Office—on the effects of managed migration and the benefits to the economy. As the noble Lord, Lord Desai, said, we have at present 600,000 vacancies. We do not have rampant wage inflation. We are still short of people. It is true that we have a big increase in work permits. I think that that is managed well. There have been more prosecutions of people employing illegal labour. There is definitely a benefit. In terms of the Treasury's view, there is a contribution. I shall come to the figures when responding to the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lamont. But even the Treasury's current figures demonstrate that there is greater benefit to the country than disbenefit.
Several noble Lords referred to the 1951 UN convention. I have nothing to say other than to repeat the government policy which I stated in this House on 7 February. The noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, asked Her Majesty's Government:
"The answer is no. We have no plans to withdraw from or renegotiate the 1951 refugee convention. It is part of the legal and ethical framework that enshrines basic principles of human decency through which all countries meet their obligations. A better and more realistic way of addressing today's protection issues is to adopt effective domestic asylum procedures and to work with other governments and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees".—[Official Report, 7/2/05; col. 540.]
In supplementary answers, I made the point that the convention had been written for another age but the fact remains that we have no plans to pull out of it.
We published the five-year strategy on the same day, 7 February, as I recall. My noble friend Lady Scotland repeated the Statement which had been made in another place about the strategy which gives a clearer, tighter system. It gives greater clarification about whom we admit to the UK and why; and who is allowed to stay in the UK, and why. It also details how we police the system and how we ensure that people leave when they are no longer entitled to be here.
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I realise from what has been said that some of the issues—they will come before noble Lords in due course—are somewhat controversial. I have no doubt that they will be fully debated. The strategy in the five-year plan is the result of a top-to-bottom analysis of what has happened in the past few years with regard to asylum and immigration that the Prime Minister announced in April 2004. It looked at how the system operates to develop an approach which is simpler, more straightforward and more robust.
We are not interested in "fortress Britain". Neither are we interested in an open house. It has to be in the middle—
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