Asylum Decisions (Support for Refugees)

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered support for refugees after receiving an asylum decision.

The asylum process is anxiety-inducing and arduous, but for many the intense relief of being granted refugee status by the UK Government is only momentary. For new refugees—people who, let us remember, have escaped conflict and persecution—that is often just the beginning of another nightmare. That is caused by the so-called move-on period—the period after which the support they have been receiving from the Home Office will be terminated—which causes unnecessary problems and barriers to integration. I aim to lay out how those could be solved.

I thank Seb Klier at the Refugee Council and Jon Featonby at the British Red Cross for their regular detailed briefings and for nudging me regularly to table questions and seek debates such as this one. I pay tribute to them individually, and to the many individuals and community organisations in my constituency who do so much to welcome refugees and asylum seekers, to solve some of the problems I will explore, and to remove barriers.

Every week, the Red Cross in Bristol works with at least one new destitute refugee. Let us remember that “refugee” means a person who has received their status. I thank the Red Cross for that, but why is that happening? First, the move-on period is 28 days. In that time, a refugee must leave Home Office accommodation, move from asylum support to benefits or a job, obtain a national insurance number in order to do so, open a bank account, receive a biometric residence permit and find somewhere to live. I am in a good job, but I have to say that I would struggle with that. I think most of us would struggle.

To compound all that, refugees are often already traumatised and sometimes—although not always—struggle with English. Some are very isolated, and some are mentally unwell, either as the result of the initial trauma or, often, because of the complex and prolonged asylum process, during which they have not been able to work and have had little access to English classes. Often, they will have been confined by extreme poverty, living off just £37.75 per week. Then, suddenly, in the words of a refugee supported by Bristol Refugee Rights in my constituency,

“it is compulsory today to do everything that was forbidden yesterday”.

Back in 2014, the Red Cross became increasingly concerned about the number of destitute and new refugees requiring emergency care, partly as a result of that problem. It recommended extending the 28-day move-on period; we have been warned about this for many years. In 2017, I and colleagues in the Chamber launched the “Refugees welcome?” report, which was produced by the all-party parliamentary group on refugees following our inquiry the previous year. Among our many findings was a recommendation that the move-on period should be extended to 56 days. Thankfully, the Government took up some of our recommendations—I am grateful to them for that—but, unfortunately, not that one.

The same year, the Refugee Council published its report “Refugees without refuge”. None of the 54 respondents to its survey had secured accommodation within the 28-day move-on period. In 2018, the British Red Cross published its report “Still an ordeal”. The 26 refugees it surveyed had been left without food and shelter after receiving their status. There is not just an unacceptable high risk of extreme poverty; the move-on period creates inevitable destitution.

Just last month, Women for Refugee Women found that women left destitute are vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. That is a further consequence of the move-on period. A third of the women interviewed were forced to stay in unwanted and abusive relationships. I thank Women for Refugee Women for its extraordinary hard work, but I am saddened by its findings.

Refugees, refugee organisations, local authorities, health organisations and us MPs—including Government Members—all know that the move-on period is failing to support refugees. My primary request is for the Minister to ask his colleagues to extend it from 28 to 56 days.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate and on the exceptional work she does in Parliament for refugees and asylum seekers. She is right to highlight the need for an extended move-on period, but does she not agree that the circumstances she describes show that we need a cross-Government approach, involving not just the Home Office but the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Education and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government? They must all come together to meet the needs of this vulnerable group.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. She, too, does an enormous amount on refugee policy, as do many colleagues in the Chamber. She is absolutely right that we need a cross-departmental approach. Funnily enough, that was recommended in our report three years ago. Actually, a former Tory MP—I cannot remember his name, but it will come to me—recommended to his Government not only that there should be a cross-departmental approach but that there should be a Minister for refugees to help co-ordinate it.

The Home Office recently took some steps to provide more support for refugees. I welcome that, but their benefit is limited without a longer move-on period. The London School of Economics and the British Red Cross found that extending it to 56 days could save up to £7 million of taxpayers’ money each year. Of course, the consequences of destitution are extra costs to the public purse due to homelessness and impacts on health and employability.

What is the justification for 56 days? First, since refugees mostly are not allowed to work while waiting for an asylum decision, most of them will need, at least initially, to apply for universal credit. There is the first problem: clearly, the inbuilt 35-day minimum wait before the first day of universal credit is incompatible, by seven crucial days, with the current move-on period after someone’s asylum is over and they are granted refugee status. As I said, I have a reasonably good job and I may be able to manage for seven days, but it would be a struggle. People are suddenly put in that position, with no money, perhaps no relatives to turn to—whereas I would have that—and probably no one else to call on. Those seven crucial days can be seven days without food.

In some instances, the delay in receiving benefits may be much longer. Mariam from Women for Refugee Women gave me permission to quote her. She said:

“The asylum support stopped in January, but my benefits didn’t start for nine months. I had no money, I was lucky to have a solicitor who gave me some cash. I also relied on charities for food. Being destitute after getting asylum isn’t something I had expected.”

I know that my colleagues in the Chamber have come across that too. A cash grant—just once, upon receipt of status—would help so much. That is something else I would like the Minister to consider. Charities such as Aid Box Convoy in my constituency do wonderful work finding things such as cookers, clothes, bedding and nappies—we probably all have charities like that in our constituencies—but one small cash grant could make such a difference.

A 56-day move-on period would also align with the time local authorities are given to work with house- holds at risk of homelessness under the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017. That is another example of the cross-departmental work that my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) called for. The Government could also encourage the establishment of a private rented sector scheme for refugees, to recognise not just the general problems that most people might face when suddenly plunged into the private rented sector, but the specific barriers faced by refugees.

Those changes might give new refugees the ability to move on rather than, as one refugee in Bristol described it to me, running from “pillar to post”. The complications of the system are compounded by a lack of Government funding and organisational capacity. Support agencies are often open only part time, and advice agencies are often full. During such a critical time, losing a week waiting to speak to the right person could make all the difference between someone being destitute and not.

That is the situation if there are minimal complications. If there is an error in someone’s biometric residence permit, which is their formal identification—even if there is an incorrect spelling, which happens—their 28 days are not automatically restarted. That is another really simple and, I would argue, cost-free change that the Minister could agree to: if a mistake is made by a Government agency, the refugee should not have to pay the price, and the 28 days should be automatically restarted.

As an example, K is a new refugee in Bristol. She fled both sectarian violence and domestic violence with her 15-year-old child. She was granted status—she is here legally—on 6 September 2019, but she contacted the Red Cross in Bristol shortly afterwards as there was a spelling mistake on her biometric residence permit. She failed to receive her updated permit by 7 October and she was at risk of homelessness. At that point, she met the homelessness prevention team at Bristol City Council, but without identification she was unable to open a bank account. The earliest she could receive an advance universal credit payment, intended to cope with such gaps, was 30 October, 54 days after receiving her refugee status. Hon. Members can see where I am going with this: 56 days would have meant she was not in destitution or at risk of destitution. Between 16 and 30 October, K and her child were destitute and, although they received support from the Red Cross, it could have been so easily avoided.

We must also change the administrative barriers that delay new refugees from moving on. Recently, another constituent and his family were granted further leave to remain. Their 28 days began and they tried to apply for local authority housing. Unfortunately, they were not sent an eviction notice from their asylum accommodation, which must be done in the form of a letter, and without that letter they could not apply for housing. My caseworkers Michelle and Sheila, whom I thank from the bottom of my heart—what they do is extraordinary, and I am sure all hon. Members present speak highly of the work that caseworkers do in our name—did all they could to speed up the process, but even so the family received the letter with just eight days to go. Their ability to live had rested on those bureaucratic nightmares. That does not do us proud. As a country we should be proud, and we have a right to be proud, of our tradition in welcoming refugees. I know Government Ministers agree. We have that right to be proud, so why let those bureaucratic nightmares creep in when they are fixable?

By comparison, resettlement schemes are a measure that the Government and everyone else should be proud of. The vulnerable persons resettlement scheme offers a fantastic model and is on target to successfully resettle 20,000 Syrian refugees. I recently met Anne James, the commissioning manager on the Syrian resettlement programme at Bristol City Council, who spoke highly of the scheme and her interaction with Government. I was really impressed by the operation and support of the initiative. For resettled refugees under such schemes, the dedicated caseworker, who supports their needs, is a lifeline. We should look to that process as a best-practice approach.

As the APPG pointed out in its report three years ago—and, to be fair, as the sector pointed out years before—the gulf between our asylum process and the resettlement process makes for a two-tier system. There are asylum seekers who are granted refugee status and are here legally, and there are those who come via the resettlement route whose status is already granted, but the route a refugee takes does not make them more or less deserving of support. Rather than making them feel welcome, the asylum process leaves new refugees fighting to overcome what feel like impossible barriers. Those barriers could be removed, and the resettlement scheme shows us how we could do that.

There are other fantastic models open for adoption by the Home Office and the Government more widely. Colleagues could talk at length about the community sponsorship scheme, the city of sanctuary approach and other community and local initiatives that provide wonderful and welcome examples of how we can do this really well. My constituents want to welcome refugees who have a right to be here, and I am sure the Minister’s do, too. I am sure most of us also want to prevent, as far as possible, situations in which desperate people feel that they have to take dangerous journeys because they have no alternative, having been cramped in a refugee camp among millions of people in countries such as Lebanon, Greece or Turkey. They feel absolutely desperate, so it is no wonder that some make dangerous journeys to countries that they feel might welcome them. We should be proud that we are seen as a welcoming country, but we should make every effort to allow more of those safe and legal routes offered by resettlement.

As I draw my remarks to a close, I have a couple more requests of the Minister. The Government could change by regulation, and very quickly, the right for asylum seekers to work. At the moment, it is limited. After six months of applying for refugee status, some can apply for employment in certain categories, which unless I am very much mistaken still includes that of ballet dancer. To my not very certain knowledge, there are not many people setting out from Syria saying, “I want to be a ballet dancer.” These people have got skills and want to work from the moment they get status, but if they face prolonged delays in the asylum process, that weakens their skills.

Ministers have also talked to me about wanting people to be able to return home when conditions are safe. We could talk about refoulement, preventing further traumatisation and the damage of sending people home when it is not safe, but, if it is safe for people to return to their country of origin, we want them to have kept up their skills, not lost them through prolonged periods of unemployment. Alternatively, the Home Office could meet its own service standard of six months, and do so properly, efficiently, fairly and transparently. That would help. The Government could also establish the scheme I mentioned on private renting. They could provide cash grants and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston, there could be co-ordination between Departments.

The moment someone receives their refugee status should be one of celebration. It should be a time when refugees feel able to move on, if possible, from the horrors they have left and the difficulties they have had to face. Instead, all too often, the contradictions of Government policy and the cuts to various services—I have not even mentioned cuts to English language services—leave refugees facing new problems such as homelessness and destitution, and, as Women for Refugee Women has said, vulnerable to harms such as exploitation and abuse. We are and should always remain proud of being a welcoming country to people fleeing conflict, but we have a choice about how we treat people. We can choose to treat them with dignity or to put them at risk of destitution. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I thank the Minister for his comments. I am aware that we are going to vote any minute now, so I will confine my closing remarks to expressing my thanks to all hon. Members for an extremely thoughtful and constructive debate. Sometimes it feels like groundhog day, because we have done this before, but I am heartened by the Minister’s response. His commitment to read the Red Cross report is welcome. I was glad to see nods from his officials at certain points made by hon. Members.

I want to be hopeful. I hope that the Minister will engage constructively with me and other hon. Members here, and I would be grateful if he agreed to meet me to discuss some of the detail. I thank him for doing that. I want to put on record the fact that I was referring earlier to David Burrowes—a good man, who set a good template. All hon. Members made constructive and thoughtful contributions and I welcome the Minister’s constructive approach to this. I hope we can take a different approach, so that we do not have to do this debate next year—that would be fantastic. We will come back to discuss the right to work—it is related—but I am happy to take the Minister’s commitment that he will focus on the issue of 28 days versus 56 days at this point.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered support for refugees after receiving an asylum decision.