I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that matter. It cannot be right that we allow anyone to be destitute in this country, whatever circumstances they find themselves in.
Mohsen’s story is far from untypical and the situation is even more dire for families with children, sometimes creating serious safeguarding issues. Asylum Matters told me about Bao, who was originally trafficked from Vietnam and received refugee status in November 2017 after going through the national referral mechanism. Less than one month later, his daughter was born.
The family survived on £35 per week in asylum support, but that stopped and he did not know how to apply for benefits. When he tried to find a home, the council told him he would need to find private rented accommodation. The private landlords all wanted a deposit or guarantor, which he could not provide because he had no savings. An integration loan could have helped him, but he was refused a loan by the Home Office, which claimed he was already integrated because he had been here for such a long time. That meant he could not secure a private tenancy because he had no money to pay for the deposit. He and his baby daughter were destitute for nearly four months, forced to survive on the charity of friends for food and milk and somewhere to sleep—on their floor.
Such cases are cause for enormous concern. I am glad that the Government have accepted that there is a problem and have attempted a number of measures to deal with that, but although it is a pleasure to see the Minister in his place this afternoon, I am a little disappointed that the debate is not being answered by a Home Office Minister as I requested. Fundamentally, we need cross-governmental action to address a mismatch of policies across different Government Departments and the failure of any one Department to own the problem. I believe the Home Office should be taking the lead in joining up policy and procedures. I hope the Minister will share the breadth of my concerns with all of his ministerial colleagues.