Asylum Seekers Contingency Accommodation: Belfast

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Robert. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Belfast South (Claire Hanna) for securing this debate, which is the first that we have had the pleasure to take part in together. It raises some important issues that I hope I can address over the course of my remarks.

As a country, we face a significant challenge in all parts of the United Kingdom. The confluence of record numbers of migrants crossing the channel in small boats, with the schemes that the hon. Lady set out, such as the Homes for Ukraine scheme, the Syrian resettlement scheme and the Afghan resettlement scheme, has meant that over the course of a two or three-year period a very large number of individuals have arrived in the UK and now need our support in contingency accommodation.

In some cases, those with the right to remain here for a longer period, or indefinitely, also need support in order to have a full and fulfilling life in the United Kingdom. That has put immense pressure on our asylum system and on local government and devolved Administrations throughout the United Kingdom. That is the challenge that the Home Secretary and I are now grappling with.

Northern Ireland is not a full dispersal area for asylum seekers, as the hon. Lady will know. That means that the asylum seekers who are accommodated in Northern Ireland are almost exclusively, if not exclusively, those who have presented themselves and claimed asylum in Northern Ireland. The vast majority of those will have crossed the border from the Republic of Ireland in order to make their asylum application, which makes this a different situation to those found in the rest of the UK. Comparatively, that also means fewer individuals are claiming asylum and being accommodated in Northern Ireland than in some other parts of the UK. That does not mean that the issue is not serious or that the pressures on accommodating them in accordance with our statutory obligations are not significant.

We are taking a broad approach, on many different fronts. First, on the diplomatic front, we are working with partners, such as France and the Republic of Ireland, to try to discourage individuals from crossing the channel or the border, to break up the people smuggling gangs, which are particularly active on the continent and in the channel, and to create a system in which deterrence is a golden thread running through it and diffused throughout it, so that we are significantly less attractive as a destination for asylum seekers, particularly economic migrants, than our EU neighbours.

[Claire Hanna]

I appreciate the Minister setting out the context for the pressure on public services, but I draw attention to the years of inadequate investment in those public services and I dispute some of his figures about those arriving in Northern Ireland. Does he understand my point that, notwithstanding the challenges of providing accommodation and food needs, the core failure is in processing? The number of staff to process asylum seekers was higher in the past, and that is primarily where the Home Office is failing.

[Robert Jenrick]

I do not agree with the hon. Lady. It is not that I disagree with the fact that the backlog of cases has grown too large and now needs to be tackled, which I will come to in a moment, but these are the symptoms of the problem. The cause of the problem is record numbers of people choosing to come into the United Kingdom illegally and the consequence of that is the exact opposite of what the hon. Lady seeks to achieve, which is that those illegal migrants, the economic migrants in particular, are putting immense pressure on our system in all parts of the UK and making it difficult, and in some cases impossible, for us to treat people who are genuinely fleeing persecution, war and human rights abuses in the manner that we would all wish to do as a big-hearted and welcoming country.

The hon. Lady is correct to say that the number of individuals waiting for their asylum cases to be processed is unacceptably high. That has risen over the course of the last three years for a range of reasons, some of which are related to a drop in productivity during the pandemic. We now need to change that. My role and that of the Home Secretary is to ensure we raise productivity in all the Home Office’s offices, including those personnel based in Northern Ireland, and ensure that we return to at least the levels of productivity we had prior to the pandemic.

We have already done a pilot of that approach at our Leeds office, which has seen a significant increase in the speed of processing. We are rolling that out now across the whole of the country. This is not a matter of resources or the number of decision makers. The part of the Home Office that handles this now has greater resources than prior to the pandemic and we have more than 1,000 individuals making the decisions, with that number rapidly rising to a target of 1,500. The issue, I am afraid, is one of leadership and productivity and that is what we are now setting out to address.

Coming to the specific issue of the accommodation that the hon. Lady raises, I want to make a few points that provide background and which I hope are helpful. First, having reviewed the accommodation throughout Northern Ireland in preparation for the debate, it is true to say that it is heavily centred on Belfast and in particular on the hon. Lady’s constituency. Across the UK, one of our objectives is to move to fairer and more equitable distribution so that individual cities or towns are not facing a disproportionate impact. There needs to be an effort to encourage more parts of Northern Ireland to accommodate asylum seekers.

[Claire Hanna]

Of course, I will make the point that almost the only way for people to arrive is illegally, due to the absence of safe and legal routes. Can the Home Office publish the data about arrival? Can the Minister also outline the efforts made to engage with other councils and areas in south Belfast and more widely than Belfast? He characterises it as a disproportionate pressure, but the Syrian scheme showed that there is willingness to take on and there is capacity. However, that has to be led by the Home Office, which controls dispersal and the resources that come with it.

[Robert Jenrick]

I can only speak to the time that I have been in position, which is only around a month. We have engaged with local authorities throughout the United Kingdom to explain the challenges that are being faced and encourage them to play their fair part in the solution. Yesterday, I held a call with the leaders and chief executives of all local authorities throughout the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland. In the absence of the Executive, my officials are actively engaging with civil servants and with local leaders and partners to encourage other parts of Northern Ireland to play a greater role.

We have instituted mandatory dispersal, by which we are encouraging children and adults to be accommodated by all local authorities throughout the United Kingdom. We have put in place a financial package to encourage local authorities to do that. That amounts to £3,500 per asylum-seeking adult and a more substantial package for unaccompanied children, with which there is a particular problem. Indeed, we are looking for state and private foster carers and children’s homes to find places for those vulnerable young people so we can get them out of hotels as swiftly as possible. If there is anything the hon. Lady and her colleagues can do to encourage local partners throughout Northern Ireland to step up and find other contingency accommodation—particularly dispersal accommodation, which is the ultimate solution to the hotels—that would be very much appreciated. The Department is understandably hamstrung by the lack of an Executive to deal with directly in the way we would wish.

The medium-term strategy to exit hotels, beyond reducing the backlog and bearing down on the number of individuals coming to the UK illegally, is to move to a model whereby we use hotels judiciously in exceptional circumstances; find a greater pool of dispersal accommodation in all parts of the United Kingdom, working with local authorities and relevant public bodies; and find more sustainable, somewhat larger, sites, such as disused student accommodation, where we can provide suitable accommodation for asylum seekers that is decent but not luxurious and provides good value for money for the taxpayer. We will provide good engagement prior to arrival so that the wraparound services that the hon. Lady mentioned in respect of health and education are constantly improved, as appropriate.

The hon. Lady and several colleagues from both sides of the House and all parts of the United Kingdom have raised engagement with me in my short tenure in the Department. At times, there has been limited engagement by the Home Office prior to choosing hotels and bringing in asylum seekers, and we need to change that. We have now instituted basic performance standards whereby the Home Office and its partners will engage with relevant local bodies at least 24 hours before individuals are sited in that hotel or other contingency accommodation. We will involve all the relevant agencies that are needed to ensure that those individuals’ arrival and stay are as successful as possible.

That is a first step, and we want to progressively improve that in the weeks and months to come to the point where local authorities and relevant public bodies are included in the decision-making process at the earliest opportunity. The Home Office—Whitehall—is clearly not best placed to choose the right contingency accommodation in particular cities and towns across the country, such as Belfast, and I believe we can improve that.

I have also met the suppliers this week, including Mears, to discuss how they can improve their engagement with Members of Parliament and local representatives. They have committed to step up their engagement and ensure that for every building that is occupied, such as a hotel, they provide a named point of contact so that the hon. Lady and her local partners can have proper engagement in an ongoing fashion with the people running the building. That would enable her to raise concerns as swiftly as possible with the relevant people so that, where appropriate, improvements can be made.

I hope that has provided some context to the Home Office’s approach. I appreciate the hon. Lady’s concerns and I take them seriously, even if we have a different attitude to the broader question of asylum. We want to ensure that we meet our statutory obligations to provide decent accommodation to all those who are in our care for as long as they are in the United Kingdom. I am very happy to work with her, her local partners and residents of Belfast to improve the situation.

Question put and agreed to.