My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for moving her amendment and for continuing to maintain pressure in this important area. She and the Red Cross have managed to identify a bureaucratic problem that we accept needs to be addressed.
In responding, I will place on record a few points. The first is my letter of 10 February, which is in the combined pack and set out my initial responses. I was also very grateful for the opportunity to meet—with the noble Baroness—officials. We talked through the reasons for the delays and the evidence. I know that that was something the officials found extremely helpful. It contributed to the response that I give now.
I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Hamwee, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich for bringing forward Amendment 116 concerning the transition off Home Office support of asylum seekers granted refugee status or other leave to remain. I agree with them on the importance of these arrangements, which we discussed at our meeting on 25 February. I also thank the British Red Cross for its excellent work in this area and for its advice ahead of this debate.
We allow a grace period of 28 days before Home Office asylum support ends in these cases. This is to provide time for the person to make other arrangements and move on from Home Office support. Many refugees have much to contribute to our economy as well as to our society, and work and integration go hand in hand. But some need support while they find work. I do not dispute that there is evidence—from the Department for Work and Pensions research in 2013 and the British Red Cross report of 2014; those two dates are relevant to the point I will come on to
later—that some newly recognised refugees do not secure DWP benefits within 28 days. But the reasons for this are complex and the evidence does not show that the problem would be easily fixed simply by increasing the grace period to 40 days.
Our investigations into this show that there are two main reasons for delays. First, there is a lack of awareness among refugees of the need to apply for welfare benefits as soon as they are granted refugee status. Of the 16 people sampled in the Red Cross report, only three applied within the first three weeks of being granted status. That is a problem. Of course, they should apply for their biometric residence permit as soon as they get an indication, and that should take just a matter of days.
Help is on hand. I repeat that people are not left on their own with this. They are given advice and leaflets about the information and help that are available to them. Refugees can also seek help from the free telephone advice line run by Migrant Help—an excellent service that the Home Office funds. Migrant Help provides advice and support in building a new life in the UK, including help with housing and other issues. Refugees can also apply for integration loans. These can be used, for example, to pay a rent deposit or for essential domestic items or for work equipment. My point is that when we are identifying the problems, we must first make sure that people who are granted refugee status immediately understand what help is available to them and what they should do next. A new information leaflet for refugees was introduced in July 2015. In oral evidence in 2015 to the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee session on benefits, the British Red Cross said the new leaflet provided “good guidance”. It supplements the advice and assistance available from Migrant Help, which I referred to.
Secondly, the DWP research identified occasions on which a lack of awareness among staff of the correct processes contributed to the problem. Updated guidance and instructions have been issued to DWP front-line staff to address this. We welcome the Work and Pensions Committee’s report on benefit delivery published on 21 December 2015, which recommends further work in this area. DWP will respond shortly to the report but intends to carry out an evaluation later this year of the impact of the improvements I have described.
The key point I make to the noble Baroness in assuring her that we take the concerns very seriously is that it is important that we have up-to-date evidence. I mentioned the reports from 2013 and 2014. We are now in 2016. Since those two dates, there has been a significant number of new initiatives and changes. We want to understand what the up-to-date periods of delay are.
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The noble Baroness and others have otherwise made a strong and persuasive case for this amendment to which I have listened very carefully. The length of the grace period is set out in the regulations for Section 95 support. I can confirm that, if the further DWP evaluation which will be undertaken later this year—I have referred to that—shows that it is necessary to increase the
length of the grace period consistently to enable newly recognised refugees to begin to receive the welfare benefits for which they are eligible before their Home Office support ends, we undertake to return to Parliament with a proposal to amend the regulations to reflect that. Immigration regulations can be amended at any point in time. We are not bound by primary legislation having to go through to do that. We will come back with amended regulations to reflect the evidence which we receive.
I thank the noble Lords, Lord Roberts of Llandudno and Lord Rosser, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for their Amendment 117. We had another vigorous debate on Azure cards. I am sure that the Chief Whip—my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach, who is with me on the Front Bench—will recall fielding questions from the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, who is assiduous and tenacious in speaking up for some of the most vulnerable people. We respect that. He raised issues in Committee which related to the types of outlets which can take the cards. We agreed to look into that and to respond. I have listened very carefully again today to the views of noble Lords. I also wrote to Peers on 10 February covering this matter in some detail, as I referred to.
It is important to be clear about the circumstances in which decisions on applications for Section 95A support will be made. The failed asylum seekers applying for this support will generally be doing so because they have received notice that they are no longer eligible for the asylum support that they will until that point have been receiving under Section 95 of the 1999 Act. The reason they will have received that notice is that the courts will have just agreed that they do not need our protection and have no lawful basis to remain here. There will therefore be no question that it is right that they should leave the UK as soon as they are able to do so. The only issue will then be whether there exists a genuine obstacle that now prevents their departure; and where there is, support under Section 95A will be made available for as long as the obstacle exists.
What is meant by a “genuine obstacle” will be set out in regulations which, under the government amendments in this group, will be subject to the affirmative procedure—that point was covered in one of our reports on the regulations—so they will be debated and approved by both Houses of Parliament before they come into effect. Your Lordships will therefore have an opportunity to examine in detail the basis on which support under Section 95A will be provided and how it will operate.
A “genuine obstacle” to departure will include, for example, where medical evidence shows that the person is unfit to travel, or where they have applied for, but not yet been issued with, a travel document. This will involve a straightforward assessment of matters of fact. We do not consider, therefore, that a right of appeal is necessary and the evidence supports this conclusion. I again thank the Asylum Support Appeals Project for its excellent work and its briefing for this debate. This again highlights how uncommon it is for an allowed appeal to concern whether there is a genuine obstacle to departure, still less at the point the person’s asylum appeal rights are exhausted. This is unsurprising.
Of the 105 destitute failed asylum seekers granted support under Section 4 of the 1999 Act in 2015 because of medical reasons or pregnancy or because they were taking all reasonable steps to leave the UK, only six applied for this support within 21 days of exhausting their asylum appeal rights. I also remind the House that we are retaining—not removing—a right of appeal for the present circumstances in which support appeals by failed asylum seekers commonly arise.
Around 87% of asylum support appeals in the year to August 2015 were against the denial of Section 4 support, most commonly where a failed asylum seeker had lodged further submissions or intended to do so. Schedule 10 will repeal Section 4 and provide Section 95 support for those with outstanding further submissions on protection grounds, or who are granted permission to apply for judicial review in relation to their asylum claim. There will remain a right of appeal against a decision that a person does not qualify for Section 95 support. On such an important issue we should be guided by evidence rather than opinion, and the case for a right of appeal for Section 95A support is simply not supported by the evidence available to us.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for Amendment 118. As I said in Committee on 3 February, the support provided to failed asylum seekers under the new Section 95A of the 1999 Act will generally be the same as that under Section 95 for asylum seekers. Section 95 support normally includes a cash allowance. The relevant regulations provide that, as a general rule, a weekly cash allowance shall be provided to cover the person’s essential living needs. However, those regulations allow flexibility to provide support in other ways in individual cases if that is appropriate. As an example, in an emergency a supported person may need to be moved quickly from their current accommodation, and they might then be accommodated temporarily in full-board accommodation. It is not necessary in those circumstances to provide a cash allowance. We intend to make regulations relating to Section 95A support to make similar provision.
Government Amendments 119, 124 and 125 implement recommendations or take account of comments made by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, for which we are grateful. I thank the committee again for the excellence of its advice on this Bill. The amendments will mean, in particular, that key details of the new system of Home Office and local authority support will require debate and approval by both Houses of Parliament before coming into effect.
Government Amendment 123 is a technical amendment, agreed with the Northern Ireland Executive, to update references in Schedule 3 to the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 to the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995, as amended.
Government Amendments 126 to 139 to Clauses 64, 67 and 68 extend the scope of the provisions for the transfer of unaccompanied migrant children from the care of one local authority to that of another, to cover those who arrive in the UK with refugee status as well as those applying for that status while they are here. The Government announced, on 28 January, their
intention to work with the UNHCR to lead a new initiative to identify and resettle unaccompanied refugee children from conflict regions where it is in the best interests of the child. The amendments allow such children to be included in any transfer scheme introduced under this legislation, should voluntary arrangements not prove sufficient. The amendments also make clear that, should it prove necessary, one statutory transfer scheme is envisaged, with a number of local authorities included in it, rather than a series of schemes each run on a bilateral basis.
The noble Baroness asked about a “person of kind”, as specified in regulation, the ability to extend the transfer provisions to refugee children resettled in the UK, as well as other unaccompanied migrant children, including unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. This is covered in other sections and my letter of 10 February. I hope that in the light of my answers and, in particular, that reassurance to the noble Baroness and the right reverend Prelate, the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment at this stage, in the knowledge that she will be given an opportunity later this year to scrutinise the decision on the basis of the new evidence which will be accumulated to help us make that decision the right one.