Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill

House of Commons, 17 December 2003.

Michael Martin (Speaker, Glasgow Springburn)

I inform the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson).

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

Before I move Second Reading, Mr. Speaker, I should be grateful if you forgave me because, in the light of the court judgment that Ian Huntley is guilty of the murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, I felt that the House would want to send the families our love and concern. Our hearts go out to them this afternoon. I shall lay a statement before the House and, in conjunction with the Opposition spokesmen, take steps to initiate an investigation into some of the events that took place from 1995 onwards.

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I understand that the shadow Home Secretary is ill, and send him our best wishes for Christmas. [Interruption.] There seems to be some demurral among Liberal Democrat Members, but I send good wishes on their behalf—let us be joyous for Christmas. The Bill is part of a jigsaw that includes not only the legislation already on the statute book but the administrative measures that we have been using to improve the operation of our border controls and immigration system. As the House knows, there have been substantial improvements in recent years, but we all accept that many changes are still required, both in legislation and to improve administration. To repeat what I have said when we have debated these issues over the past two and a half years, Ministers are painfully aware of the difficulties of achieving substantial improvement, given the significant rise in the number of people applying for asylum, while at the same time modernising and improving the rest of the immigration and nationality directorate. We often forget that asylum is only a small part of broader immigration and nationality responsibilities. There have been considerable improvements in the non-asylum elements of the service, but there is still a great deal to be done.

Lynne Jones (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

Is my right hon. Friend not concerned that, notwithstanding the fact that the consultation period on the Bill did not comply with Cabinet Office guidelines, it has not been possible, even today, to get hold of a summary of the report on the responses to that consultation? That report is specified as a relevant document, but I could not get hold of it until 12 o'clock. Does that not cause him concern, as we are considering legislation without all the relevant information to hand?

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

As my hon. Friend acknowledged, we laid the response to the consultation before Parliament today.

Lynne Jones (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

It is not in the Library.

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

I authorised it to be placed in the Library this morning, so I apologise to the House if that has not been done—[Interruption.] I understand, however, that some Members have been able to obtain it from the Library.

In our debate on the Queen's Speech, I spelt out the key elements in the Bill that would enhance and support the work that has already taken place. There must be a determination of honesty in relation to individuals and those advising them before the authorisation of the initial decision and the subsequent adjudication. We should consider the blocking of people who arrive at our airports, throw away documents or refuse to co-operate either with the process of determining their country of origin and their passage into the country or with redocumentation for return purposes—I shall come back to that.

We must deal with the question of organised criminality—the way in which people, with the connivance of facilitators and organised traffickers, become involved in international trafficking and criminality. We need to extend the measures that we have already put in place on sexual exploitation, in both the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 and the sex offenders legislation.

Paul Flynn (Labour, Newport West)

Does my right hon. Friend agree that not all the public feelings of antagonism towards our present system are the result of media hyperbole or invention? There has been a large increase in the criminal elements who are getting involved in the asylum process to the detriment of the public acceptability of our asylum policy—and, indeed, the acceptability of all our policies.

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

I agree entirely. Asylum has been regarded as an opportunity by international gangs of organised criminals to make a great deal of money. Very often, they have made money out of the exploitation and degradation of people with whom they have been dealing. They take large sums of money, sometimes for children whom they have trafficked across the world and literally dumped on our soil, unfortunately in large numbers.

Of course, those gangs have often done that alongside multiple criminal trafficking activities and the smuggling of drugs and guns. They switch between the different opportunities that they see to make money. They have obviously been doing so in the wake of worldwide people movements—the enormous movement of people across boundaries, which we have discussed in the House before—on a scale unprecedented in our history. Whereas 20 years ago, very small movements initiated by major catastrophes were the order of the day, now, partly because of communication, partly because of the English language and partly because of the economic changes in the world, people are desperate to seek a better life, as well as to seek refuge from terror, and opportunists have taken advantage of that.

David Winnick (Labour, Walsall North)

No one disputes the amount of criminality involved, and we remember the Chinese who suffocated to death and who were undoubtedly the victims of criminal gangs, but does my right hon. Friend accept that much of the controversy over the proposals could be avoided if more attention were paid to the quality of decision making? The Home Affairs Committee report, to which I was a party, makes the point, which I am sure my right hon. Friend has noted, that, whereas one in 25 appeals was successful in 1994, the figure has risen to one in five. The quality of decision making by Home Office officials is so important, and some of the controversy about the taking away of children as a last resort could be avoided if that quality were improved.

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

I am terribly sorry but the last point is completely irrelevant. It has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of initial decisions, or the subsequent appeals that take place. Clause 7, which we will come to in a moment, deals with those who have been through multiple appeals systems and have not had the initial decision to refuse overturned. My hon. Friend does his case no good at all by mixing the very real issue of improvements in decision making with the issue of clause 7. If hon. Members take every opportunity to use anything, no matter how extraneous or irrelevant, to deal with clause 7, we will not have a sensible debate this afternoon. I say that in all sincerity, because clause 7 relates to people who have failed to establish their right to be in the country.

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

I shall give way in a moment, but first I shall address the sensible and rational issue that my hon. Friend raised—the quality of decision making. The massive increase in volume, especially over the past three years, which can be tracked in terms of the numbers coming in, has undoubtedly put enormous pressure on the system. We accept, as Ministers, that we need to take steps to improve decision making, and we have already done so. That has certainly been true of the recent steps that we have taken, including a fast-track system, building on the experience of Oakington and Harmondsworth, and ensuring that the non-suspensive appeals process is robust.

We accept that further steps are required. My hon. Friend the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration is announcing today that we will work with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, accept UNHCR's offer to work with our training programme to improve decision making, and undertake integrated work with the adjudication system, so that we can learn the lessons and get it right. I am happy to respond to such approaches and to the justifiable concerns expressed by hon. Members in all parts of the House to make sure that the system is administratively competent, that there are no delays and above all that we do not have to overturn on appeal.

There is one other element. None of that discourages people from seeking the asylum route when they would be more justified in seeking legal economic migration. The steps that we have taken to secure our border controls with France are the most significant thing we can do, together with the signals to organised traffickers, to prevent people from seeking asylum when it is not asylum that they want, but a better life, offered through the massive expansion of the work permit system.

Jon Owen Jones (Labour/Co-operative, Cardiff Central)

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, in response to the strategy that he is setting out on how to deal with asylum seekers who have failed to show that they have a right to asylum in this country, he is opposed by a fantasy island strategy and a Nelsonian blind eye strategy that pretends the problem does not exist?

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

Yes. I am trying to match the two together—Nelson in search of a fantasy island that does not exist and that has apparently been wiped off the map by the Leader of the Opposition, who decided last week, I think, that the Opposition could not find such an island, despite the help of ITV, and that they might seek a peninsula somewhere far away instead.

Keith Vaz (Labour, Leicester East)

I welcome the steps that my right hon. Friend has taken to improve what is happening at the immigration and nationality directorate, but one of the problems is that Home Office presentation officers do not attend court. A large number of cases are adjourned because the officers do not attend. Will he take steps, with the tribunal service, to make sure that they turn up to present their case, so that cases will not be adjourned?

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

We have taken urgent steps, and carried out further recruitment and improved training, and there will be a new tranche of presenting officers in January, to avoid such delays and circumstances in which officers are not available, with the consequent cancellation of the hearings to which my hon. Friend refers. That is not acceptable. We understand that that aspect, like much else that we have been dealing with, needs to be improved, and we give a guarantee that it will improve in the new year. The Minister for Citizenship and Immigration is taking the issue on board, as it is extremely important.

Hugh Bayley (Labour, City of York)

Many parts of the Bill touch on day-to-day immigration matters, not the controversial issues of asylum. Overseas students, whether they go to public sector institutions such as universities or further education colleges, or private language colleges, make a valuable contribution to the UK economy through their fees, and when they return to their own country, they usually leave well disposed towards the UK. Will my right hon. Friend give the House an assurance that he does not intend to use clause 20 to charge that group of applicants more than the actual cost to the Government of processing their visa applications and visa extensions? If he were to do so, it would, in effect, be a tax on an important export industry for the UK.

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

We all accept, as I did when I was Secretary of State for Education and Employment, that we wish to maintain the high levels of application and entry to this country for qualifications. That has the advantages that my hon. Friend outlined. Clause 20 is an enabling clause. I guarantee that we will consult before laying an order. The factors that my hon. Friend mentioned will be a substantial part of our consideration, in conjunction with the Department for Education and Skills. I want to put it on record, because it is not often said, that considerable benefits arise from the availability of the education process in this country and from all the ancillary support and health facilities that go with it, which are not available in other parts of the world. That is one of the attractions for people coming, including—this is not the same thing as asylum seekers—those who bring their families and receive education for their children and access to health care. My hon. Friend makes a valid point.

Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru, Meirionnydd Nant Conwy)

In light of what the Home Secretary fairly said—that decision making is, by and large, of poor quality and needs to be improved—is it not extremely unwise and possibly unjust to remove judicial oversight of the process at this stage?

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

First, I did not use those words. I said that, given the number of appeals that were overturned, we accepted that there was room for improvement. Secondly, we are not overturning the right of appeal and it is that to which the 20 per cent. is relevant. That particular appeal is not affected by the proposition that we are putting before the House this afternoon.

I do not simply blame the media—that is a fairly fruitless task anyway, especially at Christmas—but it is important that people do not automatically believe what they read but study what we are putting forward. That is why the provisions in the Bill streamlining the appeals and removal process, preventing the exploitation of legal services and allowing generous legal aid and advice are crucial.

Bob Blizzard (Labour, Waveney)

My right hon. Friend just referred to what one reads in the newspapers, but did he see the claim in a newspaper a couple of days ago that an asylum seeker in Britain receives on average about £16,000 a year in benefits? I find that hard to believe, but that is true of most of what I read in the newspapers about the asylum system. Will my right hon. Friend comment on that?

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

There are two separate issues here. One is the total cost of processing and supporting applicants. The other is what they receive, and it is important to distinguish between the two. A family would receive less than £7,000 a year in direct support, but what was presented to the Home Affairs Committee by the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration was the total cost. We have been transparent about that and it is one of the issues with which we seek to deal, in terms of the totality of the draw-down on the public purse.

Marsha Singh (Labour, Bradford West)

I am sure that my right hon. Friend will agree that the fast-track procedure at Harmondsworth has been extremely successful, but does he also agree that, this being the fifth immigration and asylum Bill to come before the House, the real problem, apart from entry, is removals, and if we can get that right, we can crack the system? The level of removals is still very low. Will my right hon. Friend give us a guarantee that this time we will crack that issue and that we will not be back here in a year's time with another Bill?

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

I think that all agree that removals are important, but let me take this opportunity to set out the challenge. It is important to understand the difficulty that we face on removals. We have increased the number of removals to 1,500 or 1,600 a month, which is now over 18,000 on an annualised basis. We separately remove 1,300 people a month, and the figure is rising, who are here illegally but who, before we managed to remove them, did not claim asylum. We have separately managed each month to stop 3,000 clandestines getting into the country. The total picture is rarely presented because in our media, which I have already said I love, one set of people is told to present the worst possible side of asylum and immigration and another is completely convinced that it is not an issue and that it should present the matter as though we have some sort of obsession. Neither reflects the reality. The developed world is addressing a difficult challenge and we are part of that process.

The difficulty in removals is not simply fast-tracking, giving people their final decision and then putting them on a plane or a boat; it is the process that stops us from being able to achieve the goal. First, there are legal constraints, which is why we intend to improve and streamline the appeals and judicial review process. Secondly, there is the issue of documentation. Even if individuals or families are held in a secure removal centre, they cannot be removed without the documentation that allows the country of origin to take them back. That is a crunch issue, because 70 per cent. of applicants either have never had or have thrown away their documents. Many of them are now being advised, sometimes by disreputable people, that if they do not co-operate in the redocumentation process we cannot remove them, and therefore we will continue to sustain them. Therefore, without the documentation required by the receiving country, we have the devil's own job to trigger compulsory removal, which we are undertaking, and without a country to receive them, we have nowhere to remove them to. We cannot eject them into outer space.

The complexity of these issues is growing by the day. Every time we close a loophole, the facilitators and those behind them, and many advising those who claim asylum, tell them what to do. I understand such advice from those who are dedicatedly against any removals, with their campaigns for what they call no deportation, but in terms of fulfilling public policy and having a system that works and is trusted, and in which people have confidence, we are constantly fighting a battle to close the loopholes and thwart those who will use any ends to make a monkey of the system.

Jeremy Corbyn (Labour, Islington North)

Does my right hon. Friend have any concerns about the conditions faced by people who, after an unsuccessful asylum application here, are deported to a country from which they have fled and who may then be open to abuse and intimidation? What monitoring is undertaken by his Department or in British posts abroad, and what consideration is given to the safety of such people when they return?

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

The whole system is geared not to send people back to countries where they will be threatened with death and torture. That is the whole basis of the 1951 convention and of our immigration and asylum laws, and will remain so. Secondly, people whose individual claims fail, but whose country of origin, to which we would usually return them, is considered unsafe, are not returned. That is the serious problem that we face with regard to people who have no legal right to be here but whom we cannot remove on humanitarian grounds—and we do not intend to change that. We of course monitor and take the international, as well as national, in-country assessment. As a consequence of the previous legislation we agreed to have an advisory group and to take further advice, so we are going out of our way not to send such people back. Even if people inside or outside the House disagree with the Bill, when we return people who have failed all their claims and whom we can return to a country that we believe to be safe, where appropriate we shall assist them with resettlement, as we are doing at present with regard to Afghanistan.

Mike Hancock (Liberal Democrat, Portsmouth South)

The Home Secretary said that there was evidence to support the view that 3,000 clandestines were prevented from coming into the United Kingdom each month, and I should be grateful if he would substantiate that claim. Will he also clarify—[Interruption.] The Minister for Citizenship and Immigration laughs, but the Home Secretary made the claim, and it is worth having it substantiated. Secondly, what will the Bill do to make easier the removal of people with no documentation? The House appreciates the problems that the Home Secretary explained, but I cannot see anything in the Bill that will make that task easier.

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

On the first point, the statistics relate to those who are turned back at the new border controls in France—and now in Belgium, where we have put in place facilities at Zeebrugge—and therefore do not claim asylum at our ports and airports. The statistical facts on those people, who are turned away because they have no legitimate right to be in the country, are on the record. Presumably, people do not know about that because we do not shout about it loudly enough, but I have every intention of doing so from here on in.

On redocumentation, we are working with countries across the world from where large numbers of returnable people seek asylum, to get them to accept simplified and speeded-up measures for acceptance of nationality or a simplified redocumentation system. We are putting in place a system to guard against those who throw away their documents when they get off the plane—bearing in mind the fact that they must have had a passport and other documents to get on it in the first place. That includes our consultation on copying relevant parts of those documents to ensure that we are able to present the facts to the person's country of origin. That measure will assist us substantially.

Martin Salter (Labour, Reading West)

Does the Home Secretary acknowledge the damage that is done to community relations when many decent citizens without a racist bone in their bodies become understandably frustrated by the fact that after several years of different pieces of legislation from Governments of two different political persuasions, there remain massive delays in processing, a degree of profiteering by certain unscrupulous lawyers and advisers, and extensive profiteering by private landlords, all at the taxpayer's expense? What will the Bill do to address those issues?

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

I agree with my hon. Friend's analysis. That is the kind of discontent and disquiet that others feed on and use to cause friction, break down social cohesion and damage race relations. That is why, through the administrative changes in the Bill, we stress that people should be honest in terms of their presentation of the facts and their willingness to give evidence on what has happened to them. The Bill will help us to tackle organised criminality; to strengthen our borders; to speed up the system, including the adjudication and appeals process; to tackle bogus advice; and to deal with legal aid.

As well as taking measures to ensure that people have to present their case honestly, retain their documents and tell the truth about their country of origin, we need to be sensitive in understanding the difficulties that some asylum seekers face when they reach the country. The process and the legality of section 55 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 was upheld by the courts, and we intend to respond to that through the Bill. The measures that we are introducing, following discussions with refugee organisations, will allow us to be more flexible in assessing whether people have been in the country for any length of time. That is why my hon. Friend the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration will announce today that we will provide to those who make the decisions the necessary adjustment in advice to allow them—subject to people's giving an honest account of how they reached the country and how long they have been here—72 hours, rather than the current 24 hours, in relation to people claiming asylum and being entitled to benefit.

Evan Harris (Liberal Democrat, Oxford West and Abingdon)

I am grateful to the Home Secretary for making that point about greater flexibility in relation to the time that is taken to apply for asylum. Another problem is the difficulty that the National Asylum Support Service faces in accepting that, a decision having been made, a person is really without any means of support and qualifies for assistance under section 55(4) of the 2002 Act. Apparently, several hundred applications to court have not been opposed by NASS in cases where court orders have been given instructing it to provide support for people who, having had an adverse decision, find themselves on the street and destitute. Will the Home Secretary accept that that is a second component where more flexibility is required?

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

Where a court indicates through judicial review that we have an obligation to reconsider the case or to provide support, we will of course do so. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman make known to my hon. Friend the Minister of State any examples of cases where that is not being done.

Iain Coleman (Labour, Hammersmith and Fulham)

Will the Home Secretary give way?

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

In a moment. I should explain that I now intend to move through the clauses so that Members are able to intervene at relevant points. However, I shall give way once more if my hon. Friend has a general rather than a specific point.

Iain Coleman (Labour, Hammersmith and Fulham)

With reference to the Home Secretary's comments on section 55 of the 2002 Act, does he recall the informal discussions that he had with me, and a number of my hon. Friends, prior to its introduction? My recollection—I stand to be corrected by the Home Secretary—is that we were told that it was not the Government's intention to use the powers in section 55 for people who had just arrived in the United Kingdom, and that we were talking about not 24 hours or 72 hours but, at the very minimum, weeks, if not months.

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

I think that during that meeting we moved delphically from 72 hours to a period of months. I have never said that those who have been in this country for months could establish a claim to asylum. The purpose of section 55 was to prevent those who had been in the country for other purposes, on other visas and for other requirements from finding themselves destitute and deciding that this route was the fastest and most effective way of gaining public support in relation to subsistence and housing. We indicated that that was not the correct way in which to do so.

Asylum is about those who are threatened with death and torture escaping from that and seeking sanctuary in this country. We offer that sanctuary readily, but on the basis that when people arrive they demonstrate that they are asylum seekers, not economic seekers of a better life or people who have come for other purposes and do not want to go back home. I am seeking, with my hon. Friend the Minister, to ensure that we show a deal of flexibility within the requirement, so that people should be prepared to co-operate with us. That is not unfair—it is something for something, which is the principle that we apply in terms of the welfare provision offered to the indigenous population of this country.

Clauses 1 to 5 tackle illegal immigration and abuse of the system, and clause 2 is specific about the undocumented arrivals that I mentioned. I shall not go into that again, because most people would accept that it is unacceptable to throw away evidence of where one has come from and which plane one arrived on, and that we should take action on that.

Gwyn Prosser (Labour, Dover)

I support the Bill and the measures that the Home Secretary has introduced in past years, mainly because of the effects in my constituency: I echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West (Mr. Salter) said about the way in which community relationships can be destroyed by a feeling that the situation is out of control. However, will my right hon. Friend give us some assurances and securities in relation to specific clauses? For instance, as regards people coming in without documentation and destroying their documentation deliberately, can he assure us that he will go to some lengths to inform incoming passengers that that will be a penalised offence, so that they do not take the advice of the traffickers, tear up their documents and end up being prosecuted unnecessarily?

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

That is a sensible point. We should work with sea and air carriers to ensure that the message is clearly conveyed. We have tried to make more sophisticated the subsidiary ruling on airports in relation to section 55 of the 2002 Act. At one stage, we were almost being asked to provide public address systems at airports to tell people that if they wanted to claim they should do it immediately. That struck us as a trifle odd, but I accept the thrust of the helpful suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mr. Prosser); I believe that it would help people to thwart traffickers and facilitators.

David Heath (Liberal Democrat, Somerton and Frome)

Further to that point, would it not be even more satisfactory if, at the embarkation points, we had copies of asylum seekers' travel documents, which would detail likely points of departure? Even if they destroyed the documents, we would then know their identity. Could not such a responsibility be placed on carriers?

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

We are consulting on precisely that point. We are in discussion with Departments that have an interest in the matter. I should like to ensure that such a liability did not interfere with free competition or disadvantage British-based carriers. We should try to ensure that that does not happen. Any such provision would be in conjunction with the purchase and presentation of a ticket and run alongside the visa regime which applies to countries where visas are required.

Clause 6 deals with people's preparedness to give a reasonable explanation. I have commented on that in the context of thwarting facilitators, and that is linked to clause 2. Clauses 4 and 5 introduce a new criminal offence and build on the powers that relate to sexual exploitation, which I mentioned earlier.

The behaviour of those who are authorised to take steps to provide credibility will be important. The credibility of the claim, and the credibility clause, as we may deem clause 6, will enable us to respond to the debate a few moments ago about providing a better, faster and more sensible method of dealing with the initial decision. Adverse behaviour makes a hell of a difference in such circumstances. The countries through which people have passed, the way in which they present their claim, timings and much else will be considered.

I hope that hon. Members will give me a moment to explain our thinking on clause 7. There is disquiet about our holding families in detention centres when their claims have failed and they are in the process of being redocumented or given removal directions. Yesterday, my hon. Friend the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration responded to concerns about children who are held in those centres by saying that there will be what might be called a ministerial lock. The Minister will not only monitor but have to approve any lengthy stay in removal centres. The conditions in which families are held in those centres have been and will continue to be improved.

Some people fundamentally oppose holding families in removal centres, however. Some fundamentally oppose compulsory removal of families—picking up children and families, putting them on a plane and removing them. Anxieties about that have already been expressed this afternoon. Some people, including some hon. Members, are worried about the withdrawal of public support from those who have been through a lengthy process, including multiple referrals by letter and interview, and a 14-day stay while the family is further informed about what will happen.

Annabelle Ewing (Scottish National Party, Perth)

rose—

Hilton Dawson (Labour, Lancaster and Wyre)

rose—

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

I shall give way to both hon. Members shortly.

Some people oppose all three measures that I outlined and believe that if people will not leave, we should simply do nothing and accept the position as a burden of a modern, economically successful country. I do not agree with that.

Annabelle Ewing (Scottish National Party, Perth)

The Home Secretary mentioned the comments that the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration made yesterday. She said that children would be held in Dungavel removal centre for an initial period of 28 days and thereafter, they would be subject to a ministerial review. Does not the Home Secretary accept that for a child, 28 days at Dungavel is 28 days too long? Surely, as a plain-speaking man, he accepts that that will punish innocent children for the actions of their parents. By what means will the Bill exclude the competence and jurisdiction of the children's panel system in Scotland, which has primacy over the matter?

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

The hon. Lady knows that the issue is reserved. There has been a massive campaign about Dungavel. The average time families are held in removal centres is 10 days because there are some long-stay cases, but the bulk of cases are dealt with in five or six days. On Monday this week, 38 children were held in removal centres in the United Kingdom. I regret the holding of any child in a removal centre and I want other measures to be applied to avoid that happening. They include encouraging people to be redocumented and supporting them with free return and, when appropriate, resettlement. That is why, in a sensible debate, people cannot simply rule out every possible measure to achieve a public policy goal and then criticise the Government for failing to achieve it.

Hilton Dawson (Labour, Lancaster and Wyre)

I welcome the news of progress on monitoring children and families in detention centres. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that the oversight will include input from the relevant social services authority with child protection responsibilities? In expressing frustration about the way in which some asylum seekers try to thwart the system, will my right hon. Friend also confirm that their children are highly unlikely to have played any part in the decision either to come to this country or to try to evade immigration authorities?

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

First, I accept that social services have a highly relevant and appropriate central role to play in protection and in our education programme. On my hon. Friend's second point, of course I accept that the children are not responsible for their parents' decisions, but neither are we. We have to deal with children and support them wherever we can, consequent on the decisions and responsibility of their parents.

We are considering an issue of fundamental values. The primary concern of parents is the well-being of their children. That should come first, second and third. If it is in the interests of that well-being to comply with sensible and sensitive removal to the country of origin when asylum seekers have failed to establish their claim that they faced the threat of death and torture, they must take responsibility and accept the consequences. Parents, not only the state, must take responsibility for consequences. I reiterate that the state has an important role of last resort. However, in a civilised society, it is our job to protect children and not to give way to, second-guess or replace parents' responsibility for the care of their children.

Hilton Dawson (Labour, Lancaster and Wyre)

I accept my right hon. Friend's comments, but does he agree that much of the welfare state's work is protecting children from the consequences of their parents' actions, and that, by and large, that should be done by keeping families together?

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

As someone who was a chairman of social services for four years and dealt with difficult issues, such as removing children from their families, I accept my hon. Friend's point. I accept that we should take every possible step to ensure that children are well cared for, supported and maintained in their family unless they are at risk. As we have seen cases from Maria Caldwell all the way through to Victoria Climbié, our only objective is to protect children's interests when the decisions of adults whose care they have been in—parents or otherwise—have led to their being at risk. When they are at risk, we intervene to care for them.

Mark Oaten (Liberal Democrat, Winchester)

Will the Home Secretary give an absolute commitment that social services will be informed at the point at which a decision is taken to withdraw benefit from a family with children, so that social services are not brought in too late?

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

The obligation on the family is, first, to accept the removal directions and to be removed—we shall be tracking these families—and secondly, if they are in distress, to indicate that that is the case so that we can take the appropriate steps, including, as a logical conclusion of destitution, although not as part of the Bill, supporting the tiny number of children whose parents have taken such a contrary decision that it has put those children at risk. That is the normal practice. We are not in the business of trying to engineer a situation in which children are at risk and destitute and have to be taken into care. That is neither the role of the state nor the will of the Government. Had this issue not been totally distorted publicly after three weeks of the initial consultation, we might have been able to hold this debate on a more sensible basis.

Diane Abbott (Labour, Hackney North and Stoke Newington)

The whole House will agree with the Home Secretary that the actions of adults have consequences. However, the question at issue in relation to clause 7 is whether those actions should have consequences that are visited on the heads of children.

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

In every circumstance in which parents make decisions and are held responsible—whether it is parents who engage in unlawful action, parents who neglect or abuse their children, or parents who are no longer in receipt of benefits as a result of their actions—we have to take steps. In the domestic situation—and I am familiar with the legislation—section 1 of the Children Act 1989 enables social services, in extremis, to intervene financially. What we are saying is that we are prepared to intervene financially: we are prepared to pay the fare and provide support to those being returned to their country of origin. [Interruption.] That pager might have been providing an answer that I needed to give to the House. I thought I had better pause for a moment in case it was something vital. What we are not prepared to do is to get ourselves into the situation in which parents, having gone through all the processes that I have described, know that we will not withdraw public support from them because they have a child. In those circumstances, what chance would we have of getting the growing number of people being advised not to co-operate with re-documentation and removal to leave? That is the simple public question: what do we do, and what do people expect?

Our actions have consequences, as do the decisions of parents. Through our actions, we have identified a massive and growing problem: 70 per cent. of those claiming asylum do not have documents, and many are not co-operating with re-documentation. They are being advised by those who should know better to "play the game". So what do we do? Do we simply say, "If you are a family, when you touch British soil, you are here for ever"? We cannot do that and have a credible system.

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

I shall give way in a moment.

Let us bear in mind the fact that, when one hon. Member said earlier that the real issue was removals, there was an enormous number of "Hear, hears" around the Chamber. I can say, "Hear, hear," to the removal of those who have no legal right to be in the country, but not to taking away any steps that we put forward to make that a reality. It is the challenge of a legislature to make decisions, to ask the Executive to implement policies that are both credible and administratively possible, and to back them in taking those difficult decisions forward. When we were debating the previous legislation, I said—this is in Hansard—that I believed that people would encourage us to step up removal, but that there would be tears when removal was implemented. That is the case.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

My right hon. Friend knows that the Home Affairs Committee and I support the principle behind clause 7, as I hope to explain later. I welcome the fact that, earlier this afternoon, he said that he was looking again at the way in which section 55 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 is being applied, perhaps because some of the consequences had been harsher than the House or he intended. Does he take from that the fact that the House must look very carefully at how the Government would implement clause 7 in practice, to ensure that it achieves the outcomes that he wants, rather than resulting in consequences that we would find unacceptable?

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

I accept that stricture from my right hon. Friend. I am pleased that his Committee is not recommending that clause 7 be removed from the Bill. I accept that, as with so much legislation, it is crucial that the Executive are properly scrutinised and that the House—including the Home Affairs Committee, which my right hon. Friend chairs—does that job. That is part of Parliament's democratic role, and it is a very important one. If we can be shown to be in the wrong in terms of the way in which we apply legislation administratively, or to be too harsh or too soft, the House should hold us to account. While I cannot engage in a subjective judgment, as requested by the Select Committee, in terms of predictions of numbers, I can assure its Chairman that we will present all the facts to it and keep it informed on how we are implementing this legislation.

Andrew Turner (Conservative, Isle of Wight)

I am sure that many of us sympathise with the right hon. Gentleman in terms of the very difficult decisions that he is trying to balance in the Bill. He referred to people who ought to know better giving poor advice, and to people making a monkey of the legislation. Does he have—or will he take—the power to withdraw legal aid contracts from firms of solicitors that consistently give poor advice, propose failed appeals and bring forward failing arguments?

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs is to implement a review of the legal aid system, which will apply from April, and, with the Legal Services Commission, a new accreditation system for those providing advice—not to withdraw the accreditation but to ensure that there is proper monitoring. We are also strengthening the powers of the commissioner in the Bill so that he can achieve what the hon. Gentleman is seeking, in the interests of good advice and public probity and of ensuring that the very large tranches of public money that are going into the system are used wisely.

Keith Bradley (Labour, Manchester, Withington)

I seek further clarification on clause 7. I have here a briefing which states that

"local authorities will have to take whatever action is necessary to protect the children. In most cases, this would not involve taking children into care".

Will the Home Secretary clarify exactly what actions local authorities should take where they do not take children into care?

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

There might be family friends and members of the community who are able to assist. Let us bear in mind that 30,000 people in London receive benefit only, and not accommodation, and therefore are presumed to be accommodated by the host community or by family and relatives in this country.That is an interesting point in itself. We were enjoined not to withdraw benefit only when we introduced the measure in the 2002 Act, and we have not done so, because we have listened to the requests of hon. Members not to do that.

Those in a responsible position should give advice and support to families to encourage them to take up the offer of voluntary as opposed to enforced removal. Other measures in the Bill will assist us with enforced removal. With the fast-track process and better notification of the removal directions when the final appeal is turned down, we should be able to achieve a more streamlined system.

Neil Gerrard (Labour, Walthamstow)

I want to return to the issue raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham). The Home Secretary is asking us to accept that very few children will be taken into care or be made destitute as a result of clause 7, but large numbers of people could be affected. It is a question of how the provision will be implemented. Some of us have studied section 55 of the 2002 Act. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Coleman) asked for an assurance that that would not be used against people who have been in the country for only a short time—a matter of days. However, as we have just been told, the practice was 24 hours. I have a letter issued two months ago to someone who was denied support and had been in the country for one hour. How are we expected to accept assurances when that is our experience of what has happened under section 55?

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

rose—

Janet Dean (Labour, Burton)

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

I shall give way in a moment, but I would be grateful if I could first answer the question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard).

There are two separate issues: one is the individual's claim and the other is the credibility of the claim. Any individual can claim that they arrived only an hour ago, depending on where they arrived from and what mode of transport had got them within an hour of being able to make their claim.

Neil Gerrard (Labour, Walthamstow)

That was accepted.

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

If it was accepted that the person had arrived an hour ago, their claim to enter the asylum process and to receive support, including at an induction centre or through the fast-track process, in which the country of origin may be taken into account and the non-suspensive appeal may apply, should have been put in place. I am happy to take my hon. Friend's complaint if the procedure was not followed and the situation was badly handled.

I acknowledge that in the period after the 2002 Act was passed a year ago we had multiple claims from people in-country who had been here for some time and whose credibility was in considerable doubt. We believe that in the circumstances that we are now addressing, alongside the legislation dealing with greater credibility, we should exercise a degree of flexibility. I am happy to take criticism for having been too harsh, but I will not take such criticism when I have actually been more flexible and have acknowledged that what is being said to us has merit and we have changed our minds.

I shall give way one more time, to my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Mrs. Dean).

Janet Dean (Labour, Burton)

It is clearly nonsense for the asylum system to be run in such a way that those who fail in their claim can carry on receiving public money. But will my right hon. Friend assure the House that people who have failed in their claim receive adequate warning that public funds will be taken away from them? That is vital when children are involved.

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

I can give that absolute assurance. There will be multiple notifications, interviews and a further period of notice. People will be clearly informed of the consequences. The whole intention is to have a process that avoids that problem. The fast-track process, the sensible operation of removals, including encouragement to leave voluntarily, resettlement help and, despite the difficulties of planning consent, the experimental accommodation centres, were all designed to achieve precisely that. We want people either to move through induction to accommodation, receive a validated claim and be integrated, or to receive a removal direction and be removed immediately from the accommodation centre—as opposed to a secure removal centre, where we have to hold people in secure provision. Someone has always been against all that in one form or another.

The Minister for Citizenship and Immigration and I just have to accept that we will not satisfy everyone, either this afternoon or during the operation of the system. I respect the view of those who believe that, whatever the circumstances, families should continue to receive benefit on the ground that there may be some detriment to their child as a consequence of their decision. I understand and respect that view, but I cannot agree it as public policy.

I want to move on to clause 10, because I am sure that hon. Members will want to discuss the issue of decisive speed and effectiveness in dealing with the present system. Clause 10, together with schedule 2, will introduce the fast, speeded-up single tier of appeal. An appeal will be retained, and within the single tier multiple tracks for different forms of application. There will be an appeal to the president of the immigration appeal tribunal, and the ability on points of law to challenge whether the initial decision of appeal adjudicators was correct. A case can also go from the president of the single tier to the Court of Appeal when a point of law requires to be tested.

We believe that that will cut out the terrible situation in which, despite the adjudication system, which weeds out initial decisions that are doubtful, we end up with months and sometimes years of prevarication before action can be taken. We recommend to the House that we should move along those lines judiciously and sensibly to make the system work.

As with non-suspensive appeals, the different tracks will enable us to test a case when there is an unusual or new situation. I think hon. Members will agree that that process has been implemented with some care.

Robert Marshall-Andrews (Labour, Medway)

What will happen if one of these tribunals exceeds its power, perhaps grossly, or reaches a decision on the facts that no reasonable tribunal could have arrived at? Under the Bill, there is no provision for appeal. How will such decisions be reviewed?

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

There will be an appeal within the single tier to the president of the adjudication system—I am talking about judges, some of whom are part-time and some full-time. They will make a decision on whether the application made to the president is valid. That does not involve the case having to leave the single tier, and the president of the adjudication system will be able to make a judgment as to whether the application fits the criteria specifically—my hon. and learned Friend uses the word "specifically", because that is appropriate for such an application—and whether it should be referred to the Court of Appeal. I think that that is a reasonable process to adopt, so that we do not end up with judicial review after judicial review on claims that are not valid.

Clause 11 concerns safe countries. I think most people would agree that ours is a reasonable proposition in terms of the groups affected. Clause 12 is merely a tidying-up exercise, as are clauses 13 and 14. Clause 15 will allow us in the future to use new technical developments, primarily to avoid the need for people to be in secure accommodation. It is envisaged that they will be able to choose whether to be in a secure removal centre or, if the technology allows it, to use that technology to enable their whereabouts to be traced. Clauses 16 to 19 concern immigration advisers and the new powers of the Immigration Services Commissioner. I have answered a question about clause 20, relating to charges reflecting the totality of the benefit available and to the consultation we are undertaking.

I sincerely hope that in the next 18 months my hon. Friend the Minister of State and I will have a full night's sleep. I hope that we will answer fewer parliamentary questions, sign fewer letters and attract less acrimony, and that we may even be the subject of the odd complimentary leader in The Guardian—although I am not holding my breath. I also hope that we will have a system which, legally, administratively and in terms of competence, satisfies the requirements of what I believe to be the overwhelming majority of Members. That will be in the interests of a system and a process that work, but above all it will be in the interests of good race and community relations, and of the ability to give a warm welcome to people from around the world who—as I said at Chatham House a month ago—should be welcomed here, in a diverse, open society.

If there comes a time when we can have the sort of debate that I asked for a month ago but did not get, I for one will be a much happier man.

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

I echo the Home Secretary's comments about the Soham trial, and welcome the investigation to which he referred.

I apologise profusely for the absence of my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis), who is confined to his bed with flu. With slightly gritted teeth, I wish him a speedy recovery. I hoped that he might have recovered yesterday. The House will understand that I, more than most, regret his absence today, but I wish him well.

The hon. Member for Walsall, North (David Winnick) made a brief reference to the fact that one day in June 2000, some three and a half years ago, we woke to a shocking headline in our newspapers: 54 Chinese had been found suffocated in the back of a van at Dover. They were all young people—four were women—and they had suffered appalling deaths, having travelled across the continent of Europe to reach this country under the influence of criminal gangs. To any decent and civilised person, it should not matter whether they were genuine refugees or merely economic migrants in search of a better life. The fact is that these were young lives needlessly lost.

That tragedy brought the debate about asylum and immigration policy into sharp focus. It is a debate that has been very necessary. I think—and I thank the Home Secretary for all his contributions during his time in office—that we in the House have engaged in it rationally and sensibly—an approach that, sadly, has not always been adopted in the press and other media.

We are all agreed on one proposition: that our asylum system must be humane, and we must continue our long and honourable tradition of giving safe refuge to the persecuted. Along with humanity, however, there must be efficiency. I contend that our current system lacks efficiency, and is beginning to lack humanity.

Keith Vaz (Labour, Leicester East)

As the hon. Gentleman will know, the present Government inherited a large backlog from the previous Government. He was involved in that Government as Parliamentary Private Secretary to, I think, a Home Office Minister. Does he not agree that his party shares some of the responsibility for not ensuring that the system was more efficient when the present Government took office?

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

The hon. Gentleman should never forget that under the present Government, the number of asylum applicants has trebled. He should never forget that this Government have been in power for nearly seven years. He should never forget that under the previous Conservative Government we had a treaty with France under which those who turned up illegally on our shores were returned to France, and that the treaty lapsed and was never renegotiated. I will never forget that I was not here during that Parliament: the electors of Croydon, North-West had said goodbye to me in 1992.

I was saying that our current asylum system had begun to lack not just humanity but efficiency. Indeed, it is now widely accepted that it has reached a state of almost total collapse. For a start, many of us would agree that the wrong people are claiming asylum. It is claimed almost entirely by those who reach the United Kingdom illegally, or those who, having come here legally, try to overstay. Unlawful entry normally requires the paid services of people-smugglers—the criminal gangs who take vast sums from their victims by extortion and threats. Many of those who claim asylum have the economic resources to get here; they are not destitute, or the most deserving of help.

Furthermore, our system has been characterised by delay and inefficiency for many years. I believe that in recent times the Home Office has been overwhelmed by the number of applications.

Tom Harris (Labour, Glasgow Cathcart)

The hon. Gentleman says that those with money, who can pay the people-traffickers, are less deserving of asylum, while the more "destitute" deserve it. Is he not making a case for economic migrants to use the asylum system to come here on false pretences?

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

I understand the hon. Gentleman's point. I am merely saying that there are those with the money to cross the continent to get here, and that the most persecuted are often the poorest. They simply have not the resources to travel any distance from their own countries.

As I have said, the number of asylum applications has almost overwhelmed the Government. Last year the number of people seeking to come to Britain for asylum topped 110,000. That figure is the highest in Europe, and it is three times as high as the number claiming asylum in the last year of the Conservative Government. I do not believe that the Home Office has been able to cope with the volume of applications, and there is a growing feeling that the Government are beginning to lose control of our borders. Here is the rub: the Government believe that by legislating they can cure inefficiency and a discredited system. Legislation, however, is not the answer. The answer is to have practical operations working properly.

Let me say gently to the Home Secretary—who could probably say the same to me of my party—that we legislate too often and too hastily. Today we are discussing the second major piece of legislation introduced by the Home Secretary in two years: the ink is hardly dry on the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. As the House will recall, the flagship policy of that Bill was the establishment of accommodation centres where asylum seekers would live. The Government, of course, got it wrong then, ignoring advice from all the experts and proposing centres that were far too large and in the wrong places.

Tony Baldry (Conservative, Banbury)

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is absolutely nothing humane in placing large numbers of asylum seekers in huge accommodation centres in the middle of the countryside? Will he confirm that an incoming Conservative Government would abandon such a policy?

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I pay tribute to the work that he has done on his constituents' behalf in respect of the proposed accommodation centre in his constituency. He has worked tirelessly on their behalf. No, we are not in favour of large accommodation centres being established in the wrong places, and we were backed up in that—[Interruption.] An hon. Member says from a sedentary position, "In Banbury", but, as we know, all the experts outside this House say, "Keep the accommodation centres small, and keep them near urban areas, rather than rural ones."

Marsha Singh (Labour, Bradford West)

I have served with the hon. Gentleman on the Home Affairs Committee, where we discussed these and other issues. Does he accept that it is something of an exaggeration to say that the system is collapsing? It has got better under the legislation that we have passed, and it will get better still under this Bill. Does he accept, however, that it was near to collapse when the previous Government introduced a hopeless IT system and sacked 1,200 experienced immigration officers?

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

The hon. Gentleman has a distinguished record on the Home Affairs Committee, so I had anticipated an extremely friendly intervention; I am only mildly disappointed. The previous Conservative Government did many very good things in the asylum field, one of which I have already mentioned. We had a treaty with France, whereby people were returned there forthwith when they arrived here illegally. The treaty lapsed and has never been renewed by this Government, despite my pressing them on many occasions to do so.

Gwyn Prosser (Labour, Dover)

rose—

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

I give way to the hon. Member for Dover (Mr. Prosser), with whom, I should point out in advance of his intervention, I shared very happy times on the Home Affairs Committee.

Gwyn Prosser (Labour, Dover)

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that, but I am afraid that he will get an equally unfriendly intervention from me. Does he not remember that it was the current Leader of the Opposition who signed up to a Dublin convention that was designed never to work, and that on the day that he did so, the original arrangements collapsed? That is the real reason why we were no longer able to send people back to France.

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

With respect, the hon. Gentleman is wrong. The agreement lapsed, but there was nothing to prevent this Government from working tooth and nail to renegotiate it.

I was referring to accommodation centres, the work done by my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) and the Government's flawed policy. The House will not be surprised to hear that, some 18 months after the introduction of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, not one single accommodation centre is yet up and running. That shows that although we can discuss legislation for weeks and months and ram it through this House at great pace, it does not equate with efficiency. We legislate too quickly: after Second Reading of the 2002 Act, the Government added 342 of their own amendments and 25 new clauses.

What about this Bill and the consultation period? Frankly, that period has been disgracefully short—a view shared by many on the Government Benches.

Bob Blizzard (Labour, Waveney)

The hon. Gentleman may remember that in the Queen's Speech debate I intervened on the Leader of the Opposition to ask him whether they were going to oppose this Bill, at which point he launched into a tirade against it. Are they going to oppose it, or do they intend to allow failed asylum seekers to continue to receive benefit for long periods? Was the performance of the Leader of the Opposition just for show?

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

My right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition was particularly opposed to a matter relating to children, to which I shall turn in a moment. I am afraid that I missed the hon. Gentleman's intervention during the Queen's Speech debate, although that had nothing to do with the fact that there was a one-line Whip. I should point out to him that I have a long track record in the world of asylum and immigration. There are some things in the Bill to which I can give qualified support; in other respects, I want to tidy it up and improve it in Committee. We do not even know whether there will be a vote on it later today—at least, I do not. However, I should point out that there is much in it with which I do not agree, and which must be improved in Committee or in the other House. That view is shared not just by my Conservative colleagues, but by the vast majority of Labour Back Benchers.

Hilton Dawson (Labour, Lancaster and Wyre)

Is the hon. Gentleman really trying to tell us in his gentlemanly way that the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) was shedding crocodile tears when he made that vehement statement about children in care?

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

Quite the contrary. My right hon. and learned Friend—incidentally, he himself has a refugee background—was expressing justified concern, which has also been expressed across the nation, about the possible treatment of children under one of the Bill's clauses. I shall return to that point and make my feelings quite clear.

The Government wrote to interested parties with their proposals on 27 October. They set the wholly unrealistic deadline for responses of 15 working days, completely contrary to Cabinet Office guidelines. The Bill itself was published only nine working days after the deadline for responses. My guess is that it was printed before the consultation period even began, and I should not be surprised if the Government flood this House and the Committee with amendments.

The Home Secretary will point to improvements that have taken place in the past few months, such as a drop in the number of asylum applicants. It is possible that the Government deserve some credit for that, and I pay tribute to him if it is true that any of his measures have indeed improved the system, but before he becomes too smug—he has never been so in the past—let us ponder the following facts. The number of asylum seekers is still much higher than under the previous Conservative Government. Secondly, there has been a policy U-turn, involving the reintroduction of Conservative proposals that the Labour Government condemned and scrapped; indeed, that may be a factor. Thirdly, the recent drop in asylum claims may in part have been achieved by letting greater numbers into Britain by other means. Legal immigration is up dramatically. Hundreds of extra Home Office staff are granting thousands more work permits. Because we do not count people out, and because our borders are not secure, nobody knows how many illegal immigrants are in this country. Indeed, the Home Secretary confessed recently that he did not have a clue how many illegal immigrants there were. He could have added that, after nearly seven years, the Government still do not have a clue about how to manage an efficient system.

Let me focus on one or two of the Government's failures, which I hope the Home Secretary is prepared to accept. First, they have abjectly failed in their policy for removing failed asylum seekers. That failure strikes at the credibility of the whole system; indeed, the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Singh) referred to it. That credibility was further damaged when the Home Secretary announced a series of amnesties for failed asylum seekers. Many in the country were dismayed at his recent announcement of an amnesty for up to 50,000 people whose asylum claims had failed. Surely a key ingredient in the integrity of any asylum process is the Government's ability to remove those found not to be in need of protection. The story so far has been one of Government failure—a fact confirmed by the Government's own Back Benchers in a series of Home Affairs Committee reports.

Diane Abbott (Labour, Hackney North and Stoke Newington)

The hon. Gentleman criticises the Government for the level of removals, but is it not true that the level was not much higher under the Conservative Government? [Interruption.] Indeed—it was lower. It is easy to call for many more removals, but in fact it is a very difficult and contentious thing to achieve.

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

I agree with the hon. Lady that it is a very difficult thing to achieve. I also agree that the previous Conservative Government did not remove every failed asylum seeker, but she should not forget that the problem is getting worse. I hope that she understands that there are tens of thousands more failed asylum seekers than there were seven years ago.

Let us have a look at the comments of the Select Committee on Home Affairs. It was three years ago, I say to the hon. Lady, if she is prepared to listen—[Interruption.] She is not. It was three years ago that the Home Affairs Committee, dominated by the Labour party, concluded that this Government had been dilatory in enforcing removals. It added that that in itself had attracted more people to the UK. There was further criticism of the Government on removals by the same Committee in spring this year. A glance at the statistics illustrates the problem. Last year was one of the worst on record. Of 45,000 failed asylum seekers who should have left, only 10,000 went through removals and voluntary departures. What kind of efficiency is it when barely one in five failed asylum seekers are being removed from the UK?

The Government compound the problem by setting themselves targets to try to grab the headlines. They had a target of removing 30,000 failed asylum seekers per year, rising to 37,000 by 2003–04, but what on earth is the point of setting a target if it is so unrealistic that it cannot be met and has to be abandoned? Again, as the Home Affairs Committee has remarked, what on earth was the basis for the belief at the time that the target was achievable? A target that is not reached and is dropped serves only to arouse false expectations of what can be done. That failure results in a drop in morale among all concerned.

There is another basic failure, which is at the beginning of the asylum process: the Government's continued refusal to understand that initial decisions must be fast and of the highest standard. At the moment, I do not believe that they are either. A parliamentary answer in June 2002 revealed that the average time for a Home Office official to reach an initial decision on an asylum application was seven months. It further revealed that at that time nearly 20,000 cases had been awaiting an initial decision for more than six months. Some 16,000 cases had been outstanding for more than 12 months. That was in 2002 and, to the Government's credit, times for initial decisions are coming down, but it is a slow process and it will take years to catch up. Even today, with the vast resources and money poured into the system, considerably more than 20,000 applications per year have to wait more than two months even for an initial decision.

What of the quality of those decisions? They are made largely by inexperienced Home Office officials who are on a starting salary of £15,500 per year—two thirds of the national average. With only 27 days of training, those officials have to make decisions that can literally mean life or death to the applicant. They are neither paid nor trained well enough to deal with those complex issues. I wonder whether the Home Secretary knows what the turnover rate of such staff is. It is a telling but unsurprising fact that considerably more than 20 per cent. of appeals against their decisions are successful. The percentage used to be 4 per cent. In relation to some countries, the successful appeal rate against initial decisions is even higher. That must surely concern us all, and it has certainly concerned the Labour-dominated Home Affairs Committee.

The inefficiency at the early stage of the process is compounded by the fact that at most appeals before an adjudicator the Home Office simply does not have a presenting officer present to argue its case. I ask the Home Secretary, what has happened in the past year to cause so many part-time and full-time adjudicators to bemoan the fact that the Home Office has simply stopped providing representation before them? That failure can only lead to more delays and, in practice, a greater likelihood of appeals being allowed.

With that background, it can be no surprise that the Government have largely lost the confidence of the British people. I wish that they would take our advice and concentrate on an expert and timely initial decision-making process, coupled with an efficient removals system.

David Winnick (Labour, Walsall North)

When the then shadow Home Secretary, now the shadow Chancellor, gave evidence to the Select Committee on Home Affairs a few months ago, his party's solution was to put all the applicants on an island, from which their claims would be processed. Does that remain the policy of the Conservative party?

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

I will tell the hon. Gentleman what our policy is, and I am glad to have the opportunity to do so. We believe that the current system is in many ways discredited and that the Home Secretary has real difficulties getting it to work properly. We doubt whether he will ever be able to do so, although we wish him well in that pursuit. We believe that the appropriate course of action is to scrap the current system entirely, to accept—[Interruption.] I am explaining, if the hon. Member for Walsall, North will listen, that we should accept a quota of refugees, designated and agreed between us and the UNHCR every year, so that we know when they arrive that their arrival has been agreed, and they are to be welcomed.

Under that quota system, if anyone else sought to claim asylum on these shores, they would be removed to a safe offshore haven. I am using my words carefully here: they should be removed to a safe offshore haven—forget the island—where their cases would be decided. [Interruption.] It is all very well for the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) to barrack, but there is a great deal of sense in deciding asylum applications offshore if possible, because we would be able to avoid the problems that the Home Secretary is now facing, which he cannot solve.

We want to work towards a combination between a quota system and offshore decision making. We do not want a system like the one that the Government preside over, which is so discredited throughout the country.

Keith Vaz (Labour, Leicester East)

rose—

Douglas Hogg (Conservative, Sleaford and North Hykeham)

rose—

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

I shall give way to my right hon. and learned Friend first.

Douglas Hogg (Conservative, Sleaford and North Hykeham)

May I press my hon. Friend a little on the policy that he is enunciating? If we are to delegate to the UNHCR the role of determining who is an asylum seeker, is not one of the consequences that if somebody comes to this country unlawfully we should simply refuse to entertain an application from that person, but rather say that he or she should make an application within the UNHCR procedure?

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend—or at least, I think I am. We all want to avoid the situation in which people travel to this country, at great risk of their lives and under the cosh of the gangs, in order to make their claim, so there is much to be said for the proposal that every year we take a quota of refugees who are officially recognised by ourselves in conjunction with the UNHCR. There is also a great deal to be said for moving as rapidly as possible to an offshore processing system, which would be a much more efficient way of handling matters. [Interruption.] Before Government Members scoff, let me ask them this: in the seventh year of this Labour Government, is not their record one of abject failure on all fronts, and do not the British people regard the system that they are currently operating as chaotic and in a complete shambles?

Keith Vaz (Labour, Leicester East)

rose—

Lynne Jones (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

rose—

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

I shall give way to the hon. Lady, and then to the hon. Gentleman.

Lynne Jones (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

Would the accommodation provided in those offshore havens be of a large institutional nature, or would there be small units, as advocated by the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry)?

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

The hon. Lady is trying to tweak me on this subject, but I shall give her a frank answer. We do not know the answer to that question yet. Let us just occasionally be frank in this House, and say that we are not sure—

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

rose—

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

I shall give way in a moment. I shall just finish my sentence and say to the hon. Lady that there would be centres where—

Steve Pound (Labour, Ealing North)

Neither offshore nor sure.

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

That is a good line. I shall remember that. Let me just tell the hon. Lady that at those offshore bases and centres there would be a proper judicial system, with legal advice and the fullest possible help given. Part of the purpose of that policy is that if we send a message throughout the world—[Interruption.] I hope that the hon. Lady will take this on board. I am saying that if we send a message—

Sylvia Heal (Deputy Speaker, Halesowen and Rowley Regis)

Order. Hon. Members should listen to the hon. Gentleman's response to the question.

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

If we send a message that we in this country offer a genuine welcome to the needy who have been identified as such, and a message to those who want to use the asylum system as a means of getting here, that they cannot, because they will be removed to have their claims decided offshore, we shall have fewer applicants.

David Blunkett (Labour, Sheffield, Brightside)

I am almost sorry to ask the hon. Gentleman this question, because I imagine that flu is rapidly developing. A propos the accommodation centres, will he tell us whether the offshore facility per se would have to be in an urban rather than a rural area, particularly given the Conservative party's clear policy on those matters?

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

The Home Secretary gets a reasonable laugh for that, but not the greatest that we have heard in the House. Let me tell him frankly that we have to identify methods—we are currently working on this—by which we can move to an offshore processing centre. I say that in the certain knowledge that if our policy can be formulated and put into practice, there will be far fewer abusive applications for asylum in this country.

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

I want to make some progress and I have already given way several times. However, I shall give way to the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham).

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He is dealing with the problem with his characteristic good humour, but does he not recognise the dangers in his approach? Many of our constituents say that there must be some simple solution, like sticking all asylum seekers on a boat somewhere or shoving them off to an island. However, it is extremely dangerous to encourage the idea that there is a simplistic solution that can wish the problem away. Does the hon. Gentleman not recognise that Conservative Members need either to produce a credible policy or to shut up about it? The idea that there is some simple solution is highly dangerous.

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman for all that he has done in home affairs and for what he is doing now. Let me say, quite frankly, that there are no easy answers to any of these problems. However, I also say, just as frankly and with all the force that I can muster, that the movement towards having a recognised quota of refugees, identified by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and ourselves, coupled with offshore processing of those seeking admission to this country, is the right way forward. That is my and my party's view and that is what we shall do.

Douglas Hogg (Conservative, Sleaford and North Hykeham)

I am sorry to press my hon. Friend on the point, but I wonder whether he may be unduly complicating our position. I can understand the point of having a quota system based on the UNHCR—it may require changing our ratification of the convention—but why the need to have a secondary ability for people to come in and then make an application from some secure centre? Surely it would be best to have one way in—through the UNHCR—and then entertain no applications that do not fall under that one process.

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

My right hon. and learned Friend makes his point in his own way, but there will be people outside the quota system who seek to claim asylum in this country, and my message to them today is that we will remove them to a safe offshore centre where their applications will be processed. That will bring more order into a system that is utterly discredited.

Keith Vaz (Labour, Leicester East)

rose—

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

No, I want to make some progress. I have given way on every occasion so far and I shall not do so any more.

Some of the Bill's proposals are to be welcomed. Anything that can be done humanely to improve the removals system will be welcomed on the Opposition Benches and throughout the country. We offer a welcome to the extension of powers of arrest, entry and search for immigration officers. We also offer a limited welcome to the proposal to criminalise those who wilfully destroy their passports or immigration documents with the purpose of pursuing unmeritorious claims, which is a pernicious practice. We welcome provisions to tag electronically those subject to immigration control, provided that such measures work in practice.

One of the Government's greatest failures hitherto has been their inability to keep in touch with asylum seekers in the community, and not to require sufficient reporting at regular intervals. A classic example is the Oakington centre. That fast-track procedure, which incidentally costs the taxpayer £1,600 a week for each person in detention, works quickly, humanely and efficiently. But at the end of the process, it utterly fails. Why? Because applicants are released into the community, and many are never seen again.

We also welcome measures that seek to make the appeals process more efficient, provided that justice is not lost in the process. However, we have concerns, which are shared by not only expert organisations outside the House that work in the field of asylum law, but many of the Home Secretary's own Back Benchers.

In respect of making it a criminal offence, punishable by two years imprisonment, to present oneself to an immigration officer without a valid immigration document, have the Government considered what effect implementation might have on the prison population in this country?

Robert Marshall-Andrews (Labour, Medway)

The hon. Gentleman knows that clause 10 removes any judicial review or oversight from the tribunals. The only review will be by the tribunal itself, which is not a review. For the first time since the Star Chamber, we are creating a body that has powers over people's lives that are not reviewed by the courts. Does the hon. Gentleman agree with that? Knowing him as a libertarian, I am sure that his immediate answer will be no. If so, why are the Tories not voting against the Bill, and why are they leaving it to Labour Members to test it?

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

Let me deal with the point of principle first. Am I in favour of that clause? The answer is that I am not, and I do not believe that any fair-minded person would want it to remain unamended.

Returning to the offence under clause 2, there is one category of people who must be dealt with: those who tear up their immigration documents on a flight or on arrival at an airport wilfully and with intent to evade the system. Would it not be more effective either to require carriers to take copies of traveller's documentation, or to take such documents from them when they board the aeroplane and give them back at immigration control?

Can we not distinguish that group of people—those who wilfully destroy their documents before arrival—from the other group who flee persecution, crossing the continent, often under the influence of criminal gangs? Thousands of those people have never had travel or immigration documents, or passports. Such people would be guilty and could go to prison for up to two years. We are potentially criminalising people who have to flee in a hurry and are told to destroy documents by the smugglers, people who never had them in the first place, and people who have them collected by the smugglers before they reach immigration control. A huge percentage of genuine asylum seekers have no documentation whatever, so there is real concern that the provision might catch and hurt innocent and vulnerable people, rather than merely catching those trying to defeat the system.

How many such asylum seekers have dependent children with them? What would be the effect on those children if the asylum seeker, on being charged, were remanded in custody and, on conviction, placed in prison for up to two years? What if their parents were fined thousands of pounds that they clearly could not pay? If they came before the courts as defaulters and had to go to prison, what would happen? What sort of system is that for the genuine asylum seeker?

Lynne Jones (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

I agree with the hon. Gentleman's comments. The Government have said—I finally saw the consultation document in the Library—that few people would choose to go to prison rather than return home. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that people who are prepared to go to prison for two years are likely to have established that they did have a well-founded fear of persecution?

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

The genuine asylum seeker arriving here, fleeing persecution, torture and possible death, would, if offered a choice between going back or spending two years in a British prison, opt for prison every time. However, the clause is potentially unfair, unless it is amended in Committee to make sure that we punish only those who are deserving of the punishment—in my view, those who wilfully tear up their documents on the aeroplane or when they reach our airports, not those who flee in haste across the continent.

Tony McWalter (Labour/Co-operative, Hemel Hempstead)

Is the hon. Gentleman confused about the idea that it might be deemed an offence not to have documents? As far as I can see, the Bill certainly does not suggest that it is an offence for someone not to have documents, as opposed to someone wilfully refusing to co-operate with the authorities in seeking to establish his or her identity. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will take that point on board.

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

The clause reads as follows:

"A person commits an offence if when he is first interviewed by an immigration after arrival . . . he does not have with him an immigration document which . . . is in force".

That is the offence. The broad nature of that allegation means that we might send tens of thousands of innocent people to prison, so the clause will need to be carefully examined in Committee.

Clause 7 deals with withdrawal of support. Until now, asylum seekers with dependent children have received support until they fail to comply with a removal direction. The issuing of a removal direction is an administrative act signifying the Government's immediate readiness to remove the failed asylum seeker—it comes right at the end of the process. Now, it is proposed to stop benefits much earlier. That may encourage more failed asylum seekers to take advantage of an opportunity to leave the UK; it may send a signal that those who attempt to play the system cannot expect to succeed; but it may also drive failed asylum seekers underground and split up families, as well as make removal more difficult.

The measure may hit many people who have nowhere to go—people on whom the Government would hesitate to serve a removal direction because of the hardship involved in removing them to their country of origin. Zimbabwe is a case in point—a prime example. Removals to Zimbabwe have been suspended for a long time, so what happens to the failed asylum seeker whom the Government cannot and will not remove to Zimbabwe? Does such a person receive the notice stopping all their benefits or not? There are many people whom the Government would hesitate to remove because of the practical difficulties in getting the country of origin to receive them back—countries such as China, Moldova, Zimbabwe and the Congo all have their own particular difficulties. What would the Government do about failed asylum seekers whom, in the normal course of events, they would not remove to those countries? Will the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration set out precisely what is to happen to such people? As the Bill stands, they could be refused any support, which might be grossly unfair.

There is one aspect of the changes that the Conservative party will never tolerate. Last month, the Government briefed the press that the children of asylum seekers would be taken away from them to make them leave Britain. It was a despicable and disgraceful idea, and the British people have already expressed their disgust, yet despite the opportunities given to him on many occasions in the House by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), the Prime Minister has refused to rebut his officials' briefings. The Home Secretary has distanced himself from the threat and there is no mention of it in the Bill. If the Home Secretary can guarantee that the removal of children into care will not be used as an explicit threat to asylum seekers, he will have our support; but if any amendment is made to the Bill to the effect that asylum seekers' children will be taken into care simply to persuade their parents to go home, we will have none of it and we will oppose it in the strongest possible terms.

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

The hon. Gentleman discredits himself with that accusation, which the Home Secretary has refuted on many occasions, including by writing to the newspaper concerned. The newspaper repeated that story, even after we had disavowed its version of clause 7. Will the hon. Gentleman accept that that story was in no way the result of briefing by either Ministers or officials?

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

I have to say to the Minister that the briefing began somewhere—the press were briefed to that effect by someone in the Government. All I ask the Minister to do is to give us the undertaking I described.

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

I want to make a little progress before giving way again. I have given way almost every time I have been asked.

We have always said that a streamlined, fast and efficient appeals system is important. Like the Home Secretary, we deplore attempts by those who seek asylum to play the system for all it is worth and to mount a succession of unmeritorious appeals, so in principle we understand and accept the desire to unify the appeals system. However, I greatly regret the proposal in the Bill to abolish all existing rights of appeal and review to the High Court, the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords. One of the strengths of the present system is that the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords have decided a large number of asylum cases and given clear and binding precedents on a number of vital matters. I would be more than sorry to see that go.

It is a fact that the stakes are often highest for the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society. A mistake could send asylum seekers back to a country where torture and execution await them, and we must be absolutely sure of ourselves before introducing the measure. As the Bill stands, the obvious question to ask is how an erroneous decision by the new tribunal can be corrected if there is no right to apply to the Court of Appeal for a binding decision. The Bill offers only one possibility: for the tribunal to review its own decision on the basis of written representations. That provision is surely too restrictive, in effect, making the tribunal a judge of its own cause. Remember also that under the Bill as it stands, there is no judicial scrutiny of a decision by an immigration officer to remove someone. I share the concerns expressed by many hon. Members, not only Conservatives but Labour Members, most eloquently the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews).

Iain Coleman (Labour, Hammersmith and Fulham)

I strongly agree with the hon. Gentleman's most recent observations, but may I take him back to his comments about destitute children and the leader of the Conservative party? I advise the hon. Gentleman that the policy of a large number of Conservative-controlled local authorities in the event of a family being found to be intentionally homeless—perhaps because they have got into rent arrears or refused an offer of accommodation— is to take away the children of that family and put them into care against their parents' will? Does he regard that as despicable and barbaric, and if not, why not?

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

As the hon. Gentleman was speaking, an hon. Friend was whispering something into my ear, so although I picked up most of what he said and will give the best answer I can, if I do not completely answer his point, let us talk about it afterwards. In principle, I am not generally in favour of taking children into care. I believe that the splitting up of families with the children being taken into care is potentially extremely damaging to the children, to the family unit and to the long-term prospects of those young people.

Hilton Dawson (Labour, Lancaster and Wyre)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

Let me make some progress.

Can we not agree that the highest courts in this land should, when appropriate, be available to all our people, regardless of background? We will have to examine the clause closely in Committee. We will also look closely at the provision for charging immigration applicants more than the cost of processing their applications. That has caused much concern in educational establishments, and needs to be considered with care.

We can therefore give the Bill qualified support, subject to proper scrutiny and amendment in Committee and the other place. It is greatly to be hoped that it will do much to remove the incentive to remain in Britain after an application has been refused on appeal, and that it will end the dire situation whereby some failed asylum seekers can cynically play the appeals system. However, it troubles me that the Government are seeking to exclude the judges.

It is something of an irony that the Prime Minister, when he was Leader of the Opposition, championed the right of individuals to have access to the highest courts in the land, yet now talks to his party conference about the problems that the Government face from what he describes as "judicial interference". When the Government accuse the judiciary of interfering, it is time to be very concerned about our ancient liberties.

I end with this advice to the Government: in future, legislate less, and give much more thought to legislative proposals; consult more widely; move more slowly; and remember that legislation has never created, and will never create, operational efficiency. That is what is wrong with our current system.

Finally, in view of what so many of us feel about some of the Bill's illiberal aspects, the Government should never lose sight of the principle that although our system must work, it almost certainly must remain a beacon of humanity and decency to the rest of the civilised world.

Sylvia Heal (Deputy Speaker, Halesowen and Rowley Regis)

I remind the House that Mr. Speaker has imposed a 12-minute limit on Back-Bench Members' speeches.

Hilton Dawson (Labour, Lancaster and Wyre)

I beg to move,

That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill because it contains provision that would make children destitute.

I am extraordinarily grateful to Mr. Speaker for selecting this reasoned amendment. I have spent most of the morning being warned by vastly more experienced colleagues that that would not happen. That it has is a mark of Mr. Speaker's commitment to the rights of Back-Bench Members. It is also, I hope, an indication of the seriousness of this subject. I regard it as a matter of fundamental principle and conscience. Other hon. Members will deal with the merits or demerits of many more of the Bill's 28 clauses than I shall. I intend to concentrate solely on clause 7.

Clause 7 is so wrong in what it intends to do that it should be opposed by every hon. Member from every party in this House. The presence of the clause in the Bill demeans all of us here.

It is an indication of the seriousness of this matter that all hon. Members will have received a briefing from the British Association of Social Workers. I spent 25 years as a social worker, but I never joined the association as I did not think that it reflected the profession's radicalism. It is extraordinary, and entirely to be commended, that the association should say that it cannot overstate its opposition to receiving children into care on the ground of parental poverty, which it regards as a breach of professional ethics. The association briefing states:

"We expect our members to strongly resist the implementation of this clause."

It is a matter of enormous regret that the Bill has been produced by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, and that it has the support of my hon. Friend the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration. Both are exceptionally fine people, whom I hold in the highest respect and regard. They have an enormously difficult task, and I support them in many aspects of the job that they try to do. However, they are wrong in what they propose this afternoon. They are taking us a step far too far.

It seems extraordinary that I have to say this to a Labour Government, but in no circumstances whatever should the basic means of sustenance be removed from children. That is true whatever their parents have done, whoever they are, wherever they come from, and regardless of the merits of the case presented by any adults involved. All hon. Members should reflect that, if they vote for a Bill that contains clause 7, they will be voting for a measure that will mean that children in this country will go hungry. That will be their individual responsibility, not the responsibility of Whips. They will be taking direct responsibility for children becoming homeless. They will be taking direct responsibility for children being at risk of physical and sexual abuse, and they will be taking direct responsibility for children needing to be looked after by their local authorities and separated from their parents simply because those parents are destitute.

Tony McWalter (Labour/Co-operative, Hemel Hempstead)

My hon. Friend knows that I greatly respect his tremendous work on behalf of children. Will he reflect on the fact that families are rapped out of their beds at 5 o'clock in the morning and wrenched out to the airport by force at present—children must also go through that traumatic experience? The Bill is an attempt to put in place a system of co-operation that would be gentler and better supported, which should be better for children all round.

Hilton Dawson (Labour, Lancaster and Wyre)

I am sorry, but I entirely reject my hon. Friend's view. I entirely support ways of working with families and helping them to deal with situations in which they find themselves, but we do not help families by taking away their basic means of sustenance and impoverishing them. I have gone to bed in nice hotels in Romania, Angola, Burundi and Kenya knowing that destitute children were right outside the building, but that has never happened here. My hon. Friends might like to protest that such things will never happen and that families with no right to remain in this country who are faced with the prospect of destitution will take their leave earlier and more quickly. They may also argue that local authorities will intervene, after which people will be removed virtually immediately in any case. I hope that they are right—they may well be right for several cases.

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

I have told my hon. Friend that I know of and respect his great concern for children. However, it might be worth while for him to set out where he thinks that parental responsibility lies in such circumstances. There is an important difference between the families about which he is talking, and indigenous families and those with the right to remain. Those families will have the opportunity to get an assisted package to help them back home to their country and assistance with resettling, if necessary, so they will consequently have the means of avoiding the possible consequences of support being taken away from them.

Hilton Dawson (Labour, Lancaster and Wyre)

I shall try to respond to my hon. Friend's point in part later in my speech. However, we cannot rule out the possibility that neither the Home Office nor all its procedures will be infallible, so people who are forced to go home might well be pushed back to a life of torture and oppression in the countries from which they came. We need to draw a clear distinction when comparing children in such circumstances with children from our country. The welfare needs of children from our country are met by keeping the family together and offering all sorts of support, but they are occasionally removed from their families to address their protection needs. Several hon. Members have conflated those issues already.

When some families are faced with the implications of clause 7, whatever the merits of their case, they will ask local authorities to look after their children because they are unable to do that. They may do that at an earlier stage than my hon. Friends would like to believe. The nature of section 20 of the Children Act 1989 has already been misunderstood this afternoon. Children cannot be taken into care under the provision, because the arrangement is entirely voluntary. If parents go to local authorities because they have no money to look after their children, given that the authorities will not be able to provide the families with money and the only alternative would be to try to construct a network of voluntary support, social workers will probably have to agree to accommodate children under section 20 despite the fact that that offends against the paramount principle of the Children Act and every tenet of good professional practice. Thereafter those parents could disappear, leaving their children as alone as any unaccompanied asylum-seeking child who had made their own way to the UK. Such children would be left in the care system and would need to be looked after until they were grown up.

Those children could be the lucky ones, however. I have great faith that the overwhelmingly decent people of this country would rally round to help families made destitute by clause 7. The horrible, ridiculous nonsense peddled by the likes of the Daily Mail and The Sun does a gross disservice to the people of this country. Churches, mosques, synagogues, temples, voluntary organisations, friends, families and many individuals will do all that they can to offer food, clothing and shelter. They may reduce the number of people who will need to beg, to steal and to camp out on our streets, but people will still be on the streets as a consequence of the clause.

The criminals and paedophiles will also spot new prey. Only last month, we passed the fine legislation that is the Sexual Offences Act 2003, but how many families desperate to stay in this country will be impelled back into the arms of traffickers or forced into the arms of thieves and pimps, into the homes of men who will have an uncommon hold over people who will feel the full weight of that obligation? In such circumstances, social workers may have to intervene with compulsory powers.

Over the past few days, we have heard much, rightly, about the awful human difficulties of compulsorily removing families from this country under our immigration laws. My right hon. and hon. Friends might also like to contemplate the awful human difficulties of removing children from their families under emergency protection orders. That can be a very harrowing experience indeed.

The proposed legislation will make some families—some children—disappear from view and they will be in colossal danger. As I wrote that sentence I thought, "My God, I hope I'm wrong." We should not dream of putting the legislation, or families, to the test. What is proposed in clause 7 is wrong. It undermines all the work that the Government are rightly doing to emphasise the principle that every child matters. Under clause 7, some children do not matter. The clause breaches the Children Act 1989; it breaches articles 3 and 9 of the United Nations convention on the rights of the child; and goodness knows how the Home Secretary can believe that it complies with the Human Rights Act 1998. The Human Rights Act is not worth having if these provisions comply with it.

The Bill invites us to attempt to persuade adults to do something because if they do not we will harm their children and break up their families. That is immoral.

Julie Morgan (Labour, Cardiff North)

Is my hon. Friend aware that the office of the Children's Commissioner for Wales has expressed grave concerns about the legislation? Does he agree that when there is a children's commissioner for England that person may express similar concerns?

Hilton Dawson (Labour, Lancaster and Wyre)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. The children's commissioner for England would face the prospect of such legislation with coruscating anger and would take the Government fully to task for even contemplating it. We should not allow this country to reach that position.

Voting against Second Reading is a moral imperative for Members on both sides of the House. We have heard utter confusion from the Conservative Front Bench and I appeal to Conservative Back Benchers, over the heads of their Front Benchers and the crocodile tears of their leader, to vote with their consciences this evening.

The Whips should have no sway over the issue. I am confident that even they might examine their consciences in this case—[Hon. Members: "No, never."] I remain confident.

I sincerely urge my right hon. and hon. Friends to reconsider clause 7, to think again and to decide not to take our precious, tolerant, democratic society, which is based on fundamental human rights, down a wicked road. ROYAL ASSENT

Michael Lord (Deputy Speaker, Central Suffolk and North Ipswich)

I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified her Royal Assent to the following Act:

Consolidated Fund (No. 2) Act 2003.

Mark Oaten (Liberal Democrat, Winchester)

I start by sharing a sentiment with the Home Secretary on the outcome of the Soham murder trial. I should add that if it does emerge in the next day or two that there were some serious record-keeping errors in the past, that will be of serious concern to parents throughout the country. After all, what is the point in having such measures in place if there has been a failure? I hope that the Home Secretary will come to the House as soon as possible to explain what will be done to examine the issues thoroughly.

If somebody had told me six years ago, when I entered Parliament, that as a Liberal Democrat I would be arguing against an immigration Bill that used children as a tool to try to remove asylum seekers, and which took away levels of natural justice, and then told me that it would be a Labour Government to whom I would be raising objections, I would not have believed that possible. However, since the Labour Government came to office, they seem persistently to want to battle it out in the right-wing press to try to outbid the Conservatives in their period of office.

If the Home Secretary, as he said, wants to try in the next few months to have some more positive leaders in The Guardian, my advice to him is that he may have to do away with some positive leaders in the Daily Mail if he is to achieve such an outcome.

I shall run through some of the measures in the Bill. Before doing so, I will place my remarks in the context of why we are having the debate in the first place. There have been discussions about the degree of the problem in relation to asylum seekers. A couple of weeks ago, the Government announced that by their own measurements, there had been a reduction in the number of asylum seekers coming into the country. It strikes me as slightly odd that against that backdrop of a clear Government target met, they want to introduce another wave of measures, I assume to try to have a further cut in place. When the Minister replies, it may be useful for him to explain whether an assessment has been made to ascertain what reduction in the number of individuals seeking to come to the UK the Government want.

Is there to be another target similar to the one that the Prime Minister announced a year ago? If not, have the Government made assessments of the impact of these changes? It strikes me that the sole purpose of the changes must be to try to reduce the number of asylum seekers entering the country. It would be helpful all round to know what the target is, or whether there is a target.

I hope that the Government will accept that one of the reasons why we are seeing a reduction in the numbers is that there has been a change, with the expansion of the European Union, which will be embedded in 2004. Some of the measures that the Government will put in place with the enactment of the Bill may not be needed if the pattern that seems to be emerging over the last year or so continues.

There are three or four critical clauses and I shall raise some concerns and put my points to the Minister. First, there is clause 10, which introduces a fundamental issue. There is much talk about children and benefits, but for me the big principle rests with the changes that the Government plan to the appeal system that currently operates. It seems that the Government, despite the Home Secretary's assurances that there will still be some peculiar route to a higher court, are doing away with a level of appeal. Not only that, they are doing away with the principle of being able to go to a higher court for some form of judicial review.

Tellingly, the Law Society has said:

"The general principle of English law is that the High Court exercises a supervisory jurisdiction through judicial review, over administrative decisions and the work of tribunals, in order to ensure there is a remedy where those bodies make errors of law or reach decisions in a way that is grossly unfair."

It added:

"It is essential that asylum appeals which deal with life or death issues are subject to that full and proper judicial scrutiny."

I cannot understand why the Government want to take away that protection and break an established principle that we have in law.

It is important to have the ability to refer on to a higher court. We have often seen in the past that testing out some laws through judicial review has resulted in better decisions. It has changed the practice. It has changed the way in which decisions were made in the first place. We will lose all that now.

Robert Marshall-Andrews (Labour, Medway)

Are the two things not linked? Is not clause 7 made infinitely more iniquitous because of the problems introduced by clause 10, which make it infinitely more likely that deserving cases will be subject to the provisions in clause 7?

Mark Oaten (Liberal Democrat, Winchester)

All the clauses are connected in many ways, and the implications of rights being taken away in one clause by changes introduced by other clauses are very dangerous indeed. I would include in that something that is not in the Bill but which is being discussed elsewhere—the plans to change legal aid. If the Government are moving towards a more streamlined approach and want to remove certain levels of appeal, it is critical that decent decisions be made. If such decisions are to be made, decent legal aid must be in place. The Government proposals to remove legal aid should be put on hold until we have seen how the changes in the Bill bed down.

Jeremy Corbyn (Labour, Islington North)

I agree, particularly with the hon. Gentleman's last point. Is he aware that, especially in inner London, large numbers of solicitors' firms are closing down because they simply cannot afford to represent immigration and asylum cases? Voluntary sector law centres are overwhelmed by cases, so people can only go to places where they are prey to unscrupulous, incompetent advisers who often mess up a case, resulting in a grave injustice at a later stage.

Mark Oaten (Liberal Democrat, Winchester)

That is an extremely valid point. The consequences of the proposed changes in legal aid are serious, as we could end up with individuals who have not got the necessary skills, particularly given the change in the structures suggested by the Government.

The Government are breaking a fundamental principle, and it is extraordinary that they should do so, as there are very few areas indeed where they have removed the ability to go on to a second appeal and then a higher court. In fact, the only other area in which they have made such changes involves issues of national security. The affected bodies are the investigatory powers tribunal, the Special Immigration Appeals Tribunal, and the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission. I do not see how the issue of dealing with asylum seekers falls into that category of national security. Having already broken one principle, the Government should not break the principle of referral to a higher court of genuine asylum cases. The plans to take away the option of another tribunal looking at a case are of concern, let alone the issue of being able to go to the High Court. The limitation of having only a written review, which cannot be discussed unless technical issues are raised, narrows very unfairly indeed a tribunal's ability to review its own decision.

It is critical to establish the number of individuals who are going through the process at the moment. When we debated the Queen's Speech a couple of weeks ago, I tried to establish with the Home Secretary how many people were involved. There was general agreement that in the first stage of appeal 20 per cent. of cases were successful. In the second stage of appeal, I argued that 20 per cent. of people were successful, but the Home Secretary said that it was more likely to be 3 per cent. It is important to get that figure right. A Library briefing tries to clear the issue up:

"The Home Secretary has consistently referred to 3 per cent. of appeals to the IAT being successful but this is not apparent from the published statistics".

It appears that there is genuine confusion about the number of individuals who are currently successful on the second appeal. In written answers, the Home Office has not been able to tell me what proportion of immigration appeal tribunal appeals are initiated by the Home Office, and it cannot tell me what proportion of Home Office appeals are successful compared with appeals lodged by individuals. Without those statistics, it will be difficult for us to debate the issue in Committee, as it is critical to know how many individuals will be affected by the removal of the second tier of appeal. I hope that in the time available we can try to get more detailed figures.

Far too many cases are being dealt with incorrectly at the first stage of appeal. The 20 per cent. figure suggests that there are serious problems with the way in which the process is currently conducted. The situation seems to have got worse in the past five years, and in particular country cases, 39 per cent. of appeals by Somalis and 38 per cent. of appeals by Sudanese have been successful. Something is clearly going badly wrong in the system if that proportion of decisions is proven to have been incorrect.

Vera Baird (Labour, Redcar)

The situation is even worse than the hon. Gentleman sets out. The 22 per cent. average failure rate allows for the abusive applications that we have heard a good deal about. Many applications are made that should not be made and do not have much of a leg to stand on. They, of course, weight the average. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is prepared to take it from me, but there are some skilful asylum practitioners who have a success rate on appeal of 90 to 95 per cent. That is what we are really talking about.

Mark Oaten (Liberal Democrat, Winchester)

The hon. and learned Lady's reputation is such that I am prepared to take it from her. That demonstrates the need to establish the figures clearly before Committee stage; otherwise we will be discussing these issues in a vacuum.

All hon. Members agree that we must speed up the process by getting it right in the first place, not by cutting out tiers of natural justice. That means, as we have heard, better training and—we have not heard this—better use of interpreters during the early process. There could be difficulties over language and understanding what is being said at that stage. Better and faster information is needed on applicants' countries. The Home Secretary said that the Government had established the advisory panel to help produce that information.

I have concerns, first, that the information is still not as up to date as it could be about possibly fast-moving events in those countries, and secondly, that the information and all the data collected with it are not getting through to the individuals down on the desk who take the initial decisions. We need to make better information available faster. Finally, the proposals to do away with legal aid will make it extremely difficult to try to steer an individual's case through a changing legal process.

I turn to clause 7 and the controversial issue of the withdrawal of benefits. As I said, this is the issue that has hit the headlines. I know that the Minister is irritated by it, and that she will claim that no briefings by the Government to the press have taken place. Nevertheless, I am left with an impression—I do not know where it came from—that the issue of children and asylum was put in the press from somewhere. However that happened, it is extremely regrettable that the subject of children has been raised in that way, as part—

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

For the record, let me clarify, in addition to my earlier comments on the issue, that the Government publicised their intention to legislate in precisely this way on 24 October, when I announced the ILR—indefinite leave to remain—exercise involving 15,000 families. We also announced these measures. On 27 October, in our first consultation document, we included the details of what is in the Bill. The Bill says nothing at all about taking children into care. That is not the measure that we are debating.

Mark Oaten (Liberal Democrat, Winchester)

Whether the announcement was made three months ago or three weeks ago, it is incorrect and wrong. It is clearly the intention of the Home Office to remove the benefits of children and families. That will lead to hardship and will make it necessary for social services to make judgments on those children. On the "Today" programme yesterday morning, the Minister said that she did not expect any children to be taken into care because parents would comply if threatened in that way. Does she stand by the view that she does not envisage children being taken into care because people will comply? I believe that is the Minister's view—that children will not be taken into care. [Interruption.] I am happy to give way.

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

If the hon. Gentleman wants me to intervene to answer that question, rather than doing so from a sedentary position, I am happy to do so. I do not believe that the vast majority of parents who are asylum seekers, any more than the vast majority of any of us as parents or any other group of parents, will want to be separated from their children when they have an alternative remedy, which is to go home, with assistance. That is my position.

Mark Oaten (Liberal Democrat, Winchester)

My instincts as a parent are much the same as the Minister's, but it is the Opposition's role to ensure that we have good legislation, and that is not achieved by putting in place a threat that one hopes will work and that one therefore does not expect to have to use. If that logic applied, there would be fewer people in prison. We have laws, we hope that they will act as a deterrent, but human nature is such that people take different views from those that the Minister or I might take. The Government put forward a similar argument for section 55 of the 2002 Act. The logic then was that individuals would not make late claims because the possibility of losing their benefits would be a deterrent. In fact, the evidence is that people have been prepared to lose their benefits.

Jenny Tonge (Liberal Democrat, Richmond Park)

Does my hon. Friend agree that a really good parent who had escaped terrible persecution in their country of origin would be quite likely to prefer to leave their children in care than have to take them back to the country where they knew that they would seriously damaged?

Mark Oaten (Liberal Democrat, Winchester)

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. The Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee said:

"Faced with that choice, families might disappear and leave their children in care, thinking that may be the better option, because at least the children would get to stay in Britain and perhaps the adults would get to stay here, albeit working illegally".

Diane Abbott (Labour, Hackney North and Stoke Newington)

The Minister says that she believes that the majority of parents, faced with having their children taken into care, will comply with directions and return home. But how big will be the minority of parents who do not comply? Are we talking about a dozen, a couple of dozen, a hundred? Perhaps when she winds up, the Minister will tell the House how big the minority of children will be who will end up in care as a consequence of the Bill.

Mark Oaten (Liberal Democrat, Winchester)

I shall leave the Minister to respond to that well made point when she winds up.

Glenda Jackson (Labour, Hampstead and Highgate)

I applaud the Minister's natural sense of how she would behave in a situation, but would not a logical conclusion of that be that every child who arrives here as an unaccompanied minor seeking refuge is an orphan? I know that many of them are, but not all of them are.

Mark Oaten (Liberal Democrat, Winchester)

Again, that is an extremely good point, which is one of those issues that, when we have line-by-line analysis in Committee, we shall want to probe.

I should like an assurance from the Minister that, at the point at which the decision is taken to withdraw benefit, someone will ensure that a meeting takes place with the local social services department to explain the consequences of losing the benefit and what will happen next. If the benefit is simply withdrawn, and the other agencies are not informed, over a period of months some form of hardship could develop of which none of the other agencies would be aware. Whatever our views about the clause, we would not want such a situation to emerge. It is important that individual authorities should be notified.

For tackling the problem of removals, Liberal Democrats do not support the idea of an island; rather, there should be a greater use of existing powers. The situation has been allowed to go on for far too long, and the long delays make an eventual removal harder. I, and the Home Affairs Committee, have had examples of individuals who had reached their final stage, but five years on nothing had happened. By that point, individuals have become embedded in the community and it is difficult to remove them, so there needs to be much more effective use of existing powers. I accept the Home Secretary's argument that one barrier to removal is re-documentation, but I thought that clause 14 tackled that; so if that is effective, we do not need powers to withdraw benefit, nor the threat to take children into care.

Initially, I had some sympathy with the view that we should take a tough stance on individuals who have clearly destroyed their documents. It is important that those who give genuine asylum seekers a bad name should be highlighted in the way proposed. I understand the Government's desire to send a strong message to the organisers of gangs who encourage individuals to do that. However, these clauses will need very careful examination if we are to ensure that genuine cases are not criminalised. At the moment, the onus is on an individual who arrives without documentation to make the case for why they have not got it. That is the wrong way round. I believe in the assumption of innocence, which means that we should assume that they have a genuine reason for not having it.

Because a punishment will be attached to the non-possession of documents, the Crown Prosecution Service is being drawn into the process. That gives rise to the danger of a twin-track process whereby somebody who arrives here without documentation is subject both to the normal immigration process assessing their case and to a CPS process leading towards possible conviction. Since the two processes will presumably consider the same information, it would be unnecessarily complicated for an individual to have to steer their way through that twin-track process. Furthermore, the situation could arise whereby although it had been decided that they were genuine and could be allowed into this country, the CPS had to continue to pursue the issue of their not having documentation. It would be crazy to have the two processes running at the same time. Will the Minister clarify that?

Does the Minister accept that there are many genuine reasons why individuals might come into this country without documentation? In some countries, such as the Republic of the Congo and Somalia, it is difficult to obtain such documentation in the first place. Alternatively, if someone is fleeing a country because something has suddenly flared up, the last thing on their mind will be to go back home to try to get their passport—indeed, their house may have been burned down, so trying to get that documentation could prove very difficult.

Jeremy Corbyn (Labour, Islington North)

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Geneva convention requires signatory states not to discriminate against individuals because of their lack of documentation or the method by which they arrive?

Mark Oaten (Liberal Democrat, Winchester)

Indeed—the UK signed up to that convention in 1951, and it would be interesting to hear from the Minister how the Government's proposals fall within its legality.

Another of my concerns about arrival without documentation relates to the message that the Government want to send back to the gangmasters and traffickers. I can understand their desire to send that message, but I have not yet heard them explain how it will physically be achieved. Those individuals would need to have a fairly sophisticated understanding of UK asylum law in order to interpret what the Government are planning. Let us also remember that traffickers often place the people they want to come into this country in considerable danger or make threats against their families. That pressure may mean that it would be reasonable for them to argue that they had come into this country without documentation because they were told to destroy it by a gang leader.

We will need to examine these clauses carefully to ensure that nobody who comes here without documentation for genuine reasons ends up in prison. I would also say to the Home Secretary that adding another category of individuals to those who are imprisoned is, first, unacceptable given the number of people who are already in prison and, secondly, unrealistic in financial terms, because the costs involved in keeping somebody in prison would wipe out some of the potential savings. We are in danger of criminalising innocent individuals instead of finding a way of punishing the gangmasters and traffickers who have brought them into this country.

The Leader of the Opposition made a great cause of the issue of children and said that the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister should be ashamed. In this sense, he is right: the Government should be ashamed that they have put themselves in a position whereby they can take such strong criticism from a former right-wing Home Secretary. On the grounds of natural justice, on the way in which children are being used as a political tool, and on the principle of this country remaining a safe haven, Liberal Democrats will vote for the amendment and against the Bill.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

The Select Committee on Home Affairs reported yesterday, and I hope that the report will be of value to the House in the debate today and also in scrutiny in Committee. I should particularly like to thank the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration, who, as part of the asylum applications inquiry, has appeared before the Committee on some six occasions in the last calendar year. I wish all Ministers were so happy to give evidence. We shall be publishing a fuller report on the asylum process in the new year, but we picked out for the current report the elements that applied to the Bill.

Asylum is clearly a major issue for many of our constituents. There is real concern about abuse of the system and about the impact on many areas of the country of significant numbers of new people moving into settled communities. I think the case for being seen to take strong measures to tackle flaws in the asylum system is sound, and the recent figures suggest that the Government have had considerable success in doing that.

I want to start with two general comments. First, we need to ensure that the public are kept properly informed about the issues. The Minister was very helpful in trying to inform the Select Committee about the overall costs of supporting families in the asylum system, but it was very unfortunate that that was done in a way that enabled the cost to be represented as a much higher income than some of our constituents enjoy, when the reality is that, on a like-for-like basis, asylum-seeking families have a standard of living that is significantly below the income support levels available to British families. It does no good for any of us if the problem is overstated in the public mind—it creates a rod for all our backs if people get the wrong impression.

Secondly, we must recognise that failed asylum-seeking families are human beings. Of course, there are people who try the asylum system who are of outright criminal intent, and certainly there are many who wish to use the flaws in the system to remain here as long as possible, to exploit the ability to work illegally and so on. But the truth is that most are people who, although they have no valid claim to be refugees, have set out and risked a lot in the hope of a better life for themselves and their families. When the decision comes that the answer is no, they still deserve to be treated humanely by the system, and we need to bear that in mind in talking about these proposals.

The Select Committee considered the proposals but not the Bill; we did not have time to do that. I have to say that there was too little information available at the consultation stage for the Committee or many of the respondents to respond in detail to the proposals that are now being discussed. Particularly in relation to clause 10, which will clearly be controversial, it would have been better if the full shape of the Government's proposals had formed part of the consultation document. Difficulties will arise in another place, if not here, and it would have been better to work through the issues.

The Committee's overall assessment of the Bill is that its basic principles are right, but its implementation will be critical. There is clearly a significant problem with undocumented passengers, both in returning those who have no case for asylum to their countries and in tackling people traffickers. The Committee supported the general proposals to tackle those who deliberately destroy documents or fail to co-operate with redocumentation.

However, we must ensure that there is real protection for those who are genuinely fleeing persecution. Most people who enter the country, particularly on airlines, depend on people-traffickers; they get their information from people-traffickers. If people are to be aware of the consequences of destroying documents, we need to ensure that they understand the position fully. There must be improved information to passengers.

When the Minister came before the Committee, she told us that it was not the intention to use the provision against those who have no option but to travel on false documents because they come from countries where they cannot approach the embassy to ask for a visa, or even get a passport in the first place. We welcome that assurance, but I believe that it should be explicit and included in the Bill. That would provide a valuable protection.

Lynne Jones (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

Does my right hon. Friend agree with the Government that the reforms are urgent and that the Government were therefore justified in not carrying out due process in relation to consultation or making the appropriate details available to his Committee and other Members?

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

I believe that there is a powerful case for the Government introducing this legislation in this Session of Parliament. It is unfortunate, however, that Parliament—and, more particularly, the informed organisations outside—did not have more time to comment on the details. I think that there will be problems as the Bill goes through that could have been avoided if we had had a longer consultation period, and that is a shame.

To return to the problem of undocumented passengers, the Committee believes that not all the burden should be placed on the individual asylum seeker. We were given useful information about the use of covert surveillance and other methods of ensuring that the authorities knew which flights people had arrived on. There is scope for far more action of that kind at airports—for example, having immigration officials meeting selected flights, and so on. These cases depend heavily on the individual asylum seeker at the moment, and more could be done about the way in which the immigration and nationality directorate operates.

We have to be realistic about the appeal system. There is undoubtedly a significant incentive in the system at the moment, in that the lengthy and cumbersome appeals procedures with their multi-layered approach enable those supporting people coming to this country to tell them that they will be able to stay for a very long time before their cases are resolved. In terms of pull factors, that is a significant issue. The Select Committee took the view that, in principle, simplifying the appeals procedure so that the process did not last as long as many hon. Member know it does now was the right thing to do. Those who say that there is nothing wrong with the current system are simply turning a blind eye to the fact that that long-drawn-out procedure is a significant pull factor.

The Committee therefore supports, in principle, a simplified system with a single level of appeal. But—and it is a very big "but"—the problem currently lies in the quality of the initial decisions. To switch to a simplified system when so many of those decisions are wrong and when there is so much reliance on further stages of appeal will be very difficult. The statistics are not satisfactory, because the Home Office does not keep track of what happens to particular cohorts of asylum seekers, but one in five decisions are overturned at the initial decision stage, and it would appear that well over half the cases that reach the immigration appeal tribunal are overturned in one way or another—cases are either held up or referred back to an adjudicator.

The Government must recognise that there needs to be confidence in the system. I understand that rights for asylum seekers are not a popular concept, and that tough action is. However, tough measures must be founded on sound principles and procedures. The Committee therefore concluded that initial decision making must be improved, as demonstrated by a fall in successful appeals, before the system is simplified. We are saying not that this part of the Bill should be removed, but that there should be a clear commitment about when it will be brought into effect. I regret the fact that the Government rejected this recommendation from the Committee within hours, if not minutes, of our report being published on Monday. I hope that they will listen to the tone of today's debate and look again at the issue—given that it will take time to put in place a different system of tribunals anyway—and set themselves a target to improve their record on initial decision making before the changes are made.

Robert Marshall-Andrews (Labour, Medway)

I do not disagree with the principle of simplifying the adjudicator and immigration appeal tribunal process. That is where the principal delays are occurring. Many people will agree with everything that my right hon. Friend has just said, including those who criticise clause 10. He will get an extra two minutes as a result of this intervention, so will he briefly address the question of the proscription of any judicial overview of this process? That is absolutely unique in our system, and, as I have said, has not existed since the Star Chamber.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

The Select Committee did not consider that issue. We were unable to do so, as the Bill had not been published when we were preparing our report. My own view is that we must avoid a situation in which such a recourse becomes as regular a part of the procedure as the IAT or judicial review. I shall go no further than to say that it is worth exploring whether that protection can be provided but in a limited set of circumstances, so that the rights to which my hon. and learned Friend referred can be protected.

The restriction of family support is the most controversial element of the Bill. It is deeply unsatisfactory that we do not have any estimate of the number of asylum-seeking families currently in the system to whom this measure could potentially be applied. We are having a major debate with no idea whether we are talking about tens of thousands, thousands, hundreds or tens of families. It is a problem with the Home Office statistics rather than with the Minister, but none the less the Standing Committee must be given better information.

The Select Committee came to the view, which I support, that the principle is right. It is difficult to say to our constituents that a family who have no right to be here should expect taxpayers' support ad infinitum. To go against that principle would be to make a mockery of the asylum system for families—we might as well say that once they have set foot in this country they should be allowed to stay. We are not suggesting that clause 7 be removed from the Bill. However, the House must scrutinise carefully how the Government intend to implement it.

We accept that the aim is to achieve more voluntary returns, and we must examine how that will be done. Our Committee has said in the past that much needs to be done to improve the return and removal system—not necessarily with more snatch squads or dawn raids. We should ensure that the whole system is reformed, so that it is understood by all parties that a failed claim will lead to swift action to effect removal. I hope that the Committee will say more about that in the new year. My view is that everyone should be prepared before they receive the decision, so that it is perfectly clear that if it is yes, this is what will happen to them, and if it is no, that is what will happen to them. I worry that we are still starting the process when the appeal letter arrives, which is too late to involve people in informed decision making.

Karen Buck (Labour, Regent's Park and Kensington North)

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

No, I will not give way as I have very little time left.

In the Standing Committee, the Minister must set out exactly how the procedure will work. If the House can be persuaded that it will produce more voluntary returns, the Government should implement it. But we need to be sure that it will not lead to the worst possible outcome, which is children being taken into care and parents working illegally.

Hilton Dawson (Labour, Lancaster and Wyre)

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

No, I am running out of time, I am afraid.

It is critical that we know which countries the Government believe are safe to return people to, and which have a return and resettlement programme. This issue already arises with single people, but now that it will be linked to the removal of benefits from families, we need to know which countries those are, and that must be open to scrutiny. Our Committee considered whether that should be a statutory process, and decided against it for obvious reasons. The Government must in every case make it perfectly clear which countries they believe it is safe to return families to.

Those are the Committee's major conclusions, and I hope that they are helpful to the House in the weeks to come.

Robert Key (Conservative, Salisbury)

I agree with the analysis made by my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Malins). He is right not to reject the Bill wholesale, but to say that there is a great deal of important work to be done in Committee. I fear that this could be a law of unintended consequences, in one respect at least.

Last week, I was e-mailed by Mr. Michael Wills, the principal of the Salisbury School of English, who made representations about the impact of the Bill on language schools in this country. I spent Friday with the chemistry department of the university of Southampton and with my Royal Society pair, Dr. Andrew Hector. I heard from students and the vice-chancellor of the university that the Bill would have an unintended consequence for overseas students and universities up and down the country. They expressed great concern about clause 20, which also concerns me.

In clause 20, power is given to the Secretary of State to impose fees that exceed the administrative costs of determining an application for a visa. It also gives the Secretary of State power to reflect benefits that the Secretary of State thinks are likely to accrue to the person who makes the application. In other words, the Secretary of State can say, "If someone attends a language school in Salisbury, they are likely to have a higher earning potential when they get home, so I'll screw them".

According to the explanatory notes on the Bill, charges will be set at some stage by statutory instrument—although we do not know what the statutory instrument will say—and a further regulatory impact assessment will be completed. Today—indeed, for a week and more—it has been very difficult to get hold of the regulatory impact assessments. But it was always clear, since the press release issued by the Home Office on 27 November, that the Government intended the Bill to catch students. It states:

"More than 500,000 non-asylum applications are expected to be made this year from people who enter the UK to work, study or join family members."

I was relieved to hear the Home Secretary say that he would guarantee that the Home Office would consult people who would be affected in that way. What a pity that it did not do so before.

In annexe B to a letter dated 27 October and signed by the Minister of State, a list of consultees stretching to scores of organisations makes no reference to any university or to the language school sector, or even to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which has a role in sponsoring language schools. That is astonishing,

The Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee has said that his Committee's report—and a very good report it was—was written before the Bill was published. The Committee therefore had no opportunity to scrutinise this aspect of the Bill, and to consider who might be affected and what it might cost.

Paragraph 24 of the regulatory impact assessment states

"The over cost charging indicative figures are that charges might range between £20-£500 but would be introduced on a rolling programme over a number of years."

In the excellent House of Commons Library briefing for the Bill, the excellent researcher points out that in saying that, the assessment identifies the risks of introducing above-cost charging, and the entry fee is pitched at a level that encourages people to consider illegal entry, overstaying and working. In other words, the consequence of, say, a £500 surcharge on a student coming to a language school might cause him or her to try to enter the country illegally in order to avoid it. That is absurd.

I was approached by Pat Marchiori-White from the Southwold School of English, on behalf of the Recognised English Language Schools Association, who pointed out that at present a visa for a fortnight's course in the UK costs a student £95. If the student wants to extend the visa by a week, however, it will cost £155 to do so by post and £250 to go to London in person to do so.

Tim Boswell (Conservative, Daventry)

Exactly the same concern arose in relation to a recent order on visa fee extensions. Again, the Home Office had not consulted and the consequences were substantial. Is there not a real risk that the controversy over top-up fees will be supplemented by concern about top-up visa charges?

Robert Key (Conservative, Salisbury)

My hon. Friend is right.

I do not accuse the Minister or the Department of a conspiracy. I have been a Minister myself, and for me the cock-up theory wins every time. I do, however, think that the Minister should look at this carefully, because the impact could be enormous. Quite simply, the business will leave this country and go elsewhere.

The Recognised English Language Schools Association says:

"the importance of students to the UK economy is not just what they spend on course fees, accommodation and social programmes while they are here, but their value through the affinity they develop"

with our country. When they go home, says the association,

"they recommend British education to others, they are more likely to return here as tourists with their families, and they are more likely to look favourably on UK suppliers in trade deals etc."

After all, only a couple of years ago the mayor of Shanghai, who had been at a UK university, raised with the Prime Minister the whole question of the excellence of British education. In 1999 the Prime Minister launched an initiative to increase the number of foreign students attending UK universities, colleges and language schools. If the Secretary of State for Education had been standing at the Dispatch Box today, he would have trumpeted the success of the Prime Minister's initiative of 1999. Instead, the Home Secretary is doing his best to destroy it by hitting students with a succession of charges. He will drive those students, many of whom come from the Pacific rim economies, for example, to competitors in New Zealand, Canada and elsewhere. Were that to occur, it would of course have a big impact on my constituency.

The importance of English as a foreign language to the UK economy is the main factor in arguing that the industry should not be penalised by the Government in this way. It is also extremely important to universities, as the vice-chancellor of Southampton told me last Friday. The charge already made for foreign students to extend their visas in order to complete degree courses is punitive. Of the total number of international students on UK education and training programmes, each year some 600,000 participate in English language programmes, almost 250,000 participate in higher education programmes, and 250,000 participate in other programmes. The value is enormous. Courses involving English as a foreign language bring in £1.3 billion a year to the UK economy. Higher education courses bring in much more—£3.5 billion a year. Further education courses bring in £450 million, and private sector training is responsible for some £1.6 billion. That is nearly £7 billion a year in invisible exports from this country, as a result of such people coming here.

I am sure that Home Office Ministers never intended this outcome, and I hope that the consultation, along with the judgment, will be thorough and careful. I hope that the judgment will also be sensible and will neither discourage students from coming to this country, nor discourage science students in particular from attending British universities. I hope that drawing attention to this important problem in this way will help Ministers to make up their minds.

Neil Gerrard (Labour, Walthamstow)

This is the fifth time that I have taken part in a Second Reading debate on an asylum and immigration Bill since entering this House in 1992. It is also the fifth time that I have been told that such legislation was going to solve all the problems with the asylum and immigration system; and, of course, it is only a year since the last such Bill was debated.

When I first looked at the Bill before us, I could not see too much of a problem with clause 28—the short title—but I have some difficulty with more or less every other clause. I then realised that I was perhaps being a bit harsh. Some clauses deal with trafficking and the powers of the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner. With some minor changes, they will be welcome, but there is not much else in the Bill that I welcome. It has been presented to some extent as a tidying-up exercise that deals with some of the remaining problems in the system, but it is not just that. The effects of some clauses, particularly clause 10, are far more fundamental.

Of course, clause 7 does not introduce an entirely new power. Schedule 3 to the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 contains the power to allow support to be withdrawn from a family who do not co-operate with removal directions—so the Government already have that power, which can be applied to a family with a dependant. It was introduced in 2002 at a very late stage in the legislation's passage, and we had virtually no time to debate it. In fact, the total time spent debating some of the later clauses was very short indeed.

The proposal in clause 7, however, is of a different nature. Under the clause, we will use destitution, or the threat of destitution, to get families to leave the country voluntarily, rather than using the Home Office's existing powers to remove people whose asylum claims have been rejected. We all understand that removals must take place, and that removal is not a pleasant thing. Indeed, it can be a very unpleasant exercise, especially when families with children are involved. Time and again, I see failures arising from the complete dislocation in the Home Office system. There is no real connection between decision making and enforcement, as completely different groups of people are undertaking the two processes. As a result, huge time lags occur between a decision being taken and something being done to enforce it. It is not surprising when that happens, and it has nothing to do with appeals. Appeals can all be finished, but nothing happens, so it is not surprising that people then assume that they will be allowed to stay, and do not take the removal directions seriously.

I am not entirely comfortable with the Select Committee's recommendation that we should just wait for assurances on that matter. I referred earlier, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Coleman), to assurances that we were given last year on section 55 of the 2002 Act—another part of that Act that was debated for a grand total of, I think, 15 minutes in this Chamber—which cut off support to people who applied late. We were then told clearly that the section was intended to deal not with people who had been in the country for only a short time, but with people who had been in the country for weeks and months, and it would not be used to deal with people who had been here a matter of days. None the less, people have had support cut off when they have been in the country for a day or less. The first time that I have heard the period of 24 hours cited as a norm has been in today's debate, when the Home Secretary cited it at the beginning, and then said that he would generously extend it to three days. That is still completely different from what we were told when the provision was introduced. When one has had such assurances in the past, one becomes a little wary of accepting them over the operation of new legislation.

Diane Abbott (Labour, Hackney North and Stoke Newington)

May I take my hon. Friend even further back in time, to the introduction of the voucher system and totally cashless support? When some of us complained that that would only drive people further into destitution, we were told that we were wrong, and that that system would be an engine and a lever to discourage abuse of the asylum system. What happened? People were forced further into destitution. A punitive approach to asylum control demonstrably does not work.

Neil Gerrard (Labour, Walthamstow)

That argument has been put many times in this Chamber over the past few years, and it has been proved right. Punitive approaches simply do not work.

I have one last comment on clause 7, which is on the practical implications of how it will operate. Some of us have seen a flow chart produced to illustrate how the process will run through stages involving up to four different letters from the Home Office to the family, depending on whether a family attends an interview, fails to attend without reasonable excuse and so on, through to either their leaving the country or support ending. When I looked at it, I found that there were chunks missing. I could not find any box that said "Home Office sends letter to wrong address because it doesn't have a record of a person's change of address", or "Home Office sends letter cutting off support to someone else of the same name", or "Home Office has lost the reply from the person who sent it". Believe me, all those things will happen. That is precisely what happens time and again now. I can tell hon. Members that distressed families will turn up in our surgeries time and again because of the operation of the system, and we will have the nasty job of telling them what is going to happen to them.

Clause 7 is bad, but it is not the worst part of the Bill. The most serious part of the Bill, by some way, is clause 10, which seems to be based partly on the view that the use of appeals is just deliberate delay, and that the judicial system is not there to be used. We put the Human Rights Act 1998 in place, but we complain when someone uses it.

As has been pointed out, clause 10 removes all judicial oversight of decisions. That is not just for asylum cases but for many immigration cases as well, which at the moment can go through that process. It will be impossible to challenge decisions on a point of law. The only person who will be able to decide whether a point of law is involved will be the president of the new tribunal. That is justified on the basis that people waste time and that the number of successful appeals is tiny—3 per cent. has been cited. I have looked at the statistics, and I think that I know where the 3 per cent. comes from, although I am not absolutely sure. The only place that I can find anything that looks like 3 per cent. is where the number of decisions made by the immigration appeal tribunal on leave to appeal is compared with the number of appeals allowed. That works out at about 3 per cent., but it is a completely spurious statistic.

Let us examine what happens on the basis of the latest figures. Nearly 23,000 people applied for leave to go to the IAT. We heard that there were 6,900 appeals. The tribunal knows how to filter out cases that do not have much merit. It allowed 620 appeals—only 11 per cent.—but sent another 48 per cent. back to the adjudicators, so almost 60 per cent. of cases were recognised as worth looking at. That is not 60 per cent. of initial decisions, but 60 per cent. of cases that go before the IAT.

The same applies to judicial review. Many applications are made, but the courts reject most of them and do not allow them to go much further. In 2002, there were 2,980 decisions on applications, of which only 260 were granted leave. The court gets rid of cases pretty smartly when it does not believe that there is much merit. Of those that were determined, however, 30 per cent. of people seeking judicial review won their case.

Those are not insignificant figures, but are we playing a numbers game? I am not defending the IAT as such, or saying that I have a fundamental objection to a simplified appeals system with one tier of appeal, provided that people can still apply to the appellate courts or the higher courts, if necessary. The decision must not be made solely by the president of a tribunal. The Select Committee is wrong in saying that we should wait until we have an improved number of decisions, because it is playing the numbers game rather than examining the principles involved.

The purpose of the higher courts such as the House of Lords is to deal not with large numbers of cases, but with important cases. They should set case law, but no case law will be established under the new system. Case law, when established, affects many people, so it is not the numbers that matter, but the principle of how a system operates. If the principle under discussion applies here, where else will it apply? We could find out how many civil or criminal cases go to the highest court in the House of Lords and express that as a percentage of all appeals. It would be tiny, so let us get rid of that. That would be just as logical as what is proposed.

Russell Brown (Labour, Dumfries)

My hon. Friend is right that we must have a decent appeals system, but I ask him to examine it from the other side as well. Individuals and families going through an appeals system, usually represented by legal aid, are dragged through a process in the belief that there is justice and a positive answer at the end. I mention the Ay family, who were dragged through the system in Scotland, when, quite honestly, the decisions taken at an early stage were the right decisions, but someone—their legal representatives—saw fit to drag them through a system with no decent outcome at the end. Some people use the appeals system for all the wrong reasons.

Neil Gerrard (Labour, Walthamstow)

I am aware of cases where lawyers have given extremely poor advice about the chances of winning on appeal and dragged people through the system without helping them in the slightest, but the higher courts are not unskilled at quite quickly filtering out the cases with no merit at all. As I said earlier, I do not object to a basic one-tier system, provided that there is judicial oversight that allows cases that really matter to be looked at by the appellate courts—up to the House of Lords, if necessary.

David Heath (Liberal Democrat, Somerton and Frome)

rose—

Neil Gerrard (Labour, Walthamstow)

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I must finish.

The Bill goes further than any that I have ever seen in removing judicial oversight of the asylum system. I cannot help wondering what we would have said if this Bill had been introduced by a Tory Government. I recall what was said by the then hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) when the Tories were removing certain rights to appeal in 1992:

"It is a novel, bizarre and misguided principle of the legal system that if the exercise of legal rights is causing administrative inconvenience, the solution is to remove the right."—[Official Report, 2 November 1992; Vol. 213, c. 43.]

Now that he is Prime Minister, he should remember those words.

Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru, Meirionnydd Nant Conwy)

First, let me say that Plaid Cymru and Scottish National party Members are quite happy to vote for the reasoned amendment.

I believe that the Bill is insidious. Clause 2 deals with the criminal offence of not having travel documents without reasonable excuse. It seems to me that few asylum seekers have their own passport—indeed, possession of one's own passport is sometimes taken by immigration officers to mean that the holder is not a genuine refugee, since the authorities of a persecuting country are unlikely to issue passports that will enable people to escape. In addition, agents bringing asylum seekers to the United Kingdom generally provide them with false travel documents, which they need to board the aircraft, ferry or train, and tell their charges to destroy or dispose of them.

Article 31 of the convention on refugees recognises the difficulties that genuine refugees are likely to face in attempting to reach a safe country. It prohibits the prosecution of asylum seekers who enter the country illegally provided that they claim asylum promptly and "show good cause" for their illegal entry. In 1999, the High Court denounced the immigration police and prosecuting authorities for their failure to implement that provision. In direct contravention of article 31, hundreds of asylum seekers who had entered the UK on false documents were being sentenced to prison terms of up to six or nine months. In response to the High Court criticism, the Government enacted legislation that provided a defence to the charge of possession of false documents. The Law Society has expressed the view that clause 2 appears to contravene article 31.

Clause 14 makes it a criminal offence to fail, without reasonable excuse, to comply with a broad range of demands that the Secretary of State might make in order to obtain documentation for a person's removal, including providing fingerprints or other biometric data, making an application to the embassy of the person's country, attending interviews and answering questions, and filling in forms "accurately and completely". It is hard to think of any other field in which failure to tick a box on a form or to provide fingerprints might result in imprisonment. The maximum sentence for the offence under the clause is two years' imprisonment.

The provisions relating to withdrawal of support have attracted the most media and public attention. They appear to me to be inhumane in the extreme. As the Home Office itself has acknowledged, the difficulty is that many countries of origin are simply not safe enough to send failed asylum seekers back to. Such countries, including Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone and Iraq, are the subjects of Home Office policy scrutiny. Nationals of other countries simply find themselves in limbo, unable to work or obtain support, yet never told to report for removal. It is feared that denial of support will result in whole families going underground to prevent children from being taken into care, leading to a swelling underclass of people working as sweated labour in inhuman conditions for virtually nothing, unable to obtain health care or send their children to school on pain of discovery and separation.

I am told that Government lawyers have warned the Home Secretary that the proposal to withdraw all state benefits from rejected asylum seekers will trigger human rights challenges in the courts. I am also advised that the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, has protested to the Home Secretary about that proposal and about the provisions restricting access to the High Court to challenge decisions through judicial review. The Prime Minister and the Home Secretary are expected to urge the public to consider backing even more far-reaching proposals, including much greater use of detention of asylum seekers and, in effect, rewriting the 1951 Geneva convention on refugees. No doubt they will be told some things at big conversation events that focus on this subject.

Britain's directors of social services have also joined the mounting opposition to the package. They have said that the threat to take children of failed asylum seekers into care is something that

"belongs to an earlier century."

Andrew Cozens, president of the Association of Directors of Social Services, has said that the move runs contrary to the objectives of the Children Act 1989. That is obvious.

The detailed explanatory notes accompanying the Bill make it clear that Whitehall will foot the extra costs involved in taking children into care, using savings made when rejected families leave Britain in the face of that threat. They also state that that could amount to inhuman and degrading treatment and a breach of the right to respect for private and family life under the European convention. However, I understand that lawyers have also advised the Home Secretary that if those people leave, their legal challenge on that basis will end as a result.

I cannot understand how that one-tier appeal system will improve matters. Before the Bill was published, it was not made clear that rights of appeal and review from the tribunal to the High Court, and from the Court of Appeal to the House of Lords, were also to be abolished. The "ouster" clause proclaims that no court may entertain proceedings questioning the tribunal's decision, even if there is a breach of natural justice, an irregularity or error of law, or any other problem. It is astonishing that we should be considering bringing in such an insidious Bill as this.

David Heath (Liberal Democrat, Somerton and Frome)

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that an especially repugnant factor is that a Ministry of the Executive should be asking Parliament to accept that no decision that it takes should be subject to judicial overview? Does not that underline my argument that we need a Ministry of justice that is entirely separate from the Home Office's executive functions?

Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru, Meirionnydd Nant Conwy)

I agree entirely. In no field other than immigration is recourse to the higher courts prevented. Such prevention is, of course, in breach of article 13 of the European convention on human rights. The Court of Appeal has frequently spoken about the high constitutional importance of access to the courts. Senior judges are likely to oppose the attempt to deprive them of their supervisory role, especially in asylum cases, where the consequence of getting it wrong can be fatal. The Home Office and the immigration appeal tribunal have frequently got it wrong in the past.

The deprivation of access to the higher courts has to be seen in the context of the proposals to remove legal aid from asylum claimants, thereby reducing their access to proper advice. On the one hand, asylum seekers are told that they will be given one chance to persuade a legal body of the merits of their claim. However, on the other hand, they are to be deprived of the legal help required to do that. In addition, most asylum seekers do not speak English and are unfamiliar with the procedure. Many are suffering from the physical and psychological effects of their experiences, and are dispersed to parts of the country where legal expertise is sparse and where they face hostility and marginalisation. Others receive no support at all and are supposed to prepare and present their claims while they are homeless and have no means of support.

Jeremy Corbyn (Labour, Islington North)

I think that the hon. Gentleman is on to an extremely important point. Does he recall that when the Home Secretary opened the debate he said that there are 30,000 asylum seekers in London who receive benefit but are not given accommodation? That shows that people come to London because they see it as a place of safety, where there is a degree of community network and public charitable support for them that is denied in other parts of the country?

Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru, Meirionnydd Nant Conwy)

That is absolutely right. It is understandable that that community support would exist in London, as there are many people in similar situations. Problems are always worse—or at least as bad—in rural areas. We do not talk about rural areas often, but they face problems too. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that that is true even of parts of rural Wales.

It will be hard to monitor the denial of access to the higher courts, but I cannot accept that we should legislate for a second-class justice system. One significant cause of delay and inefficiency in the asylum system is flawed decision making. The Home Secretary has admitted that that needs to be improved. That is borne out by the large number of successful appeals.

Plans to remove judicial scrutiny are therefore worrying, and I shall refer briefly to the Law Society's position. It says:

"The Law Society believes that a second tier appeal is currently essential in view of the poor quality of Home Office decision-making at the initial stage, which means that in many cases adjudicators are, in effect, the first instance decision-making body. If the Government proceeds with the removal of the IAT second tier appeal it is absolutely essential that improvements to Home Office initial decision-making are made concurrently."

In a letter to The Times last week, Roger Smith, the director of Justice, similarly said:

"The Council on Tribunals complained . . . in April that 'better-quality decision-making at first instance' and 'speedier and better preparation of appeal papers by the Home Office' were among the conditions required to ensure an appeal process of adequate quality."

He went on to say:

"The removal of judicial oversight provides no incentive to raise or maintain standards."

Those quotes come from people who know what they are talking about.

The Refugee Council is worried about the package in the Bill and says that several of its provisions breach article 31 of the convention on refugees. It says:

"The Government proposes to remove support from families in a position to leave the UK. Support under Section 20 of the Children Act 1989 will not be available to asylum seeking families. If necessary, children will be separated from their families"—

as we know. Most seriously, the implication that children could be taken from their parents and placed in care flies against the aim of the Children Act, under which the well-being of a child is, and must be, paramount. The Government propose to reject that principle for young children, who will find themselves in an awful legal limbo, although the situation is nothing to do with them. Experience has shown that the removal of support under section 55 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 has increased destitution and put refugee communities under further pressure, and the provision has resulted in 800 High Court injunctions. The withdrawal of section 20 of the Children Act will undermine the principles of that Act.

The Bill is insidious. If there is a blockage in the asylum system, the problem should be tackled by improving the quality of decision making. We do not need the Bill. Its proposals might look good in the Daily Mail, but it is awful. I shall be proud to vote for the reasoned amendment.

Diane Abbott (Labour, Hackney North and Stoke Newington)

I am grateful for the opportunity to say a few words about the Bill. If one comments adversely about the themes and underlying principles of the Government's policy on immigration and asylum, one is often told that that is because one does not understand the problem and how people feel about it, or that one is trying to deny that a problem exists. My constituency probably has more asylum seekers, immigrants and economic migrants than the constituencies of most hon. Members—apart from half a dozen of my hon. Friends—so I am only too aware of the challenges posed by asylum.

My constituency has its fair share of casual bigotry about asylum seekers. I hear all the remarks that my hon. Friends hear, such as, "If I were an asylum seeker, I would get rehoused," or, "These asylum seekers come over here and get everything." I hear bigotry from British constituents who are white and from British constituents who are black. If I hear comments that have substance in fact, I deal with the facts, but if the comments are just casual bigotry, I name them as such. However, I do not come to the House to demand ever more draconian measures. I tell my hon. Friends that they will of course hear casual bigotry because people want to scapegoat asylum seekers for their many dissatisfactions, but Labour Members should be able to do better than colluding with that by coming back to the House to demand ever more draconian enforcement and legislation.

I want to speak about three things: removals, clause 7 and clause 10. There is no doubt that the level of removals is low, but I point out to Conservative Members that the level was even lower under their Government. But what does that prove? Does it prove that successive Conservative Home Secretaries, such as the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), were greater bleeding heart liberals than our own Home Secretary? No, not a bit of it. What it proves is that removals are extremely contentious and that they are difficult to achieve.

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

What it proves is that under the last Conservative Government there were fewer failed asylum applications because there were fewer asylum seekers altogether. The number in the last year of the previous Conservative Government was only a third of the number last year, under the Labour Government.

Diane Abbott (Labour, Hackney North and Stoke Newington)

It is easy to demand more removals, but tricky to achieve them, not least because when it comes to forced removals one of the organisations that is most reluctant to get involved is the police force. Of course, we must have a more effective system of removals, but we should not fool ourselves that the mass removal of people who may have been settled in this country for a long time is either practical or desirable. We would be dealing with a few small areas where there are quite large groups of people. There would be scenes on our televisions and written about in our newspapers that the British people would not tolerate, whatever the Daily Mail and the Daily Express ran in their leader columns. Let us not be glib about removals. If it were so easy to remove people, the number of removals under the Tories would have been much higher.

On the issues relating to children under clause 7, I have heard the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration say, very reasonably, that reasonable, sensible parents, faced with the prospect that their children would be taken into care, would agree to go back whence they fled. They would do the reasonable and sensible thing, take the plane ticket and go back. She clearly has not done what some of my hon. Friends have been doing for 17 years: she has not sat across a table from people whose asylum or immigration case was going nowhere and told them what they have already heard half a dozen times from lawyers, advisers or social workers. She has not had to try to talk to such people only to see complete disbelief and terror in their eyes.

Reasonable people, people in the Minister's position, take reasonable decisions. Desperate people—those with whom I and some of my colleagues deal week in and week out—take unreasonable and irrational decisions. Tragically, some parents faced with that choice will take the ticket and go home, but many others will find themselves forced underground, or even more vulnerable and marginalised than they were before.

I do not care if most parents take reasonable decisions. If some parents are so frightened of going home to face torture, political persecution and, yes, economic chaos and destitution—something that we in this place cannot really get our heads round—that they are prepared to see their children go into care, that is a situation that no decent Government should bring about. The use of even one child as an instrument to enforce the removal of its parents is one child too many. As a Government, we cannot use the threat of destitution or losing a child as an instrument of asylum policy. There must be better methods than that.

One method would be to increase the efficiency of the system. Year after year, I have said in the Chamber that the biggest incentives for making phoney asylum claims and for working the system are the interminable delays—the dislocation between enforcement and removal. Why do not we get the system working properly? Why do not we cut out the delays caused by the Home Office itself? Why do not we ensure that we have an efficient system before we turn to people and say, "Guess what? We're going to use your child as a lever to remove you from this country."

We have heard what the British Association of Social Workers said. Even the Select Committee on Home Affairs said that we should defer the clause until we have some statistics on its likely effects. I cannot believe that the clause will not be challengeable under the Race Relations Act 1976. It will inevitably bear most heavily on children and families with an ethnic minority background. I put it to Ministers before it is too late—just as we tried to appeal to them on the issue of vouchers—that they should think again about a thoughtless and punitive piece of policy which I do not believe will bear scrutiny, and will hold them up to an extremely harsh light. Like so much that has been done under asylum and immigration policy over the past seven years, clause 7 wholly underestimates the desperation of the people with whom we are dealing.

I move on to clause 10. It is with a sense of timidity that I tread into legal matters—so many distinguished barristers are waiting to speak on these matters. The point at issue is the cutting off of a group of people who are currently resident in these islands. The clause will cut them off from proper review and appeal processes. I do not object to one tier of appeal, so long as there is some possibility that where necessary and where appropriate, they can take their case to a higher court.

I shall quote Lord Denning—I cannot do the accent—ex parte Gilmore. In 1957 he said:

"If tribunals were to be at liberty to exceed their jurisdiction without any check by the court, the rule of law would be at an end."

I did not say that. It was not said by a member of an extreme left-wing group; as I said, it was Lord Denning. The issue that clause 10 raises goes wider than the issue of asylum—it goes to the heart of the way in which we organise our legal system. If we can get away with removing proper appeals and proper legal redress from asylum seekers, what other group that is not popular with the Daily Mail will we move on tomorrow and the day after? We cannot offer one standard of legal redress to one part of our population and another standard of legal redress to the rest of the population because that particular part of it, this morning, is getting negative leaders in Associated Press newspapers.

We could greatly improve the pure administration of immigration and asylum policy. I support Ministers who have recently begun to talk about the need for a managed system of economic migration. Sadly, this Bill, which is the fifth on asylum and immigration that I have spoken on since 1997, is yet another Bill that is more concerned with appeasing leader writers at the Daily Mail and the Daily Express than with building a coherent, a fair and a non-racist system of asylum.

Tony Baldry (Conservative, Banbury)

There is no confidence in the Government's asylum policy. Organisations concerned with the welfare of asylum seekers do not have confidence in the Government's policy. Professional organisations, such as the Law Society and the British Medical Association, do not have confidence in the Government's policy. People generally do not have confidence in it. That is in no small part because the Government appear not to know from one day to the next what their asylum policy is.

I shall take one simple and straightforward example. Clause 7 adds a new paragraph to schedule 3 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. Incidentally, we appear to have annual asylum Bills. Doubtless the Queen's Speech in 2004 will contain another such Bill.

The purpose of clause 7 is to make it clear that failed asylum seekers with families will cease to be eligible for public support. The Government are clearly having considerable difficulty in working out what the new clause means. The Bill, in whatever form, is clearly bad news. The General Council of the Bar has said that

"if passed into law, not only will . . . this Bill severely curtail the rights of asylum seekers and immigrants, but it will set a very dangerous precedent, and send a most unfortunate message around the world."

The United Nations has said that

"the UK Government has been the subject of severe criticism from the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Joint Committee on Human Rights about its treatment of children. It will be impossible to ensure that legislation operates within the framework of the Children Act 1989."

Before the Bill was published, Home Office officials briefed journalists heavily, saying that one of the consequences of the provision was that children of failed asylum seekers could and would be taken into local authority care. Consider the Prime Minister's comments, as reported by the Press Association on Thursday 4 December:

"If someone makes an asylum claim and their claim fails, and they exhaust all their appeals, and we say to them 'we will pay your fare back to your country of origin'; if they refuse we are saying we are going to withdraw social security benefits from those people. In those circumstances, asylum seekers' children are being treated no different than anybody else's".

The Prime Minister could not have made the position clearer. He had obviously been briefed by Home Office Ministers on the same basis as the media. There was a public outcry, and almost immediately Ministers changed their tune. The Home Secretary went on the BBC programme "Any Questions?" the next day to deny any such suggestions. On the Thursday, the Prime Minister said one thing, but on the Friday the Home Secretary said something completely different. In the transcript of the exchange between the Home Secretary and Jonathan Dimbleby, the Home Secretary says:

"It would be a choice of the parents not of us."

Mr. Dimbleby asks:

"But if they aren't encouraged then presumably if the children, in your view, face destitution then there will be a requirement on the appropriate officials to go into people's houses where the parents are with their children and forcibly remove the children from the parents.

The Home Secretary replies:

"The encouragement is not about taking their children away, the encouragement is to say we cannot have a system where you fail but we carry on paying you and housing you because if we do who the hell will leave voluntarily, it means with each and every family—each and every family have got to be pulled out."

That is markedly different in tone from the Prime Minister's comments. The Home Secretary's comments also differ from those of his colleague, the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration. I tabled a straightforward parliamentary question in which I asked the Secretary of State

"how many children of asylum seekers he estimates will be taken into local authority care each year following the Government's recent announcement."

The Minister replied on 8 December:

"It is not the Government's intention that any children will be taken into care as a result of this proposal."—[Official Report, 8 December 2003; Vol. 415, c. 235W.]

That answer is unambiguous—no children of asylum seekers should be taken into care as a consequence of the Bill.

Explanatory notes to the Bill were published on 27 November, the same day as the Bill itself, but before the Minister answered my parliamentary question. The notes clearly refer to the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants etc.) Bill, and paragraph 25 states:

"Failed asylum seekers with dependent children receive asylum support until such time as they leave the United Kingdom or fail to comply with a removal direction . . . if the Secretary of State certifies that, in his opinion, such a person has failed without reasonable excuse to take reasonable steps to leave the United Kingdom voluntarily or place himself in a position in which he is able to leave the United Kingdom voluntarily . . . then asylum support for the family will cease. The family is also rendered ineligible for various other types of support or assistance, although the children in the family may still be supported by, for example, the local authority."

In other words, failed asylum seekers will be told to leave the country, and if they do not their children will be taken into care. What is in the Bill is therefore completely different from what Ministers are telling Members of Parliament, non-governmental organisations and the public generally.

If one had any doubts about the meaning and import of that explanatory note, the interpretation is confirmed by paragraph 121:

"A possible consequence of creating a . . . class of person (failed asylum seeker family) who will cease to be eligible for support . . . is that some children might have to be accommodated by local authorities. The costs to local authorities of children being accommodated under these circumstances will be met by Central Government. The savings made by this measure should cover any such costs."

On 8 December, the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration told me that no children would be taken into care, yet the explanatory notes that the Government have provided make it clear that they do expect children to be taken into care. How can there be any confidence in a Government policy on which the media is briefed one day, confirmed by the Prime Minister the next, denied by the Home Secretary just one day later, denied by a Minister of State in an answer to a written parliamentary question a few days later, yet confirmed in black and white in the explanatory notes to the Bill that the Government are introducing? How can there be any confidence in a Government who appear not to know—or, if they do know, appear unwilling to admit—the Bill's purposes and intentions?

The matter is relevant and important to the residents of north Oxfordshire. The House will know that the Government intend to build an accommodation centre for up to 750 asylum seekers on the outskirts of Bicester. The origins of the policy are the Government's knee-jerk "we have to be seen to be doing something about it" mode of response. For a while, they were deeply embarrassed by nightly television reports of asylum seekers coming through the channel tunnel from the Sangatte refugee camp. Something had to be done. They wanted an initiative—any initiative—to give the impression that they had a grip on the problem.

The Home Secretary proposed accommodation centres for asylum seekers where they would be processed and dealt with on one site. The only difficulty was that he had used up all his good will with the Treasury, which was understandably exasperated by the ever-spiralling cost of the Government's asylum policy. The Treasury told the Home Secretary that he could go ahead with his trial for accommodation centres, but the funds would be limited—so limited that the only place they could be built was on land already owned by the Government—and as a consequence, they would have to be big accommodation centres. Hence the proposal for 750 asylum seekers to be accommodated on former Ministry of Defence land at Bicester.

That is an utterly friendless policy. There is not a single organisation that supports the proposal. Originally, the Government intended to use their emergency powers to push through the proposal, without even the most cursory scrutiny by the planning system. Having appreciated that that course of action might result in judicial review, the Government eventually submitted the proposal for planning approval, which in due course led to a public planning inquiry.

Again, people thought that they knew what Ministers were saying. On 5 November 2002, the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration said at the Dispatch Box:

"The Government have made it clear that we will abide by the planning process, and by the outcome of any public inquiry. That is both fair and democratic".—[Official Report, 5 November 2002; Vol. 392, c. 152.]

I was a planning Minister for four years, and believe that almost everyone would consider the outcome of a planning inquiry to be the decisions and recommendations of the planning inspector—almost everyone except the Deputy Prime Minister. Having considered thousands of pages of written evidence, including that of Home Office lawyers, and having heard 48 witnesses in person over a period of two weeks between December 2002 and March this year, the planning inspector concluded that the

"first Secretary of State should not give approval for proposed development".

The outcome of the planning inquiry was clear and unambiguous. The planning inspector adjudged that the centre should not be built. He concluded that such an accommodation centre contradicted the Government's own planning guidance and would put an additional burden on already overstretched local public services, and that such a location for an accommodation centre raised safety concerns for local residents and asylum seekers alike. The planning inspector comprehensively rejected the Government's proposals.

The Deputy Prime Minister ignored the planning inspector's conclusions and put two fingers up to the inquiry. He behaved as though the public inquiry had never taken place, and decreed that as the Government wanted the accommodation centre, and notwithstanding the planning inspector's recommendations, the accommodation centre for asylum seekers would go ahead. Ministers have decided to try to press on with proposals to build the centre, notwithstanding the concerns of local people, the objections of Cherwell district council, the conclusions of the planning inquiry, and the fact that not a single organisation concerned with the welfare of refugees supports the Government's plans.

That is neither fair nor democratic. The proposal is fundamentally flawed on policy and planning grounds and would probably cost taxpayers millions of pounds if it went ahead. It is almost certainly doomed to failure. Is it any wonder that there is no confidence in the Government's asylum policy? The decision is subject to possible judicial review so, under the rules of the House, I shall say no more about it.

Under the Government's proposal for the accommodation centre at Bicester, 750 people will be processed every six months—that is, 1,500 people a year. Many of those will be single young men, but a not inconsiderable number will be families with children. At present, on average, eight out of every 10 asylum applications fail. There is no reason to believe that the failure rate at Bicester will be any different, which will mean that a not inconsiderable number of families with children will be refused asylum. In the words of the explanatory notes, children will have to be

"supported by . . . the local authority"—

taken into care.

Children taken into care are potentially the responsibility of the local authority until they reach the age of 18. There could be a substantial and accumulating number of children, which will be a substantial new responsibility and burden for Oxfordshire county council. The children taken into care will have to be educated; they will require schooling. I understand from the Department of Health's figures that that would cost at least £16,900 per child, and for some special needs children Oxfordshire is paying as much as £91,624 per child in care.

When Ministers, Cabinet Ministers, the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister cannot agree from day to day on the basics of their asylum policy, it is not surprising that there is no confidence in their having thought through the ramifications or the details of the consequences of their policies. When Ministers ignore the totality of evidence presented at a planning inquiry as if it had never happened, it is not surprising that there is little confidence that they are approaching the issues in a sensible, proportionate and balanced way.

The Bill, which meanders from forgery to fingerprints to electronic monitoring, will doubtless find its way on to the statute book, but undoubtedly it will not reassure north Oxfordshire residents that the Government have a grip on asylum policy; indeed, quite the contrary. The Government feel—

Michael Lord (Deputy Speaker, Central Suffolk and North Ipswich)

Order. The hon. Gentleman has had his time.

Vera Baird (Labour, Redcar)

I profoundly disagree with the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Malins), who led, though with some hesitancy, for the Opposition, that the asylum system is in real difficulties. I am very impressed by the progress that has been made by the Home Office with the asylum system in recent months in speeding it up. In short, I would describe the Home Secretary and the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration as having brought it back from the brink. They have started to turn it into a legitimately effective system—speeding it up, cutting the backlogs, halving the applications. I accept, too, that there is more to do and that further steps have to be taken to achieve greater efficiency.

Subject to the Standing Committee's deliberations and to a good deal of anxiety, and I hope a good deal of Government flexibility, I could even be persuaded that further strong measures to persuade people to be removed are necessary, but if there are to be tougher removal measures, it is critical that we are sure that we will remove the right people, and that requires a proper judicial process with a proper appellate system.

At present, asylum seekers apply to the Home Office and the appeals, as we know, go to Home Office adjudicators, who allow about 22 per cent. of those appeals. But what is clear, and I think is admitted by those on the Government Front Bench, is that the quality of those initial decisions is very poor. What is also clear, and I am very ready to accept, is that many appeals beyond that are put forward when they have little hope of success.

As I said in an intervention, there are excellent practitioners and there are very poor ones. Very good asylum practitioners bringing proper appeals have success rates of 90 per cent. That is how poor the calibre of initial decision taking is, and how unrepresentative even that quite high figure of a 20 per cent. success rate is.

It is clear that the quality of decision making at the beginning should be improved, but it is equally clear that we must root out those charlatan advisers who push families through an appellate process inappropriately, doing them no harm and everybody else a good deal of damage. However, the Legal Services Commission is beginning to know who they are, it is beginning to weed them out, and it can do more. That is the job that should be being done now. The problem is the slack in the system, which can be weeded out in the ways that I have mentioned.

At present, appeals from adjudicators go to a High Court judge chairing a panel, and that is the tier that would be abolished. I can say, without any fear of contradiction, that that is by far the best tier that exists in the asylum system. First, it is presided over by a High Court judge; adjudicators are not that—I will say what they are in a minute. It is speedy, efficient, self-regulating, it has recently speeded up its processes and it polices its own considerations, so it grants leave for itself to review cases only if there is merit in them. That is proper judicial supervision.

It is so odd to be trying to abolish that tier, because, as has already been said, it is terrifically good at weeding out exactly the appeals that should not go any further—those that are put in by some of the less good advisers. It weeded out nearly 23,000 applications for leave, and since the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 removed any power to appeal by judicial review against the decision not to allow an appeal, that is really the end for a vast number of appeals. That is an important role and that too will be abolished if that tier of appeals is abolished. Moreover, it works—this is important—on a proper legal merits basis. It has been said, but it bears repeating, that when it accepts that appeals have been properly brought, the panel allows 60 per cent. of them—that is to say, 60 per cent. of adjudicators' decisions that are properly appealed are defective.

The intention is to scrap all appeals to that tribunal, which is crazy. The process will simply stop at the adjudicators. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary called them judges, but that is not right. Their numbers have been rapidly increased through recruitment to cope with the huge burden of work. The only qualification that is required is to be a solicitor or a barrister of seven years' standing—they do not even need to have dealt with an immigration or asylum case before. They are not highly trained, and they are under huge time pressure—it is common for them to deal with three cases a day. They tell us that they have to work at breakneck speed, to deal with badly reasoned Home Office decisions, to conduct a fresh inquiry from the start, to look at the background country conditions again from the beginning, and to consider all the relevant legal principles. They are required to consider natural justice in highly complex situations, and to look at a mass of national laws and rules and a mass of international law principles from a variety of conventions. They often have to do that without well qualified representatives before them, and sometimes there are no representatives.

Humfrey Malins (Conservative, Woking)

Are adjudicators less qualified than district judges?

Vera Baird (Labour, Redcar)

They do not have to be qualified in the area of work that they are intended to deal with. It would be rare to get such a vast increase in recruitment of district judges. I could tell the hon. Gentleman some horror stories about people who are working in this field.

The tribunal that will be the beginning and the end of every asylum seeker's appeal process has, on a legally scrutinised basis, a 60 per cent. failure rate. Clause 10 says:

"No court shall have any supervisory or other jurisdiction"

over any of its determinations or decisions, even if such a decision was a nullity because there was a lack of jurisdiction, an irregularity, an error of law, a breach of natural justice, or for any other reason. It is the be all and end all.

What is to be gained at this judicial appeal? Frankly, nothing worth having. It will be able to review its own decisions. That means that a person appeals to the same people, so that the issue is not between them and the Home Office, but between the Home Office and the tribunal—and it is the tribunal that does the decision making. That is called being the judge in one's own cause—or, as we would see it up in Redcar, it is like Boro playing the Magpies with the referee coming from Middlesbrough. The fact that that is the only way in which we would ever win the match is beside the point. One has to ask what is the point of such an appeal. If the tribunal upholds its own decision or refuses to review it, one can do nothing about it—one is dealing with the same people with the same level of qualifications and training, who get many things wrong.

Another overwhelming principle is involved. The adjudicator

"who knows that his decision may be subject to appeal is likely to be a good deal more circumspect, careful and even-handed than the officer who knows that his power of decision is absolute. That is simply, I fear, a matter of human nature, quite apart from anything else."—[Official Report, 2 November 1992; Vol. 213, c. 43.]

I am quoting the Prime Minister, and he was right. There is nothing to put in its place. There is a nominal power for the president of the adjudication body to refer on to the Court of Appeal for advice. However, he will not necessarily be a High Court judge, because that requirement has been removed since the previous Act: he need be no more than an ordinary adjudicator.

There is no provision for anybody to ask the president to make a referral; there is no procedure for that. How will he determine the cases that he refers on a principled basis? How many hundreds of adjudicators must he supervise? Even if one can write to ask him to use his powers, there are no criteria whereby he decides whether to do that. He does not even have to read the letter. The correspondent will never know whether he has done so. There are no legal precedents to guide him about the decision because the immigration appeal tribunal—the body that sets them—has gone.

If the president sends the right case and the point of law is found to be wrong, there is no means of enforcing the finding. The victim of the wrong point of law can do nothing. The Court of Appeal has the power only to make an advisory ruling. It may be clear that I should not be deported to Burma—someone was almost deported to Burma a couple of weeks ago, despite all that is said about that country—but there is no way to enforce that right because the Court of Appeal's power is merely advisory. Neither power—to refer and to advise—is worth much. The process therefore starts and finishes with adjudicators, who, as we have witnessed, are frequently wrong, yet make decisions about life and death.

I accept that there is delay in the current system. Some lawyers and advisers—for cash or political correctness—waste time and resources. That is the problem, and the Legal Services Commission should close those lawyers down. The immigration appeal tribunal is speedy and efficient, has good procedures, is effective in weeding out poor applications and finds that 60 per cent. of those left have been decided erroneously. It has proper processes. All we are left with is an adjudicator's decision being checked by the adjudicator at the next desk. That cannot achieve the same result. We must be careful not to act on a call for efficiency and deliver gross injustice.

Andrew Turner (Conservative, Isle of Wight)

The Bill is fairly adequate and can be considerably improved. I am sure that we shall have the opportunity to improve it as it proceeds. I begin by describing what my constituents—and, I am sure, those of many other hon. Members—perceive as the problem that we are trying to resolve. The hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten), who is no longer in his place, denied that there was a problem.

The problem is a gross overflow of asylum seekers and other immigrants to this country, to the extent that 20 per cent. of the population of London are of ethnic minority origin, and 80 per cent. of the population of the country want better control of the immigration process. It is evident that the Home Office has no idea of the numbers. It produces a variety of statistics on different occasions and challenges the information that organisations such as Migrationwatch UK provide. The Home Office believes that there are 45,000 people from Colombia in this country, whereas the Colombian embassy believes that the figure is 250,000. Perhaps both are wrong.

In such circumstances, it is hardly surprising that people are prepared to say what they would have been ashamed to say 10 years ago. According to a recent poll, between a third and a half of the population accepts that, as individuals, they are "mildly racist". The term has been abused so much and applied to so many that people think that, if it is racist to question the number of migrants to this country, they are prepared to admit that it applies to them. I do not believe that it is racist to challenge the number of migrants, and it is not wrong for the Government to act to put right the deficiencies of the immigration system that my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Malins) outlined so effectively.

The 200,000 or so people who come to this country every year put huge pressure not only on London but on the outer boroughs, the countryside around London and as far away as my constituency. It is no surprise that, when 200,000 people a year come to this country and 200,000 new houses are required in the south-east every year, people see a connection.

That situation will become even worse when the new countries join the European Union shortly. It is estimated that, as a result of the Nice treaty, 72 million people will be entitled to live in this country, although not all of them will come here. The draft constitution that we just escaped having imposed upon us last weekend provided for immigration to become a joint competence and therefore out of the control of the House altogether. That is not something that I find satisfactory.

I am glad that the Government—unlike the Liberal Democrats—recognise that there is a problem and that they are taking some steps to resolve it. However, those steps are meagre and inadequate, for various reasons. As the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) said, it would be better if we could also get the processes right, but that does not absolve the Government of responsibility to put through this legislation, with some amendments.

Let us look at what is wrong with the Bill, because there is quite a lot. Clause 7 is certainly open to criticism, and one of the problems was that the Home Office had not briefed that clause 7 meant that children would be taken into care, while No. 10 Downing street had briefed to that effect. The Minister did not deny that No. 10 had provided that briefing; she denied that the Home Office had done so—

Beverley Hughes (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)

That was not the claim.

Andrew Turner (Conservative, Isle of Wight)

That is indeed what was claimed. The Minister will have heard the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry). I am not an expert on these matters, but it seemed to me that the Home Office was delivering an honest briefing while No. 10 was issuing a briefing thought to be more suitable for the columns of the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph. Perhaps that is where the problem arises.

If children will be taken into care as a result of the implementation of clause 7, would it not be more useful if some of the responsible bodies contributed charitably to the sustenance and support of those children, so that they did not have to be taken into care? I refer to bodies such as the Law Society, Liberty, the Immigration Law Practitioners Association, Justice, the Refugee Council, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and a host of others that constantly try to undermine the efforts of this Government and previous ones to control the number of migrants to this country. Their making such a contribution would be a much more useful and effective use of their time and energy.

I referred in an intervention on the Home Secretary to one of the key problems, which is that too many lawyers are making too much money by giving inadequate advice—in some cases, wholly inadequate advice—to people, and raising their hopes in the way that the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington described. I have two examples of that. The first involves a man of Chinese origin who was advised by a mainland lawyer to get a letter from his Member of Parliament—that is, me—to support his application. I am not competent to provide a letter saying anything other than what that person has told me. I do not undertake investigations into whether people are telling me the truth. Why is his lawyer advising him to get a letter from a Member of Parliament, as though that would make a difference to the process? The unsupported word of a Member of Parliament written on the basis of unsupported evidence provided by someone who may have been resident in his constituency for less than a fortnight certainly should not make a difference.

The second, similar example is that of a person who came to this country from Italy, claimed asylum and spent six months going through the asylum process. He was subsequently convicted of rape. A number of statutory agencies gave information in support of him and his family remaining in the country, which turned out not to be supported by the information that he and his wife subsequently gave.

Keith Vaz (Labour, Leicester East)

Surely the hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that the Government should take away the right of Members of Parliament to make representations in immigration cases. Clearly, we must accept what our constituents say to us. It is an important right to be able to make representations to Ministers, and to leave it to Ministers and officials to make the decision.

Andrew Turner (Conservative, Isle of Wight)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Indeed, it is an important right for us to make representations, but it is not the right of someone who has lived in a constituency for two weeks to demand that a Member of Parliament supply a letter. It is certainly wrong for a lawyer supported from the public purse to advise someone that they have that right.

Jeremy Corbyn (Labour, Islington North)

Surely any constituent has a right to go to his Member of Parliament. Whether his Member of Parliament makes representations is down to that Member of Parliament. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his remark that people have no right to do that. Everyone has a right to go to their MP.

Andrew Turner (Conservative, Isle of Wight)

I said that that person had no right to expect such a letter. That is what I intended to say anyway, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I did not make that clear.

I should like to move on to some improvements that could be made to the Bill. Representing the Isle of Wight, I am well aware of the fantasy island argument, which I believe originated with my friend in the European Parliament, Tim Kirkhope, who produced a paper for my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) when he was shadow Home Secretary. If we implement my right hon. Friend's other proposals, it is important that we find a place where those who end up in this country can be placed pending a decision, whether that decision is taken by the British Government or by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

In my view, it is appropriate that people in those circumstances should be confined and not able to move out into the community. One way of doing that is to put them at some distant place offshore. That may be a British dependent territory, or there may be other territories where those arrangements could be made. [Hon. Members: "Where?"] I hear what hon. Members say. I am not in a position to tell them where it is, but that is the sort of place that we—and the Government if they are wise—should be looking for. It should be somewhere from which people do not have the right to return to this country.

We should consider providing temporary leave to remain for asylum seekers if we believe that circumstances may change in their home country. There are many Iraqis in this country who will be grateful for the changes that have taken place in Iraq recently, but we should ask whether they are entitled to remain here indefinitely, because they came here when there were problems in their home country.

I welcome the proposals on loss of documentation. I hope that that provision will not operate to the disadvantage of British carriers. If people arrive on these shores in carriers from other countries, perhaps those carriers should be persuaded to provide a bond for their good behaviour.

Will the Home Secretary consider more effective coastal controls? We have the coastguard, Customs and Excise and the immigration and nationality directorate, and between them they cover the 57 miles of coastline in my constituency, most of which is rural, for half a day a week if we are lucky. I think that there should be a single agency to cover coastal security, because not just immigration but smuggling needs to be covered. I also think that the immigration service should have the power to enforce removals, so that the police need not be involved.

As I have said, great improvements could be made to the Bill, and I hope that that will be possible in Committee. As I told the Home Secretary earlier, he is making difficult judgments and there are no simple solutions, but it is not right for children to be used as a weapon by the Home Secretary to effect the removal of their parents, or for them to be used as a weapon by their parents to secure the acquiescence of our immigration policy in their remaining unlawfully in this country.

Robert Marshall-Andrews (Labour, Medway)

I shall try not to use all the time available to me, not least because clause 7 was dealt with magnificently by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson), and clause 10 was dealt with similarly by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar (Vera Baird), who I thought was at her compelling and frightening best. Those clauses are the two iniquities in the Bill. When it is written in a Bill that children are at risk of impoverishment, that is a matter warranting the utmost scrutiny, demanding the utmost answer.

The answer that we received from the Minister today was very simple. She said that the solution lay in the hands of parents. They had the option of returning whence they came or had been sent, and we would throw in some money to help them. The responsibility was theirs.

Let me echo what was said by the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner). It is deplorable that parents should use their children to obtain benefit or advantage. That happens in this country, among our indigenous population, thousands if not hundreds of thousands of times each day. It is, however, infinitely more deplorable that the state should attempt to use children to deny that benefit or advantage, however illegal it may be. The Minister's response that she is sure—profoundly sure—that parents faced with that alternative will go back, no matter what the consequences may be, simply underlines the power of the threat without attempting to explain away the threat itself.

Let me now turn to the part of the Bill on which I have concentrated during the debate—clause 10, which deals with the removal of judicial oversight, judicial review, the Court of Appeal or any form of judicial counterweight to the tribunal that we are setting up. Judicial review is an ancient right that goes back to the Star Chamber. No tribunal in the country is free from judicial review. If we pass the Bill in its present form, we will pass a measure that—in peacetime—has been without compare for centuries.

It is worth reflecting on precisely what that means. It means that the tribunal, once established, can make any decision, however unreasonable, even if it is so unreasonable that no tribunal could previously have arrived at it. The decision may be capricious, but it will be immutable and without challenge. The tribunal will be able to act entirely outside the powers that we in Parliament have given it, and that too will be immutable and without challenge. That is the extent of the Bill that we are being asked to pass, and it is entirely unique.

The other aspect, which has already been touched on, is the effect of the appeal process on tribunals. If I may, I shall draw from my own limited experience. I have sat as a temporary judge since 1982, and I can say without hesitation that it concentrates the mind wonderfully to know that one's decisions, whatever they are, will be the subject of judicial review. But in this case, the only review will be that by the tribunal itself. The tribunal will have the capacity to look again at its decision, but that is not an appeal process. If I were asked to review a decision that I had taken, I would have a natural proclivity to think that it was probably right, particularly if I knew that there was no appeal against it. That is the extent of the power that we are giving to such tribunals.

It is interesting to reflect that no tribunal in this country is free from judicial review. If a planning tribunal that is deciding whether a conservatory may be put up acts unreasonably or outside its powers, it is subject to judicial review. Here, we are talking about a tribunal that can decide whether a person is liable to torture or death, yet its decision will not be the subject of any review.

We must be careful where we travel in this regard. Recent history's examples of repressive or oppressive regimes have hallmarks that can be traced through them. The first is the identification of unpopular, minority or weak groups. The second is the vilification of those groups as being unworthy and undeserving. The third is the removal from those groups, and only those groups, of the protection and rights that they enjoy under the law. The fourth is the blaming of those groups themselves for the removal of those rights, and, often, the vilification of the civil liberties organisations that attempt to protect them.

So as we embark on this road, it is worth reflecting—as I hope the Home Secretary will—that we are entering dangerous territory and a realm in which we have bad friends. I hope that he will reflect that if we put into effect measures that give the appearance of a repressive and oppressive state, we are but a short step away from becoming a repressive and oppressive state. For my part, I do not accept in any way the apologia that by imposing these strictures and eroding these civil liberties, we will in some way head off the extreme right by taking its ground and distilling away its support. I do not believe that for one minute; nor is there any historical context in which that has proved the truth. The fact is that moving down that road offers the extreme right encouragement and support, and, ultimately, success.

Douglas Hogg (Conservative, Sleaford and North Hykeham)

One of the most powerful criticisms of the Americans' approach to the detainees at Guantanamo Bay is that they do not have a right of appeal outside the military system. That is extraordinarily like what the Home Secretary is proposing—that there should be no external appeal against a decision of the tribunal.

Robert Marshall-Andrews (Labour, Medway)

I concur with that point.

Of course, this is not a statistical matter—it is the principle that is all-important—but it is worth reflecting that in 2002, the judicial review process threw back 260 cases as being not simply wrong, but so wrong that they were wholly and completely unsupportable. It is reasonable to suppose that if half those cases involved families, 200 to 300 children were involved in those decisions. Those are the people who will now have no right of appeal. They will face the agonising choice of going into impoverishment and care or going back to the country in which they were persecuted. For those reasons, it will be a pleasure for me to support the reasoned amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre. I very much hope that many of my hon. Friends and other hon. Members will be able to do likewise.

John Randall (Conservative, Uxbridge)

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews). He always makes a lot of sense to me—but perhaps that says more about me than about him.

My constituents increasingly raise asylum and immigration issues with me, so I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill. We have heard some very good speeches. I was particularly pleased to hear the speeches of my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Malins) and of the Chairman of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham).

The hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) said that when dealing with such matters, we must all be aware of the urban myths that are around. We probably all know them. Locally in Hillingdon we have the housing myth, which I am sure is also found in many other areas. It says that the fact that no one can get a house is somehow all the fault of asylum seekers. Another story that I have increasingly heard is that everyone seems to know a neighbour or a friend who has sold a car which was paid for with a cheque from social services or the benefit agencies, but when one asks for more details, somehow they disappear into the ether. Not so long ago I even heard from someone who was very worried because they had heard that the top floor of Hillingdon hospital had been closed down to house asylum seekers. Those may seem amusing stories, but they spread around and cause more and more concern, which is one reason why the subject of immigration and asylum is so often raised.

The people who are concerned are not racists and bigots, although those do of course exist. Similarly, those who genuinely raise the rights of asylum seekers are living in the real world, although the facts are sometimes uncomfortable for people. I dare say that next week at many a Christmas day service, sermons will be given about asylum seekers, which will lead to much harrumphing, with people saying that the vicar should have said a bit more about Christmas. But it is a good thing for us to be reminded of such cases.

We must also always be reminded that although we refer to groups, we are talking about individuals. For example, one of my constituents is always telling me that immigration and asylum seeking are not being dealt with properly in Parliament and saying, "It's about time you lot woke up." However, he knocked on my window at home late one evening to ask me to do something to prevent a Kosovan of his acquaintance from being deported. When we are dealing with individuals, it is a different matter.

There is a problem, as everyone acknowledges. We have to resolve certain problems, which cannot be done in this Bill. I have just mentioned housing. If there were not a housing problem, the urban myths would not exist. The high level of council tax is raising problems in my borough because, as the hon. and learned Member for Medway said, someone is getting blamed for it. There is an issue, which I am taking up with the Minister, of a recent court judgment about unaccompanied asylum-seeking children over 18, which will have a considerable financial effect on the borough. We have asked for a meeting and I am sure that if she has not agreed to it, she is in the process of doing so. It worries me when people I know, such as general practitioners or head teachers, talk about "the Heathrow effect". We know what they are talking about when they say it. It is genuine, and it is upsetting for community relations within the borough.

To return to the Bill, I wholly agree with some measures. We know how many passports and documents turn up in bins at Heathrow airport, and we have to deal with that problem.

The quality of decision making has been mentioned. I am not sure exactly how decisions are taken, but I suspect that some people have to work for long stints. Inevitably, they will get jaded. Security officers at airports have only a limited time to deal with each case; otherwise, they are not doing their job properly. Some of the people taking the decisions might be bombarded by a whole load of applications and it is easy to get rather blasé about it all. I do not know whether anything is being done about that. The quality of advice given by some legal practices can also be dubious. The lawyers often seem to take the money and then send the applicants along to our surgeries.

Another problem is the endless set of appeals. We MPs may be just as guilty, in that when someone complains at our surgeries, we often put the matter to a Minister again and again. As the hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) said, we have the right to raise such matters, though we do not judge them. The time lag is the real problem.

Clause 10 does concern me and I hope that the Government will listen to what is said about it. We should all be aware of a potential slippery slope. Speeding up the process sounds appealing—although that may be the wrong word to use in this case—but we must be careful.

I waver a little on clause 7. When I first heard about it in the media, I was, like many others, appalled. Perhaps I am too generous spirited, but I believe the Home Secretary and the Minister when I hear them say on the "Today" programme that their intentions are entirely honourable. However, the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Glenda Jackson) made the important point that even those who are not genuine asylum seekers—in the sense that their cases are not accepted—are still very desperate people.

Many unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who end up in the borough of Hillingdon are not orphans; people may have spent a lot of money sending them here on an aeroplane. We may find it incredible that people could send their children away, but people in desperate circumstances do precisely that. I can therefore quite understand people going along with being deported, but wanting to leave their children behind. We need to take that into account.

It is difficult for us to appreciate how desperate some of these people are. My experience is mainly drawn from the people who come to my surgery. Some are, shall we say, making the system work for them, but there are some heart-rending cases. I have only limited experience of seeing refugees abroad, but I did see internally displaced people in Serbia, being trucked out of Kosovo. I have seen the conditions that they live in and I can understand why they might want to go to another country. For us, it is almost inconceivable that we should ever want to leave our country, but I can understand why people in different circumstances might want to leave theirs.

Some of the Bill's other provisions, I wish well. I am not sure about electronic monitoring, but it sounds all right and I am prepared to be persuaded that the technology works. Similarly, this morning the Home Secretary was talking about ID cards as a means of protecting our borders. Yes, we need some controls, but I am not sure that ID cards are the answer, although I am prepared to listen. My hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) made some interesting and valid points in relation to clause 20, which I hope the Home Office will examine. I have Brunel university in my constituency, and many of the things that my hon. Friend said would apply equally there.

If I do not vote for the reasoned amendment, it will not be because I do not have a great deal of sympathy with it. However, I think at this stage that there is enough in the Bill to let it run its course. My hon. Friends and Labour Members will do their job in Committee, and when the Bill comes back for Report and Third Reading, we will have another look. If it has not been improved in the areas I have mentioned, we may have to vote against it.

Jeremy Corbyn (Labour, Islington North)

I was going to say that I agree with everything the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) said. Well, I do, except for the last bit. I think that the Bill needs to be opposed because of its serious deficiencies.

I shall be brief so that others might have a chance to speak. I ask myself why we are here again, and then I look at the headlines in the Daily Express two days ago—some spurious stuff about every asylum seeker receiving £16,000 a year. That is not my experience of talking to the large number of asylum seekers in my constituency, many of whom are desperate to work and to contribute to society and feel angry that they are often denied that right. As the Home Secretary said, there are in London some 30,000 asylum seekers who moved to London after having been deposited in other parts of the country by the National Asylum Support Service and who are living here without any housing support. They have only income support, which is of an extremely limited nature, and they live on the grace and favour of people in their community. We should think for a moment of those 30,000 people spread throughout London's boroughs—an average of 1,000 per borough—living in grossly overcrowded accommodation, the children at risk of underachieving in school because of that degree of overcrowding, the parents enduring considerable hardship, and other members of the community going through hardship to support them because of the degree of racism and harassment of asylum seekers that persists in many parts of the country and from which London is not immune.

Those who sanctimoniously write the newspaper headlines making abusive comments about asylum seekers should ask themselves whether they do not in part encourage the racist attacks against asylum seekers and the killings of asylum seekers that have occurred in several parts of the country in the past two years. We all have a duty and a responsibility to be careful in what we say and how we say it. We must remember that a remark of ours that is thought to be an expression of a prejudice becomes something very nasty when it gets into the hands of a group of racist thugs on a Saturday night on a street anywhere in the country. The people who cop it are those who thought that they had left a place of danger and desperation. We should not be so self-satisfied about racial tolerance in our society, because a high degree of racism remains and the people who suffer are those who thought they had got away from that type of danger.

We should ask ourselves why so many people are trying to seek asylum now. Look at the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Congo, where some 3 million people have died. Look at the instability and disruption in Somalia and in so many other places around the world. Although I do not pretend, claim or assert that this country is responsible for all those conflicts, I do believe that collectively the European Union and north American contributions to the world arms trade, to the search for and the extraction of minerals and to the trade policies followed around the world lead to instability and to large numbers of people seeking a place of safety—asylum—somewhere else. Is the history of the 20th and 21st centuries to be written in memory of the people who have died in rusting hulks trying to cross the Mediterranean to gain a place of safety in Europe? Economic, political and social migrants have all been treated with a brutality that is seen as typical of the uncaring, arrogant and aggressive attitude that rich countries take towards the victims of poverty elsewhere in the world.

I do not pretend that we can solve all the problems, but we must maintain a sense of reality. We must understand what it is like to face the ultimate disruption of having to leave one's country, home and society because they are no longer safe.

The rest of the debate is in Hansard.