My Lords, I will speak very briefly. The remarks by the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, made me reflect. She was talking about how it takes a year, 18 months or two years for the people whom she has met in the course of her admirable-sounding charity, to be able to fully open up and explain themselves. This makes me think how similar this is to grief. For asylum seekers who have been forced to flee everything that is familiar to them—their home, country, family and links—and arrive in a strange place, this is a form of grief and bereavement.
I am not the only person in this Chamber who has suffered a relatively recent bereavement. I would not say that I have fully recovered after a year, 18 months, two years—even two and a half years. Indeed, I never will be. Given the disorientation and the inability to fully function, a year, 18 months or two years is not wide of the mark for how long you need to get your act together to handle an asylum claim.
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