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Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. The attitude towards employment is wholly unsatisfactory and makes the system much more expensive. Many people seeking asylum have skills and would like to work temporarily. That would reduce the cost to the Government and, perversely, it would mean that the Government could track those people more easily. Nothing is more conducive to losing an asylum seeker in the system than forcing them into illegal work by proposing the ludicrous payment of £37 a week. No Member of the House could support themselves on £37 a week. Additionally, we must consider the quality of housing supplied by the National Asylum Support Service. If the Home Secretary is serious about his responsibilities, he should get NASS to look again at the landlords used and the quality of housing provided. Yet again this winter we will see NASS houses that are damp, cold and frankly a disgrace. We turn our eyes from that because of the larger issue of the number of asylum seekers, but we should be ashamed of the way in which we treat people while we make up our minds. They have not been found guilty—they are not guilty of anything, anyway. They have come to ask for our protection and to seek asylum here, but the way in which we treat them is not good. The Home Secretary needs to lean heavily on NASS and ensure that the system improves considerably. Work is one aspect of the problem, so we should seriously examine the practice of countries that allow asylum seekers to work temporarily while their claims are considered. The Government might well find that there are advantages all round—and few disadvantages—to allowing that. Young men from Kurdish Iraq in particular are skilled, hard-working and determined and they have great resources, but they are sitting idle and frustrated while trying to survive on £37 a week. This daft policy does nothing for them or for us and actually encourages them to work illegally or disappear from the system. The hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (Greg Mulholland) is quite right to say that the Government should look at the situation again. The other aspect of the Bill about which I am concerned is the question of the adjudication and the tribunal system because the Bill marginally turns the ratchet on that once again. The present system is hugely unsatisfactory. Those who act as adjudicators are, to my knowledge, decent and hard-working people doing a difficult job. However, they are being asked to make judgments about the credibility of the evidence put before them on matters about which they have absolutely no experience. They are asked to decide, on the basis of language, whether a person genuinely comes from a specific part of Somalia. I suspect that all hon. Members have read adjudicators’ reports on applicants. The adjudicators simply make arbitrary decisions in many cases by saying, ““I don’t believe this person comes from this particular Somali tribe.”” Although the adjudicators have no basis on which to make such an assumption, the decision is a matter of life and death for the applicants. The appeal system is now such a high hurdle to get over that it is inevitable that we are turning away people with genuine cause to fear for their lives. We need to look again at the advice available to adjudicators and the quality and specificity of Foreign Office reports because they are often general about the theatres from which refugees come. The judgments are made difficult because there are distinctions between different cities in different regions—and indeed, different parts of cities—and because of the divisions and tensions inside those cities. The way the system works at present is not fair to adjudicators and certainly not fair to refugees. Of course, adjudicators work under pressure from the media and, regrettably, the Government, but all the pressure is towards cutting the figures. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden played a part in setting the general mood of being appalled by the size of the figures. That has put such a pressure on the adjudicators and the system that there is a desire and tendency to keep the figures down.