My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness that the payments made to people who have applied for asylum should be treated in the same way as any other benefits and should be subject to review by your Lordships. Instead, as the noble Baroness explained, there is no obligation to uprate the benefits or even to make a statement, nor, in particular, for the Government to explain whether they believe that the payments made to asylum seekers should bear any relationship to those on income support, or whether the two calculations are to be performed on an entirely different basis. If so, what is the underlying rationale behind the amounts paid to people on asylum support?
As the noble Baroness has already said, with her I was a member of the cross-party parliamentary inquiry organised by the Children’s Society into asylum support for children and young people, under the very able chairmanship of my honourable friend Sarah Teather, the former Minister for Children. I join the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, in expressing the concern and
dismay that we all felt when listening to the stories of suffering and destitution of asylum seekers. The worst-off were those supported under Section 4 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, many of whom were failed asylum seekers who could not be returned to their country of origin because it would not accept them. Under that provision, people have to live in housing and accommodation provided by private agencies, the standard of which often is grossly deficient and lacking in ordinary facilities.
I could not help noticing the contrast with the Statement made earlier today about the arrangements being made for our forces returning from Germany. Quite rightly, £1 billion is being spent on 1,900 new houses for those families, when nothing whatever is spent on the accommodation of people who have applied for asylum.
Section 4 provides support in the form of vouchers which can be redeemed only at certain shops. The value of the Azure card, which is intended to provide for all essential living needs, is £70.78 a week, compared with income support for a couple with children of £123.35. Because they have no cash, as the noble Baroness has explained, the recipients cannot do many ordinary things, such as buying stamps, taking a bus or making a telephone call. She gave a particularly lurid example of evidence that we heard about a mother who had to undertake all sorts of physical arrangements with her small child as regards apparatus that was needed. My noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach said, in his brief answer a question on asylum support on 24 January, that he was surprised to find that there were two levels of benefit within the asylum system. Indeed, one cannot imagine the motive for building this level of complexity into it.
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Another iniquitous feature of the system is that asylum support was not uprated like other benefits in 2012-13, as the noble Baroness has said, and there are no plans to uprate in 2013-14. It is utterly repugnant that we should impose extra hardship on people who are already desperately poor, including the estimated 10,000 children in asylum-seeking families. Surely, the policy of keeping this group of children at a level of resources that was already well below what was considered necessary for our own citizens, and to allow that level to be eroded by inflation two years in a row, must be contrary to their best interests, and thus a breach of our obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Perhaps my noble friend the Minister would like to comment on that when she winds up.
Would she also comment on the most astonishing of all the panel’s findings; namely, that although it costs three times as much to raise a disabled child, asylum seekers are not eligible for disability living allowance, carer’s allowance or mobility allowance? How can the Government possibly justify depriving these families, who are by definition even more disadvantaged than settled families with disabled children, of the support that is given to every other such family in the country? Surely, that cannot be anything to do with making every penny count towards reducing the deficit when there are any number of ways of raising
this sum needed through the tax system. We are talking about a very trivial sum compared with what the right reverend Prelate discussed as regards a previous amendment.
Last week, when the Minister replying to the debate in Westminster Hall was tackled on this point, he said that,
“those with disabilities or complicated medical problems, who might need extra care or equipment … are supposed to be supported … through local authorities using their powers and duties under both the National Assistance Act 1948 and the Children Act 2004”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/2/13; col. 86WH.]
I should like to ask my noble friend again: will they receive the £53.62 per week payable to a family with a disabled child under income support? Does she guarantee that asylum-seeking families with disabled children are receiving that equivalent sum from the two statutory provisions that the Minister mentioned in another place?
Our panel recommended that Section 4 should be abolished and that the whole system of support for asylum seekers should be aligned with mainstream benefit rates, with appropriate deductions for rent and utilities where there is a formula used in calculating the notional amount for gas, water and electricity in housing benefit claims. The more radical overhaul, dictated by considerations of humanity and fairness, may have to wait until we have got the national overdraft under control. However, we should get rid of Section 4 straightaway. Whether or not the Government are using the forced destitution of families concerned as a means of compelling them to return to the countries which have refused to accept them back, Section 4 is seen by NGOs, as one of our witnesses said, as,
“part of a wider hostile environment to which refused asylum seekers are subjected in an effort to encourage them to return”.
One other matter I want to flag up is the treatment of pregnant women and new mothers within the asylum system, which was highlighted by the Refugee Council and Maternity Action in their recent report, When Maternity Doesn’t Matter. My noble friend Lord Howe told me that officials had met the two NGOs to discuss the report and assured them that the care provided by NHS midwives was appropriate and within NHS guidance. But that was not the whole story. The report showed that the UKBA system of dispersal and relocation impacts adversely on the health and well-being of pregnant women and new mothers, as I told my noble friend in a letter dated 26 February.
Women are being dispersed and relocated as many as six times during pregnancy, which disrupts the care provided otherwise by the midwives. We are talking about an especially vulnerable group in relation to maternity care and pregnancy outcomes. These women may have poor overall health and they may have been affected by traumatic experiences in conflict and war zones such as rape, torture, female genital mutilation or trafficking for sexual exploitation. These experiences will adversely affect their health during pregnancy and as new mothers, and the evidence obtained for this report suggests that they have a maternal mortality rate much higher than the rest of the UK population. Will my noble friend provide an estimate of the rate,
say for 2012, or if the information has not previously been recorded, will she arrange for that to be done from now on?
I suggested to my noble friend Lord Howe that the UKBA’s current policies were resulting in additional costs to the NHS. A woman who is dispersed will need a duplicate booking appointment following dispersal, at a cost of £297. They often need a duplicate scan and follow-up appointment at £281, and there may need to be interpreters at these appointments. The effects on the women’s health of the move itself may also require additional expense, such as days in hospital at £467 per day.
Unfortunately, the total cost to the NHS of dispersing and relocating pregnant women is not ascertainable because no statistics are collected on them. However, according to a freedom of information response, more than 600 women in the asylum system applied for the maternity grant in the first six months of 2011, and the vast majority of these women will have been moved during pregnancy. I have suggested to my noble friend Lord Howe that the Department of Health should hold discussions with the Home Office to ensure that dispersal policies for pregnant women and new mothers are developed that are compatible with NICE guidelines on the maternity care of women with complex social factors. I would like my noble friend, in conclusion, to provide an estimate of the rate for, say, 2012. If the information has not previously been recorded, will she arrange for that to be done from now on?