My Lords, it is an absolute pleasure to follow both my noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett—who is hard working to the point perhaps of being a Stakhanovite—and also the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar. I have added my name to Amendment 64 from the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, but I support the thrust of both of these amendments. I think this is a total no-brainer—forgive me, I really do. I have always thought this. I have been working around this area all my adult life and I have never understood the logic of Governments of both persuasions, over the years, prohibiting this category of humanity from working, at the same time as trying to get other categories to “jolly well get on and work”, not be dependent on the state and not be dependent on benefits: “Don’t be scroungers—just get out and work”. It seems so illogical to have this strange bifurcation.
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Briefly, I think this is a no-brainer, essentially for four reasons. Obviously, a bleeding heart like me would say that it is good for these people. It is good for a human being to be able to make a contribution. Coming into this place, day after day, we see many noble Lords who, let us be honest, are past the average retirement age, and many who are well able to live off their own means without the need for the daily allowance or anything such as that—and still they come. They make their contributions, and you can see how good it is for them, frankly.
I will not embarrass my noble friend Lord Dubs, but he is extraordinary: like a man of 25. Forgive me, but I do think there is something so special about being able to come to work and make your contribution. Not everyone will make their contribution in the legislature, but people make their contribution in places of work up and down this country. It is innate in the human condition that people are better off and will live a healthier life—both in terms of physical health and emotional health—if they are able to work in some way. It is good for your dignity and your mental health. That is the first argument: it is really good for these people, who have had a terrible time. It is a good thing for them to be doing.
Secondly, it is really good for the community. I have had the privilege of working with many refugees and asylum seekers over the years. Some of them are very highly skilled people. In their countries of origin, some of them were doctors, lawyers, teachers and engineers. Even the ones who were not could be contributing in all sorts of areas of our service economy at a time when we are told by Ministers, including a few hours ago at Questions, that employers are crying
out for skilled and unskilled labour. So it is really good for the community and the economy. It would be good for the Exchequer, because these people would be paying their own way, would not be dependent on state provision, and would be paying tax.
That is great, but in the end, for me, the strongest argument of all, perhaps, is how good it would be for cohesion, and how good it would be for the discourse around refugees and asylum seekers that has been toxified for years, because of this othering and this fear, stoked by certain people, with their numbers and their fearmongering and so on. It would be so good for the public discourse around these human beings, and the contribution they could make, if they were not just living in the community—as opposed to in a military barracks on the edge of town for everybody to be afraid of—but working side-by-side with British citizens.
Given that I think this is such a great idea and such a no-brainer, what is the problem? Well, it is, of course, that argument that my noble friend referred to and that we have heard mentioned many times already in this Committee: the so-called pull factor. I find that phrase pretty hideous because, if you take the bare logic of it to its conclusion, you are literally, as I suggested the other day, talking about creating a hostile environment in order to discourage people from doing what is their right under the refugee convention and seeking asylum. So I do not like the logic; I do not like the argument. Like others we have heard from, I have not seen the evidence for it. I do not think, when people are deciding to escape or deciding where to go, they are going to do it on the basis of whether they would be able to work, as opposed to being provided for by the state, before their claim is settled.
Actually, I would rather think of this policy as a push factor. The push is not on the refugees and the asylum seekers but on the Home Office, frankly, to jolly well get on and make these decisions, make them well so that they will not be subject to successful appeal, and make them swiftly. Both of these amendments are about the Secretary of State regulating people applying for permission after a period of time.
We can debate whether it should be three months or six months; it should be a relatively short period of time, but long enough for an initial sound and swift decision on an asylum claim. It is a push factor that I am looking for on my former colleagues in the Home Office. I say that with no disrespect to them; it is a tough old department. I left it over 20 years ago—I was not removed; it was a voluntary departure—and know that it is a tough place to work that is, if noble Lords will forgive me for saying so, made harder when Ministers, of whatever persuasion, are tough on the people who work there. It is Ministers who set the tone of that department, and nobody can treat people humanely at work if they do not feel that they are being respected and treated humanely themselves.
Finally, I mentioned the other day in Committee that neither party has the monopoly on advice or virtue when it comes to refugee and asylum policy. That is the negative side of things. To be more positive, as I want to be in this debate on this imaginative group of amendments, the prizing of work is something that we find in all major political traditions in this country.
Sometimes the veneration of work is too idealistic, because of course some work is back-breaking and boring and so on. None the less, it is a very Conservative, and perfectly Liberal and Labour, idea to say that people should have a right—perhaps even a duty—to work. So why can we not tap into that tradition in this part of the Bill? If the Minister could embrace this, she might be singularly responsible for making one of the most imaginative and positive leaps forward in asylum policy and discourse in this country’s history.