Letters: Rights of asylum seekers
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Your support makes all the difference.Sir: The Government should not be seeking to amend the Asylum and Immigration Bill now nearing its final stages in the House of Lords ("Lilley attempts to reverse asylum ruling", 25 June). Rather, it should withdraw the Bill entirely and take this opportunity to reflect on and amend its entire approach towards the right of asylum.
In common with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Government's own Social Security Advisory Committee (SSAC) and all agencies working with and on behalf of those seeking asylum in the UK, the Court of Appeal has concluded that the Social Security Regulations enacted in February "have the effect of rendering (genuine refugees') ostensible statutory right to a proper consideration of their claims valueless in practice".
Whatever ministers may say about their aim of "discouraging bogus asylum- seekers", the regulations make no attempt to discriminate between genuine and "bogus" asylum claims. Accordingly, and as the Court of Appeal has emphasised, "it can hardly be doubted that some genuine asylum-seekers, as well as bogus ones, are likely to be deterred by penury from pursuing their claims and thus be forced to return to the very persecution which they have sought to escape."
In response, Mr Lilley has claimed that the Court of Appeal ruled only on the "narrow" issue that primary legislation should have been used. In fact, the Court's decision was found on the ground that "rights necessarily implicit in the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act 1993 are now inevitably being overborne (by the regulations)" and "Parliament cannot have intended a significant number of genuine asylum-seekers to be impaled on the horns of so intolerable a dilemma: the need either to abandon their claims to refugee status or alternatively to maintain them as best they can but in a state of utter destitution".
The fact that one arm of the Government's two-fold attack on the right of asylum should be found so wanting by the courts raises serious questions about the second: the Asylum and Immigration Bill. As with the regulations, the Bill was introduced without the benefit of prior consultation with those who have to make the asylum process work, let alone a White Paper.
It is the view of many of those with experience of asylum matters that the Bill's provisions are as unworkable as they are unjust. What is needed is a sensible and properly-resourced procedure that can fully resolve asylum cases both fairly and expeditiously - thus minimising the burden on public funds.
The Court of Appeal has provided an opportunity to pause and reflect - to the benefit of the taxpayer as well as the refugee.
RICHARD DUNSTAN
Refugee Office
Amnesty International
London EC1
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