Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

My Lords, I am not sure if my amendment is being welcomed. We have checked the point about delegated powers which the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour, raised, and it is fine. If I discover anything untoward I will of course ensure that I put it right. Parliamentary counsel, in whom I have enormous faith, are very good at ensuring that we have done that, but I will make sure that we check what ILPA said. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for raising that. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, will not be at all surprised that I will obviously resist Amendment No. 40. I will be doing that because our amendment recognises that we need to do more. I hope that those noble Lords who have welcomed it will understand that we see the obligations that we have and want to fulfil, but do not want to do so by providing cash. In a sense, we do not want to invite people to draw on the public purse if they do not need to; more importantly, nor do we want to reduce the incentive for people to take steps to leave the UK voluntarily. Whether your Lordships like the consequence of what I am saying or not, it is crystal clear that that could be a consequence if we provided cash. We are trying to meet people’s needs in a way which does not increase the incentive for those people who have exhausted all of their appeal rights. We want to ensure that they are able to leave the UK once the barrier to leaving has been resolved. That is the principle behind it. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, indicated that there may be an issue about getting health treatment. They are provided with that health treatment which is immediately necessary free of charge under primary care. Under secondary care they can receive a number of services free of charge. To ensure that we have dealt with issues of accessing primary and secondary care we are at present considering, with colleagues from the Department of Health, the eligibility for failed asylum seekers for whom there is a temporary barrier to leaving the UK. I shall come back to your Lordships on that, but there is access to care; I would not want our deliberations to suggest otherwise. We need to think about it more carefully in the light of what the noble Lord has said, and more generally in any event. I am sorry to resist the amendment but I do so on the right grounds and I hope that my amendments, though not meeting the needs which the noble Lord wished, are none the less recognised for having an important part in providing support.