March 2023

Refugees summary for the period mid March to mid April.

With the third reading of the Illegal Migration Bill due on the 25th April, the main centre of debate this month has been over the accommodation problems for refugees awaiting processing by the Home Office. With the cost of hotels soaring, other possibly cheaper options are being considered. The most notable suggestion has been for housing applicants on the barge Bibby Stockholm off the Dorset coast.

Asylum seekers will be housed in the most basic accommodation possible, including disused army bases, airfields and possibly ships, to save money and to dissuade people from coming to the UK, the government has said. Conservative MPs with possible sites in their constituencies are not happy; one suggestion to use an airfield in Essex has been opposed by Priti Patel, so the plan looks fraught. On the Home Office’s calculations the planned accommodation would take on a total of 5400 single men.

In a Commons statement setting out the next stage in the plans to reduce asylum claims in the UK, Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, said the plans would meet legal requirements to ensure that those who arrived were not made “destitute”, but nothing more.  “We must not elevate the wellbeing of illegal migrants above those of the British people,” he told MPs.

After falling by 17% on last year’s figures, the number of boat arrivals was at a record 1000 last week.

It has been noted that up to one third of the overseas aid budget is now being spent on the domestic asylum system.

Arguments continue about the methods of assessing the age of arrivals claiming to be children. The government intends to continue with its “biological” checks although these have been dismissed as not working. Presently about 15% of those claiming children status are found to be adults.

A 2021 report by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration on an inspection of asylum casework found poor workplace culture, low morale and high attrition. According to a recent letter to the Home Affairs Select Committee the annual attrition in the 2021/2 financial year was 46%. The Inspector cited pressure to meet targets, the downgrading of the decision-maker role in 2014 and poor career progression as key contributing factors to this problem.

A decline in productivity is borne out in official statistics, with the Institute for Government calculating that there has been a 62% decrease in asylum decision making rates between 2011/12 and 2021/22, despite an increase in the number of caseworkers. This demonstrates that simply increasing the number of caseworkers, as proposed by the Prime Minister in December 2022, will not alone address the productivity issues.

Reducing unnecessary processes in the asylum decision-making system could help reduce the asylum backlog. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees have recommended that the UK better triages cases to “enable those with vulnerabilities and/or meritorious claims to obtain the protection they need on a timely basis”, as well as recommending the introduction of simplified asylum case processing, for example through the use of “pre-filled caseload specific templates for interviews”. Applications from countries that have been identified as having high grant rates, such as Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Eritrea and Yemen, could be suitable for such processes.

The Home Office has been accused of “blocking” MPs from helping desperate asylum seeker constituents despite the backlogs in the department. Labour MP Kate Osamor has been seeking to help a family of five, including a newborn, facing imminent homelessness in her Edmonton constituency. They submitted an asylum application last September and are in the usual state of limbo. Ms Osamor says when she contacted the Migrant Help charity on their behalf she was told they were unable to deal with MPs directly. Migrant Help is an advice charity and is the Advice Issue Reporting and Eligibility provider appointed by the Home Office.

When contacted by The Independent, a Migrant Help adviser said: “I am afraid Migrant Help are not contracted to respond to MPs correspondence and have forwarded the attached to the MP correspondence team. Our call handlers will reach out to the service user to see if there is any further support they can provide. I would like to clarify that not responding to MP enquiries is not a Migrant Help policy but a directive given to us by the Home Office as part of our work under the advice, issue reporting and eligibility (AIRE) contract. I have expressed concerns regarding this process”.

AH

February 2023

Those following events in Yemen – somewhat eclipsed in the news by Ukraine – will know that the UK has been involved in supplying weapons to the Saudis, which have caused immense destruction and thousands of deaths. In addition to weapons, UK personnel, including it is reported from the RAF, are involved in advisory capacities being careful to stop short of becoming mercenaries. The scale of weapons sales is over £20bn.

A clear pattern to the Saudi bombings was the attacks on domestic targets including hospitals, schools, weddings and funerals. Despite this, the UK has been keen to continue to allow arms sales and to sign off licences. The Court of Appeal ruled in 2019 that the UK had broken its own arms export laws by continuing to allow this trade to continue.

The Campaign Against the Arms Trade, CAAT, has been doggedly pursuing this matter through the courts and the High Court has allowed a fresh hearing between 31 January and 2 February 2023. This is hopeful and we await the results of this action.

List of activities the group has planned for 2023

Now all completed.

This is a list of activities the Salisbury group has planned for you to note in your diaries. If you can offer to help that would be appreciated but coming along to say ‘hello’ is also welcome. If you are thinking of joining the group, coming along to one or other of these events is a good time to make yourself known and to meet some of us.

• Coffee morning at St Thomas’s Church in the centre of Salisbury on 18 February starting some time after 10 am. finishing at noon.
• Market stall in Salisbury market on 22 April. Early start and also finishing midday sometime. It would also be helpful if you have any items we could sell, please let us know if you have.
• The Beekeeper of Aleppo in the Salisbury Playhouse on 21 – 25 March with two matinees. The Playhouse has very kindly allowed us to have a stand in the foyer so we welcome seeing you there. Volunteers to help man the stand would be helpful as well.
• People in the Park in Queen Elizabeth Gardens on 20 May, all day. This is the postponed event from last year.
• Our next group meeting is on February 9th at 2pm
• We are trying to agree a date for Evensong at the Cathedral and we will let people know the date once agreed.

We look forward to seeing supporters at one or more of these events.

January 2023

This is the monthly report on the refugee situation in the UK thanks to group member Andrew for producing it. Immigration and refugees continues to generate fierce debate in the UK particularly the problem of people arriving by boat having crossed the Channel.

In his speech in the New Year, the Prime Minister declared his intention, among other things, to resolve the issue of small boats crossing the Channel by making it illegal to arrive  by such means and to immediately arrest and deport anyone doing so. This proposal, if made into law, will undoubtedly meet opposition from the European Court of Human Rights, not to mention the House of Lords. The year’s total of boat arrivals ran up to 45,000.

The High Court in December declared the proposed removal of asylum seekers to Rwanda to be lawful. The matter is now under appeal, to be decided by the end of this month (January). The ECHR’s original objection to the policy under Article 3 of the Convention may be reactivated once the appeal is over.

The PM also pledged in his speech to abolish the backlog of asylum cases by the end of the year. The number of decision makers at the Home Office is planning to be quadrupled to 2,400 in pursuit of this aim. The biggest problem he may face, though, is that the Home Office is presently more prone to accept claims than to reject them, obviating the PM’s desire to remove most of the applicants.

Immigration from Albania has been in the news due to a spike in the numbers. While the government maintains that the country is safe to return arrivals to (and the Albanian government agrees!), the issue of “blood feuds” has been touted as one of the reasons for the increase. The government’s view is that there is sufficient protection in Albania for potential victims.

This month marks the anniversary of the establishment of the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme, under which legal routes to settlement in the UK were to be offered. Three pathways were established, 1 for people already here, 2 for those referred by the UNHCR and 3 for those who had worked for the UK. Some 5,000 arrivals were planned for the first year, 20,000 in total. The latest available figures indicate that 6,300 have been given indefinite leave to remain (i.e. pathway 1), four have arrived by pathway 2 and none by pathway 3. Thanks to Caroline Lucas and File on 4 for pointing this up.

The Windrush scandal, the subsequent review made various suggestions, among which was the creation of a Migrants’ Commissioner. It is believed that the Home Secretary is minded to abandon this plan, and also to forego planned extension to the powers of the independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration.

Finally, in a ruling over the Christmas period, the High Court ordered the Home Secretary to increase the weekly support rate for asylum seekers to £45. This was unusual in that the judge used the advice from civil servants to make a mandatory order. There has been no sign that the Home Secretary is likely to appeal.

AH

December 2022

This is the monthly Refugee report with thanks to group member Andrew. Refugees and immigration remain top of the list of concerns, and sometimes anger, by many members of the public. It’s to be regretted that there is little sign of serious debate among sections of the press and politicians. The Conservatives have made a number of promises to reduce numbers to the tens of thousands. The benefits of immigrants to our society seem lost to view.

As the numbers of asylum seekers arriving in the UK continues to grow, attention is turning to ideas for the future processing of claimants.  Among ideas put forward this month are from the think tank Demos with a suggestion to remove the asylum function from the Home Office to “Sanctuary UK”.

The Centre for Policy Studies has a new report out suggesting that “illegal” immigrants (anyone arriving by informal routes) should be refused, detained indefinitely and/or returned to a third country (e.g. Rwanda).  This is reputed to be the system applied in Australia.  The forward to the report was written by the Home Secretary, implying that she favours the ideas.  The UNHCR has criticised the use of the term “illegal” in the report.

It is also reported that the government is thinking to fast track the “white list” procedure, whereby persons arriving from the list of countries deemed to be safe have no right of asylum.  This is presently the case for Albania, to take a topical example, and the government plan seems to be to speed up the process of return for such claimants.

The problem of illegality was shown by the Home Secretary before the Home Affairs select committee, when she was unable to answer Conservative MP Tim Loughton’s question about what he – as a prospective asylum seeker from Africa – could do to come here legally. The answer from the Secretary and her aides was to go through the UNHCR.  It should be noted that the UNHCR approach was used by only 1,066 people in 2022.

It has been confirmed that £1bn of the UK aid budget has been spent on accommodating asylum seekers and refugees, rather than being spent in countries needing aid.

Looking at numbers, the latest net migration figures (the number arriving less the number leaving) is around 500,000, a larger than normal figure following the exceptional circumstances of Hong Kong and Ukraine, plus a large number of students arriving post-pandemic.

Arrivals in small boats account for 45% of claimants for asylum.

In the last couple of months, a number of cases of diphtheria have been found among Irregular arrivals. The 50 known cases have included 1 fatality.

The Home Office has produced a report on the reasons asylum seekers come to the UK, and their main conclusions are that social networks are important, but that neither economic benefits nor the perceived level of granting rights are particularly pull factors.

Finally, it has just been announced that Refugee Week 2023, the 25^th in the series, will run from 19^th to 25^th June and the theme will be “compassion”…

AH