Immigration Minister Liam Byrne has been challenged by church campaigners to end Home Office policies which make asylum seekers destitute.
The call came at a fringe meeting hosted by Christian Socialist Movement and the Free Church leaders, at the Labour Party Conference in Manchester.
Church Action on Poverty’s National Coordinator Niall Cooper told the minister that throughout Britain there are hundreds of faith groups, community groups and local projects opening their doors ëand their heartsí to the very poorest people in society. Whilst, he said, the government had made some progress in tackling homelessness, poverty and social exclusion, there was a ënew underclassí of asylum seekers who were being denied any state support whilst also prevented from working.
ìThree years ago, almost overnight churches and refugee agencies across the UK woke up to find ñ in some cases literally hundreds of people sleeping on the pavement outside their offices, churches and centresî Cooper said.
ìThese people were victims of a particularly pernicious piece of policy.î
ìLike so many government initiatives it was introduced to stamp out alleged abuse of our asylum system by refusing support to people who didnít make a claim ëas soon as reasonably practicable.í In practice, it plunged people who needed and deserved a place of safety in Britain into destitution.î
In November last year, the High Court confirmed an earlier court ruling that the policy breached the human rights of refugees. One of the law lords stated that it was wrong ìto single out a particular group to be left utterly destitute on the streets as a matter of policyî. He went on to quote Tony Blair who in 1999 said ìIt is a scandal that there are still people sleeping rough on our streets. This is not a situation that we can tolerate in a modern civilised society.î
ìDestitution continues to be a tool of public policyî Cooper continued. ìEarlier this year, the Government piloted the use of destitution against the families and children of refused asylum seekers. ëSection 9í threatened families who have failed in their claim for asylum to have their benefits removed and the children taken into care. The thinking behind the policy was to encourage desperate families in this situation to ëchange their behaviourí and agree to go back to the countries from which they have fled. Predictably, in pilot projects around the country this only happened except in a tiny proportion of cases ñ instead families threatened with the removal of support and with the prospect of losing their children simply disappeared. Goodness knows how they are coping.
ìAt the same time we are seeing other groups of failed asylum seekers thrown into destitution, and denied even basic support in the form of vouchers (imaginatively called Section 4), despite the fact that the government knows there is no reasonable prospect of their being sent back to their home countries in the near future.
ìWe are talking here in many cases of countries still in the grip of violence, unrest, civil war, or the absence or breakdown of the basic rule of law ñ Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Zimbabwe.
ìAsylum is not and should never be a game of numbers. It is, in the words of the 1951 Convention, about people fleeing from a well-founded fear of persecution. But how difficult it has become to demonstrate a ëwell-foundedí fear, in the face of what I can only describe as a ëculture of disbeliefí that has now become embedded in the asylum process. Immigration officials and adjudicators simply refuse to accept peopleís own testimonies ñ it is now almost impossible to establish an asylum claim without cast iron corroborating evidence. Yet few fleeing torture, persecution or the threat of death, stop to collect witness statements or evidence that will stand up in an immigration tribunal.î
The challenge comes a few days after the news that a parish priest has been harbouring asylum seekers facing deportation.
Christians have also urged people to ‘live as asylum seekers’ for short periods of time, so they can experience what life is like as part of the ‘new underclass’.