UK: Immigration and asylum: Developments under Labour (feature)
01 July 1997
Legislation
The Special Appeals Commission Bill seeks to cure the lack of appeal rights for those excluded or deported from Britain on national security grounds, identified by the European Court of Human Rights as violative of the fundamental right to have detention judicially supervised. The court's judgment came after Sikh dissident Karamjit Singh Chahal had been detained for deportation to India for six years on unidentified national security grounds despite his strong claim to refugee status (see Statewatch, vol 6 no 6).
The Bill, introduced in the House of Lords in June, bears the stamp of being drafted by the security services. Rules under the Bill will allow the commission to withhold from the appellant full particulars of the reasons for the decision to deport, and to hold hearings in the absence of the appellant and of his legal representative. Evidence obtained from phone taps is expressly made admissible.
Hardly surprising that Lord Chancellor Irvine's bill to incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law will not go so far as to allow the courts to overturn primary legislation: if it did, this Bill would be a prime candidate.
Despite all the promises, no section of the infamous Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 has been repealed. Not section 1, which established the "white list" of safe countries of origin, bringing the curtailment of appeal rights and the presumption of safety. Similarly, and ominously, the employer sanctions imposed by section 8, fining any employer who hires someone who doesn't have immigration permission to take the job, remains on the statute book, although the Home Office says it will not be enforced.
Restore benefits
The worst legacy of the period of Conservative government is section 11, which deprives in-country and rejected asylum-seekers of basic subsistence benefits. While the Home Office can argue that other sections of the Act no longer bite, despite remaining technically in force, it cannot say the same of section 11, which affected over 13,000 asylum-seekers in the six months from its entry into force in July 1996, and continues to throw hundreds into destitution
and despair every month. A report from the Refugee Council, Just Existence, followed 15 asylum-seekers denied benefits for three months from October to December 1996. They were drawn from most of the main refugee-producing countries. Some were suffering the after-effects of torture; one had shrapnel lodged in his skull. During the survey period, two attempted suicide. Refused benefits, they became the responsibility of their local authority under the National Assistance Act 1948. They lived in hostels for the homeless, most of which had no cooking facilities; one five-months-pregnant woman and her husband were given an unfurnished flat with no furniture (not even a bed), no blankets and no cooking equipment. Some received cash for food (subsequently outlawed by the High Court), some vouchers, some simply soup kitchen addresses. None received any help towards toiletries or sanitary requirements, or fares, or telephone calls. Most had no idea how to register with a doctor, were afraid to seek medical treatment, and did not know how to claim free prescriptions. One man, refused benefits in error, felt liberated when he began to receive housing benefit and 90% of income support.
Restoration of benefits to asylum-seekers should have been the government's first action in the field of immigration. That this could have been left untreated with over parliament's summer break sends out an ominous signal about Labour priorities.
Rules
The primary purpose rule is, so far, the only rule to have been abolished by Labour. Its abolition means that a non-EU spouse must show only that the couple intend to live together permanently and that they can support and accommodate themselves adequately without recourse to public funds, in order to be allowed in to Bri