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Asylum Seekers

That is absolutely right. If we consider the matter just in terms of numbers of applications, which has been the tendency, a graph of those numbers going back several years makes it easy to say, ““Ah yes. That year was Bosnia, and that one was Kosovo.”” That is what really affects the number of applications. The argument that being tough and removing financial support will deter someone from coming here does not work. The same applies to the argument, which is dealt with in the report, about permission to work—the suggestion that if we were to give permission to work, particularly to people whose asylum claims have failed but who have been here, and are likely to be here, for a considerable time, it would act as a pull factor. We used, of course, to give people permission to work when their asylum cases had not been decided after six months. The period is now a year. Given that the vast majority of asylum claims are now dealt with in less time, and we have speeded up the decision-making process considerably compared with 10, 12 or 15 years ago when people waited years for a decision, the number of people affected, who are making claims, will be fairly small. However, there are real concerns about the people whose asylum claims have failed and who remain here. There are several thousand people on section 4 support, and many of them will be people whom the Home Office and the Government accept cannot safely be returned, at the moment, to their country of origin. That is why they are given section 4 support—it has generally been accepted that they cannot, for the time being, be safely removed. Of course, to get section 4 support, people must sign a paper indicating that they are willing to return when it becomes possible. The vast majority of failed asylum seekers are not on section 4 support, and they get nothing. Those are often the people who end up destitute. When we know that someone is likely to be here for a considerable time, because there is no obvious prospect of returning them to their country of origin, why on earth do we not give them temporary permission to work, as the Committee suggested? That would give them something useful to do with their lives, and even if they are going to return at some point, acquiring skills and work experience while they are here could be of significant benefit to them when they return to their country of origin. In the queue of what the Home Office now describes as ““legacy cases”” there are many failed asylum seekers, and it is estimated that it will take five years to work through that queue. Are we simply going to leave these people in limbo for five years? The answer is not to say that people can work voluntarily. How do they get to the place where they are supposed to be volunteering if they do not have any cash—if they are on section 4 and on vouchers or if they are not on section 4 and have absolutely nothing? It is a matter of treating people with dignity while they are here, even if they are going to be removed. I lose count of the number of people I see in constituency surgeries who have reached the point of having their claim rejected and losing their appeal, by which time they may have been here for months and years, although nothing has been done about removing them back to their country of origin and they are relying on family, friends and relatives for support. On health care, which my hon. Friend mentioned, there is a review of access to the NHS. That joint review by the Home Office and the Department of Health was supposed to be published in October, but we are still waiting for it. He referred to the effects of the current restrictions and said that it is not just the people who should be subject to those restrictions who are affected by them, but that sometimes people who should not have restricted access to health care are also being denied it. That is not really surprising. It is pretty obvious that a health care worker, particularly someone sitting on the front desk, will not know the immigration rules in sufficient detail to be able to identify whether a person’s immigration status should prevent them from accessing certain treatments, and wrong decisions will be made. I understand perfectly well that we cannot act as the national health service for the world. We cannot operate the NHS on the basis that anybody can come here at any time they like and obtain free treatment. However, the evidence that people come here to claim asylum for health tourism reasons is virtually non-existent. I have never seen any evidence that supports that case. There has not been a great deal of work done on that, but one piece of work I am familiar with is a survey of patients by the Terrence Higgins Trust, which looked at people who had come here from overseas and had been diagnosed with HIV after they had arrived. The survey showed that, in virtually all cases, people diagnosed with HIV had been here for a considerable time before being tested and diagnosed. They went for testing when they became ill. The logic of someone being a health tourist is that they would ask for an HIV test within a fairly short time of being in the country, but that is not what happens. We have reached the point at which we are saying that someone infected with HIV who is a failed asylum seeker or is here without proper immigration status will be denied treatment. That raises serious questions, including serious ethical questions for clinicians, who do not want to be in the position of denying treatment to someone who is ill. We know from work that has been done—from what clinicians tell us—that that leads to people not coming forward for testing and giving up on treatment because they think that they will be charged. That leads to their getting much more seriously ill and then going to an accident and emergency department, by which time they are far more expensive to treat than they would have been in the first place. There are pragmatic cost-benefit reasons for not denying people treatment in those circumstances. There are also some clear public health arguments. On HIV, for example, which I am quite familiar with and on which I do a lot of work, we know that if somebody is infected and is undiagnosed they are much more likely to pass on that infection to someone else. That someone else is not necessarily a failed asylum seeker; it could be anybody. When looking at the cost of treatment, it is nonsense, on public health grounds, to leave people with serious medical problems undiagnosed and untreated. Although the report is about asylum seekers, it is not just about failed asylum seekers, but about other people who have not got legal immigration status. If, as is intended, the new systems of immigration control come in, there will be much tighter crackdowns on illegal employment and more and more people in such a situation will be thrown up. I echo what my hon. Friend said: it would be a disaster to extend this measure to primary care, because it would compound the problems for the individuals and for public health and would put a lot more pressure on accident and emergency departments, because that is where people will eventually turn up when they have become seriously ill and much more expensive to treat. Finally, I should like to say something about children. I know that you are familiar with the detention of children, Mr. Bercow. A report was produced by the all-party groups on children and on refugees that suggested to the Home Office and the Government that they ought to be looking for alternatives. That report made some practical suggestions about alternatives to detention that could be considered, and it mentioned the sort of systems that have been used in other countries, which appear to work successfully, particularly in terms of keeping families who may be subject to removal, in touch with the Home Office and immigration officers. A pilot, which has been started in Kent, is looking at some alternatives. I hope that the Government will pursue that and consider expanding it because, as my hon. Friend said, the numbers of children in detention and the length of time that they are kept there is unacceptable. We all understand that it can be difficult to remove a family with children. I accept that there may be circumstances in which some pretty tough, nasty decisions have to be made by Ministers. However, we do not need to keep children in detention for long periods. On 30 June, 35 children were in detention—mainly in Yarl’s Wood—10 of whom had been in detention for more than a month. Save the Children came up with cases of families with children that have been in detention for more than six months. I do not think that any of us should find that acceptable. This valuable report has looked in some depth at difficult areas and has produced recommendations. However, I am disappointed in the Government response because, having read it, it is difficult to find any of the recommendations that have been fully accepted and will be implemented. I hope that Ministers will think again about some of their views on the report’s recommendations.