My Lords, I again thank noble Lords who have spoken on these two amendments. The fact that there were only two amendments in this group did not make the debate any less fulsome.
I will say at the outset that the conclusion on right to work was made primarily on the grounds not of the pull factor but of the integrity of the labour market, and an impact assessment will be published on this in due course. But the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, is absolutely right that the policy has been in place since 2002. He says that things have not changed in that time in terms of people still wanting to come to this country, but I think that the global situation to draw people to this country probably has changed since 2002. I do not say that in a mischievous way at all—the world has changed and, therefore, people are more likely to want to come to this country, particularly when the economy is so good.
The noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, and the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, talked about polls, but I will not go into the merits and demerits of them: they are what they are and, as the noble Lord, Lord Green, said, it depends on the question that you ask. But the biggest poll that we have had in recent years was of course the 2019 general election, and that point about taking back control of our borders was at the heart of it.
Our current policy allows asylum seekers to work in the UK if their claim has been outstanding for 12 months, through no fault of their own. However, as the noble Lords, Lord Green and Lord Alton, were absolutely right to say, the best way to deal with people’s claims being outstanding for 12 months is to speed the process up in its entirety.
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Those permitted to work may apply for jobs on the shortage occupation list, which is based on expert advice from the MAC. Our right to work policy does not operate in isolation. We must ensure that it supports our objectives elsewhere in the immigration system and that it does not offer people the opportunity to undercut our position on our economic migration policy or our manifesto commitments by simply lodging an asylum claim—which would also increase intake and reduce our ability to focus resource on the most vulnerable. That is why the policy is designed in the way that it is. The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, made the point that asylum support is impossible to live on, and that people on asylum support have to pay council tax and utility bills. I say to her that the Home Office pays those bills for destitute asylum seekers—just to correct the record.
If the policy were amended as proposed, it would enable people to access the very same jobs for which we require a visa application process. It would offer people a clear means of circumventing our visa routes by making asylum claims. Not only is such behaviour reprehensible but it detracts from our ability to support the most vulnerable. To relax the policy would be totally to undermine everything that the British people
voted for in 2019. On my noble friend Lord Bethell’s point on labour shortages, we have offered time-limited visas to nearly 5,000 HGV drivers in the food supply chain, to 5,500 poultry workers and to 800 butchers to ease the supply chain pressures during exceptional circumstances this year. It was a temporary emergency measure, and it recognised the extraordinary circumstances facing the UK food supply chain. The Government continue to support those industries in solving this issue in the long term by making those roles more attractive to UK workers with better pay and working conditions.
Where reasons for coming to the UK include family or economic considerations, applications should be made via the relevant route, either through the new points-based immigration system or the refugee family reunion rules. We have been clear that asylum seekers who wish to come to the UK must do so through safe and legal routes, the details of which all noble Lords should now have. Otherwise, they must claim in the first safe country, and that is the fastest route to safety.
We cannot discount the risk of encouraging even more channel crossings by relaxing our asylum seeker right to work policy. With the tragic events of recent months, we cannot have a policy which in any way increases those risks. I do not agree that there is no evidence for pull factors to the UK, but I acknowledge that the picture is complex and further research is certainly required in this area. The push factors do not explain secondary movements to this country. A 2016 paper from the Overseas Development Institute on the role of asylum policy in migrant decision-making concluded that essential services and the economy are crucial in this respect. I would like to quote one particularly instructive section:
“Many of those we interviewed expressed a desire to find work in the places they had ended up in, and talked about that as one of the things that drew them there originally … nearly half of those we spoke to cited aspects of public policy at destination, such as education and labour markets, as motivations that shaped the migration decision-making process.”
I am not suggesting that labour markets are the only factor in what is, without doubt, a very complex process, but I do not think it is controversial to hold that migrants will naturally make calculations about how to maximise their and their families’ life chances after they have fled their home country, and that this will lead to consideration of which country offers the best chances in this respect. In short, there is a reason why, according to UNHCR figures, Germany has seen more than 2.5 million people claim asylum between 2011 and 2020—that amounts to about 3% of its population. Poland, however, a geographically comparable country next door to Germany, has seen around 82,000 claimants—0.2% of its population—in the same period. Evidence from countries that provide a right to work shows that they continue to provide accommodation—this goes to the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and my noble friend Lord Bethell—and weekly support rates, so it is not necessarily true that asylum seekers would be independent. Moreover, and I am sure that noble Lords know this, asylum seekers are perfectly entitled to volunteer, and quite often do, in the communities in which they live.
None of this is to suggest that those people are not in need of protection; it suggests that many people flee their home countries and then choose their final
destination based on particular criteria rather than claiming asylum in the first safe country. We cannot therefore discount the risk of even more channel crossings on that point.
In light of the above, I remain of the view that this is not a policy amendment that we can possibly support. We must focus our resources on fixing the broken asylum system—as noble Lords have acknowledged—reducing pull factors, speeding up asylum claims and ensuring that our policies do not encourage people to undercut the resident labour market or our economic migration visa routes. I hope on that basis that noble Lords will not press their amendments.