MR KEITH BEST, MR NICK HARDWICK AND SIR ANDREW GREEN

TUESDAY 17 SEPTEMBER 2002

  60. But Mr Hardwick and Mr Best dispute that.
  (Sir Andrew Green) Well, it is in front of them.
  (Mr Best) I am not sure how Sir Andrew can say they are still here. The fact is we do not know whether they are still here or not.

  61. It is a fair bet, Mr Best.
  (Mr Best) It is a fair bet but bear in mind again, Chairman, what I said earlier, the greatest desire for most asylum seekers is to be able to return to their country to live in peace and security there. That only changes once people have been in this country for a substantial length of time, when children start going to school. Where new roots are put down it becomes much more disruptive to then move.

  62. We understand that.
  (Sir Andrew Green) But the whole point about this is that the courts have found they do not have that problem at home and that they should go back, and they are not being removed.

  63. Is anybody disputing seriously the figures Sir Andrew has taken from the Home Office statistics?
  (Mr Hardwick) Unfortunately, I do not have a copy of the actual figures in front of me, so I am at somewhat of a disadvantage.
  (Sir Andrew Green) These are the latest figures.
  (Mr Hardwick) First of all, no-one is disputing that there is a significant number of people who are refused asylum who are not returned, and that is an issue that affects the credibility of the system. That is no doubt the case.

  64. That is obviously a major pull factor.
  (Mr Hardwick) I am not sure I would necessarily accept that. The pull factors are the ones identified. I do not think people have necessarily that kind of knowledge. The other figure that we have talked about—

  65. Stick with this for a moment, Mr Hardwick. You are more likely to go to a country that is unlikely to chuck you out than you are to one that you are pretty certain to get chucked out of.
  (Mr Hardwick) If that were the case and if our removal rates were very different from other European countries, that might well be a pull factor. I do not think you will find our removal rates are significantly different from other EU countries, so I do not necessarily think that is a pull factor. Can I just mention one of the figures that gets lost in this debate. I do not think it is fair to try and say people who get exceptional leave to remain somehow should not be counted. If you are trying to give a fair picture to the public, which MigrationWatch says it is, it is fair to say these are the numbers of people with refugee status, these are the numbers of people granted exceptional leave to remain on compelling humanitarian grounds, and these are the people who are allowed to stay after their case is considered on appeal, and that comes to about 50%. It depends which year you are speaking about.
  (Sir Andrew Green) It is on here. It is 20% and 20%.
  (Mr Hardwick) It depends what period you are talking about. 40%/50%. A much higher figure are allowed to stay than is generally given credence to in the immediate political discourse about this. If we want to be accepting refugees then that is an important figure to get over, but that is not one of the figures that MigrationWatch chooses to push.

  66. We are drifting back into this big bowl of treacle.
  (Sir Andrew Green) They are questions of fact and the facts are in front of you. I agree with Mr Hardwick that it is important the public understand what the facts are, and the facts are that there are two different categories (and they each have their own reasons for sympathy) and one is 20%, and the other is 20; and the real issue is those who are neither.

  67. We have got the broad picture. I think everybody is agreed that the broad picture is that there is a significant number of people whose applications fail who remain here for one reason or another and that must be a pull factor although not necessarily the determining one.
  (Mr Best) There is a fallacy, if I may say so very briefly, surrounding Sir Andrew's argument and that is the belief that those people who are given a limited right to remain in this country then remain permanently; they do not.

  68. What measure is there of the numbers who depart? There is a category on this list "voluntary departures".
  (Mr Best) Those are the voluntary departures that the Home Office know about. Those are where they have sought to take enforcement action and people have gone of their own volition. What we do not know about are the number of people who still go back or leave the country and who are not part of the statistics.

  69. Is there any research of which you are aware on that?
  (Mr Best) That is one of the problems we have; we do not have that kind of information.

  Chairman: We are now going to move on. Mr Prosser?

  70. Before we move on—and I am not talking about the figures—what you have all agreed on is the Home Office research, which was done with some sort of care and included interviews, came up with three or four issues about language, about community groups and about tolerance. You all agree with that evidence and yet MigrationWatch is still saying head and shoulders above that that there is the issue of lots of asylum seekers remaining in this country. On the one side this is rational research and investigation supported by the Council and supported by AIS and on the other hand is the view of Sir Andrew that the real pull factor is nine out of ten are not removed. Is that not the case?
  (Sir Andrew Green) The Chairman made the point himself.

  Mr Prosser: He gave his own view.

  71. I did not give my view at all; I asked questions, which is the object of this exercise.
  (Mr Best) The Committee should be aware, too, of present Home Office policy which is increasingly to grant exceptional leave to remain for only one year and for people to have to apply again for that to be renewed, and of course that can be refused. Also there is a provision in the current Bill which will actually remove the right of appeal against the grant of exceptional leave to remain for less than one year.

  72. I am moving on now to the decision-making process. One of the problems is the inefficiency and the difficulty of making the initial decision and all of the cost and bureaucracy and time delay that causes. How much merit do you see in removing that initial decision-making process away from government?
  (Mr Best) This is something we have advocated. In our paper, we submitted to you a little manifesto that we put out before the last General Election in which we advocate not only an independent documentation centre, which is something which has been looked at by the Government, but also an independent body to actually take the decisions. We accept that it is right, indeed it is necessary, that government should set the policy guidelines for immigration and asylum control, that is very important, but the actual administration of that, if done by an independent body such as in Canada, we feel would take a lot of the political heat out of the whole debate, just as (and I have used the analogy before) with interest rates. Every Chancellor in my political lifetime was accused of fixing interest rates for political reasons until that decision was moved across to the Governor of the Bank of England. I have not heard the Governor ever accused of taking it for particular party political reasons. That is an example of how you can take the heat out of an issue and away from the polemics which have unfortunately dominated the debate on this.
  (Mr Hardwick) This goes right to the heart of the issue—getting the initial decision right and making the decisions credible so that everyone can be assured that people who need protection are quickly identified and allowed to rebuild their lives and people who do not are also promptly identified and sent back. There is probably not much argument across the spectrum. That is the key to the system. I think that is the key to dealing with the removals process. One of the problems with the way that we have approached this is because of the political controversy around the issue. We have had the change in the three-year cycle of policy change which is very difficult, but also the tendency of the Government to go for "big bang" initiatives that sound like they are doing something about it, rather than concentrating on getting those issues right. I think an independent board on the Canadian model by removing some of that day-to-day political controversy would have the effect of stabilising the decision-making and stabilising the process and would have the effect of enabling us to concentrate far more on getting the decision-making right. I agree, focus on the overall political accountability but not subject to the day-to-day political shenanigans.
  (Sir Andrew Green) Chairman, this is a responsibility of Government and the Government should do it. Secondly, I do not think it would remove the heat. It certainly has not removed immigration from the political debate in Canada where it is a hot issue. The fact is that numbers are the problem and that people are much more affected or believe themselves to be much more closely affected by this issue than they are by bank rates. Mortgages are a problem but I think this is a much wider issue and I do not see any mileage.

  73. You are not disagreeing with the suggestion made by the other two witnesses that the system should be made independent on the Canadian model?
  (Sir Andrew Green) I am disagreeing. I do not think it would help. It is the Government's job and they should do it.

  74. On the issue of non-compliance during the initial decision making and specifically the failure to return statement of evidence forms within ten days, can you give any comments on how much difficulty that is causing and how we can get round it?
  (Mr Hardwick) That does cause a problem and often what happens is they try and speed up initial decisions and that merely shifts the blockages later down the system in the appeal process. I believe if you are going to restore credibility to the system, one element is independence. The second element is that each case should be considered substantially at the start of the process. Thirdly, I think we should make sure that people can state their case fully at the beginning by giving them appropriate representation to do that. If those arrangements were in place it would make people much more confident about the outcome of those particular cases, and I think that would remove some of the blockages that now exist to the removal process where that is justified. I am sure you will be aware of the House of Lords Committee which looked at this in detail comprehensively and came to that conclusion. I think they were right to do so.
  (Mr Best) The whole area has been riddled with the concept of "more haste less speed" whether in an attempt to make it more difficult for people to claim or to try to speed up the process, as a genuine thought behind it, I know not. What I do know is that very many of the measures designed to try to speed up things have put those seeking their lawful right to claim asylum under enormous pressures and have not worked and have put a bulge in the system, whether it is in the procedure rules for making an application to the immigration appeal tribunal (which ended up, because the tribunal itself could not deal with the applications, all being granted by default) or whether it is trying to submit statement of evidence forms within ten working days when there is no guarantee that you will have access to a free translator or interpreter to help you do it. I have campaigned for a long time to try to get those forms in the language of the applicant. That has been refused. All we have had from the Home Office in response is the guidance notes in different languages. That is a welcome step forward, but it still does not overcome the problem that somebody inarticulate in the English language, probably not even able to write in the English language has to submit a form within ten days. This is against the backdrop of a Government which says it is not necessary for people in those circumstances at that stage to have access to legal advice. What it is doing is making the system more incomprehensible and more difficult to administer and everybody suffers as a result of that, not just the asylum seeker.

  75. Would you agree on making the form in the language of the asylum seeker?
  (Mr Best) Absolutely, yes I would.

  76. What about increasing the ten-day limit; would you do that?
  (Mr Best) I think that the ten-day limit can be observed if people have access to proper advice and indeed to those skills that are needed in order to do it, such as translation and interpreting, but until that is done then one would have to look at extending it. Again Mr Prosser was referring to the non-compliance figures, which reached 38% at some stage of people whose claims were not even being properly considered simply because they did not comply with these ridiculous time limits.

  77. And it would be fair to say that a large number of successful appeals are for people who for one reason or another have not managed to get their forms in on time?
  (Mr Best) Yes.

  78. Was the answer yes? Can we move on.
  (Mr Best) The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has actually said that if you have a high successful appeals figures then there is something wrong with the system. You ought to have a zero successful appeal rate really if you are getting the initial decisions right.

  79. I would not make that point too loudly because the Home Office might organise that!
  (Mr Hardwick) The answer to the question is yes.