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No change from Labour, whatever the Observer says
The Observer article below welcomes Labour leader Keir Starmer’s statement on Labour’s approach to small boats, people smugglers, deportations and refugee policy generally. In contrast to the left’s view that there is little to “differentiate a possible future Labour government from the present Conservative one”, it claims to detect “a sharp dividing line between the government and Labour on asylum policy.” It says Labour is offering a humane, pragmatic and commonsense approach in contrast to the Tories’ populism and its “cruel, unworkable policy”.
The paper is right to say that the government has removed the right of all migrants who have arrived in small boats to claim asylum, when most of them would qualify for refugee status if they did; it is right to deplore the measures the government have introduced “to detain them until they can be deported to another country for their claim to be processed”; in the light of the government’s keenness to deport asylum seekers it deems to be “illegal”, the article is right to point out that no deportation deals have been achieved with any country except Rwanda (and the Supreme Court has yet to rule on the legality of that deal); it is also right to criticise the backlog the government has allowed to develop in the processing of asylum claims, so that “83% of claims made in 2018 had not been processed five years later”. The article is right to condemn the Tory policy package.
But the Observer is wrong to say that the “real difference” between Labour and the Tories is that Labour “would scrap the government’s unworkable and cruel detention and deportation policies, restoring the right of people to claim asylum in the UK.” It will do this, the Observer seems to believe, by investing in “1,000 extra case workers and a returns unit of 1,000 staff to process claims much more quickly and deport those whose claims are rejected.” This would work because Labour would come to a deal with the European Union (EU) “in which the UK would accept a quota of refugees in exchange for being able to return those who cross the Channel in small boats.” But even if such a deal could be reached, we would still be left, under Labour, with the same old “detention and deportation” policy. None of the refugees in small boats will have their claims considered here. If the Observer thinks that shunting vulnerable and desperate people around Europe as they wait for decisions on their future is what it calls “a far better approach”, so be it. The refugees may not agree. Moreover, in the same article, the Observer admits that “pan-European cooperation has never worked well in the bloc and has broken down further in recent years.” The Observer must know it’s clutching at straws.
But there is one thing Starmer has to do before we can believe in this tale of “differentiation” between Labour and the Tories on asylum. He has to commit the Labour Party to repealing the Illegal Migration Act 2022. While the Act remains, Tory policy remains unchanged. Unless it is repealed, there can be no “differentiation” between the parties. In its guidance to the Act, the government makes clear that
anyone arriving illegally in the United Kingdom will not have their asylum claim, human rights claim or modern slavery referral considered while they are in the UK, but they will instead be promptly removed either to their home country or to a safe third country to have their protection claims processed there. (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/37/notes/division/3/index.htm)
Obviously the Act must be repealed. But both Starmer and shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock have refused to commit to repealing it. While it stands, so does the policy.
The article begins by setting the “Observer view” in the context of Starmer’s political approach as a whole. Keir Starmer, it says,
has made clear that under his leadership a first-term Labour government would stick to tough fiscal rules, and has ruled out making any unfunded spending commitments in the run-up to the next election. That has fuelled criticism from some on the left of his party, who argue that this has limited the extent to which he has been able to differentiate a possible future Labour government from the present Conservative one.
It says Starmer’s asylum policy makes Labour different. It doesn’t.
What that means for our voting intentions next year is up to us all. But it puts a very big strain on mine.
“The Secretary of State [still] doesn’t believe you”
Read this Guardian article: it describes the UK asylum process at its most crucial point (the asylum interview, when individuals are given their main chance to explain why they are seeking asylum). It says that “many asylum interviews are rushed, biased and resolved by ‘cut and paste’ decisions.”
The article contains little that wasn’t known before – but these facts don’t often get publicly aired. The research I did between 2004 and 2009 on the treatment of asylum seekers is now out of date in many ways: it couldn’t have taken into account the upsurge in migration of more recent years, when people struggled across continents, many drowning in the Mediterranean. So to that extent it is out of date. But the story that emerges from this article of how asylum decisions are made today hasn’t changed since I wrote. The treatment of asylum seekers by the Home Office is cynical, ignorant, cruel and shameful. I will focus on just a few of the points raised in the article.
Because of the pressure from Home Office targets (“225 interviews or decision reports a year”), one former caseworker says: “You would have your own stock paragraphs that you put into refusal minutes.” Caseworkers say to themselves, “I’ll just sort of cut and paste the decision I did last week.” This is certainly common practice. But I see it not just as a desperate attempt by the caseworker to “get the job done”, but also as part of the structure of the asylum system. The Home Office gives this cut-and-paste approach official encouragement with its own stockpile of paragraphs which caseworkers are encouraged to use routinely when compiling their reports. So it is not enough for us to find fault with individual caseworkers or for caseworkers to blame themselves. Here is one of the Home Office’s ready-made paragraphs intended to help caseworkers in their task of refusing claims:
Further doubts as to your alleged fear of persecution can be drawn from the fact that you did not leave [COUNTRY] until [DATE]. The Secretary of State holds the view that if your fear of persecution by the [COUNTRY] authorities was genuine you would have left [COUNTRY] at the earliest opportunity and the fact that you did not casts doubt on your credibility.
Of course, many reasons may govern the timing of a refugee‘s departure: the need to find an agent, raise funds to pay the agent (e.g. by selling property), obtain false documents. Even if the journey is through normal channels there will be family concerns which cause delay. Moreover, members of opposition groups committed to political change do not tend to give up their cause easily and may maintain their activism until the last moment. But the cut-and-paste approach discourages any attempt to take these considerations seriously and tends to assume the asylum seeker’s guilt. So an Ethiopian asylum seeker was told that because he had been arrested in January but didn’t leave until May, this delay “detracts from the truthfulness of your claim to be a genuine asylum seeker.”
I met an asylum seeker from Iran who was treated in a similar way. Reza (not his real name) was a member of a political party whose members suffered persecution. After a demonstration in July 2000, during which one of his friends was killed and another went missing, his house was raided by the police and his father-in-law taken in for questioning, Reza and his wife Maryam went into hiding and a senior party member “advised me to get out of Iran if I could”. Even then he hesitated: “I had a family in Iran, I had a lot of property in Iran, I did not want to leave. But I was frightened for my safety.” None of this was unreasonable or slow. In the event he made the arrangements quite quickly – financial and travel arrangements, false passports – and left in September. Unfortunately, none of this impressed his caseworker, who insisted that his departure was tardy: “The Secretary of State holds the view that if your fear of persecution by the Iranian authorities were genuine, you would have left Iran at the earliest opportunity, and the fact that you did not do so casts doubt upon your credibility”, which happens to match exactly the wording of the prepared paragraph from the Home Office stockpile quoted above.
The article mentions transcripts of asylum interviews where “it was evident the caseworker knew very little about the case”, in the context of the pressure to meet the targets, and that was no surprise to me. But pressure to meet targets is not the only worry we should have here: I found that the ignorance of the caseworker often stemmed from Home Office Country Information reports which frequently lacked certain kinds of information entirely or were out of date. Ignorance is a feature of the system. What happens if an asylum seeker claims persecution because of membership of a political party but the party is not mentioned in the Country Report? One caseworker told researchers in 2003:
We need to know whether particular groups or political parties exist, but instead we are told to say that the Secretary of State is not aware of this group so therefore it is unlikely to be of interest to the authorities. But really they have no information on whether the group existed.
This ignorance is then turned into a denial of the asylum seeker’s credibility. A Kurd from Syria was told in his refusal letter:
The basis of your claim is that you fear persecution in Syria because of your political beliefs. You are a member of the Hergirtin. The Secretary of State is not aware that this party actually exists.
Asylum application refused. But, on appeal, the adjudicator discovered that Amnesty International knew of the party’s existence and its long history. Appeal allowed. The Syrian Kurd probably had a good solicitor who had done the necessary research. Not everyone is as lucky by any means and the caseworker (quoted in the article) was right to call the asylum process a “lottery”.
The article says there is a “culture of disrespect” among caseworkers and describes a culture in which jokes are made about asylum applicants, even going so far as to joke about them being tortured. I came across an early example of canteen culture in my research, where an Afghan asylum seeker had clearly been the butt of cynical jokes about his claim, ending in a spoof letter which declared his asylum claim “a pile of pants”. This version of the refusal letter was accidentally sent to his solicitor. According to The Guardian,
Naomi Nicholson, a case worker with the Refugee Legal Centre … had to explain the meaning of the letter to her client … “I was trying to paraphrase the letter starting from the top, but when I got to the fourth paragraph I didn’t know what to say, I was so shocked,” Ms Nicholson said. “I was very embarrassed. It was my country that was saying this to him.” Immigration staff tried to replace the letter with a hurriedly amended one that merely states “the Secretary of State is not satisfied that you have established that you are an Afghan national.”
I could go on, but this is enough. But just to end: anyone who gets frustrated with the sight and sound of Theresa May or Jeremy Hunt answering every question about the NHS with the mantra: “This government has provided more money, more doctors, more nurses, more everything than any previous government …” will understand my frustration at seeing another worn-out phrase near the end of the article: “The UK has a proud history”, says the Home Office, “of providing protection to those who need it.” I have seen and heard this phrase more times than I’ve had hot dinners. It does not reflect the reality of many an asylum seeker’s experience. Neither does the other phrase deployed by Her Majesty’s civil servants in the name, and with the permission, of their Secretaries of State: all asylum claims are “dealt with on their merits”. That was the title of my thesis when I finished my research. But I put a question mark at the end.
Read the article.
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