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Asylum System

If time permits, I shall come on to deal with the detail of that. The letter in reply to the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood will outline the figures and give that answer. A number of other changes have been made. The right hon. Lady made a very important point about Stoke-on-Trent. There is a political difficulty here, which has also arisen in other towns where the activities of the organised far-right may be designed to achieve the objective of stopping asylum support. This is a very important point which I will look into. I have received two pieces of correspondence that I am aware of about this issue: one of them is from a housing provider, and the other is from an hon. Member. The right hon. Lady made points about changes in respect of Liverpool, and I shall come straight to them. It is already the case that an asylum claim that is not made at a port of entry—there are such cases, of course—must be made in person, at Croydon or one of the other centres. Our policy is to improve the decision making and to make quicker and better quality decisions. The problem in the past has been that the backlog has built up. A year ago, in my speech to University college London, I put it on the record that the failure of successive Governments to provide support has caused division in communities and hardship for the people applying. Our policy is to improve the decision making and the Select Committee has concentrated on getting rid of the legacy backlog. That is what we are doing. In order to provide good legal advice early in the process, which is our policy—it is in the interests of a fairer system to do so—we have the Solihull project, which we are examining, whereby legal advice can be provided earlier rather than later to avoid some of the problems that the right hon. Lady has mentioned. As a constituency MP, I recognise that point. Let me return to the right hon. Lady's point about Liverpool. A further submission must, in most cases, be treated as a fresh application. It is not the case that the UK Border Agency does not provide support for people who cannot attend. Indeed, I recently met Scottish colleagues to discuss that point, given the geographical distances involved. Just as new applications that are not made at the port must be made at Croydon, a further submission, which is treated as a fresh application under the Court of Appeal rulings, must also, we think, be dealt with in person. To allow a fresh application to be dealt with by post would simply result in a further legacy backlog and further hardship and destitution.