My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, who spoke with such sincerity. I support these amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, and others. I am grateful to the noble Lord for mentioning absconding again. I hope we will get an early answer on that.
Amendment 230 would include a right of appeal against the decision not to provide support. There is a small army of campaigners on this matter out there, some of them in the House of Commons where this was a major issue in the last debate on the Bill. One of the campaigners was called Iain Duncan Smith. The Minister may already know that in a 2008 report, Mr Duncan Smith said that the then Labour Government were using forced destitution as a means of encouraging people to leave voluntarily. He said that it was a “failed policy”; only one in five left voluntarily. The same Home Office is again aiming to squeeze Section 95 and Section 95(9A) on support and to narrow down the eligibility of families of so-called refused asylum seekers, although I have never liked that term. That may even prevent, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, local authorities supporting children and families under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989. We were debating this in October, as the noble Baroness said, under the Motion to annul, and arguing whether £5 was enough for a person to live on. If you take into consideration food and clothing—shoes, for example—it is not. There are some sad examples of mothers and children facing destitution, and worse. These are taken from serious case reviews, which I shall not relate now, but they convinced me that the Government have to think again.
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