UK
Stop ‘vilifying’ asylum seekers and let them work, says former refugees minister


Charles Hymas
Fri, December 23, 2022 

Lord Harrington was commissioned by David Cameron to set up a scheme to bring 20,000 Syrian refugees to the UK - Aaron Chown/PA

Ministers should ditch their “mad” work ban on asylum seekers who could plug labour shortages, says the former refugees minister.

Tory peer Lord Harrington has joined a growing Tory backbench rebellion over the Government’s restrictions which bar asylum seekers from working while they await the outcome of their applications.

They are only allowed to work in specific shortage areas after a year but senior Tories including former ministers Sir Robert Buckland and Tim Loughton and now Lord Harrington believe it should be relaxed to at least six months.

It has also been backed by the Government’s official migration advisers - the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) - which warned lengthy delays in processing applications “directly harm” the integration of asylum seekers and their ability to work in the long term.

Some 90,000 of the 147,000 asylum seekers have been waiting more than six months for an initial decision, with nearly eight in 10 eventually having their applications approved.

‘Wants nothing better than to work’

Lord Harrington accused politicians of “vilifying” asylum seekers without having ever met any and warned that denying them the chance to work would only isolate them further.

“That asylum seekers are not allowed to work [is] something which I think is mad since every one I have met in my life wants nothing better than to work,” he said at the launch of a campaign Action Asylum.

Lord Harrington said he had become concerned about the plight of asylum seekers in the UK when he was commissioned by David Cameron, then Prime Minister, to set up a scheme to bring 20,000 Syrian refugees to the UK.

The former MP was subsequently appointed refugees minister by Boris Johnson to help set up a scheme to provide sanctuary to more than 100,000 Ukrainians in Britons’ homes.

“The world of asylum seekers began to really upset me. What I had seen as part of the Syrian refugee programme for people who get here in other methods, I objected to the way politicians vilify asylum seekers without ever having met one in their lives,” said Lord Harrington.

“When you look at polling of people who have very strong views about asylum seekers, they are in areas where there has hardly been any. They are not people living in Birmingham, Leicester, Watford or places like that.

“I am afraid it is a shocking indictment of what politics is about. I am not just saying this because of the Conservative Party. I think it’s a thing about a lot of politicians because it is easy to say to the electorate things like we have to stop asylum seekers coming.”
‘Avoid vast expense for hotels’

Lord Harrington urged the Government to consider replicating the Homes for Ukraine scheme - where families are paid £350 a month to put up asylum seekers - with migrants from other countries to reduce the £5.5 million a day cost of housing them in hotels.

“For me, that type of accommodation where people are immediately meeting people in the general community in which they live because they are in people’s homes can avoid the vast expense that the Government has got for hotels,” he said.

MAC chair Prof Brian Bell has urged the Government to lift the work ban which he said were locking tens of thousands of people out of the labour market. “We’re losing their skills and their human capital and that’s a real problem for the economy,” he said.

Sir Robert said he did not think it was a “particularly controversial” measure, just “practical and right”.

He said: “As we confer the right to work on our friends from Ukraine who are arriving in our country, who are fleeing war and persecution, why not then do the same for others who are seeking asylum and fleeing persecution?”

“I have long felt that the waste that we see with regard to, not just lives but also expenditure, when asylum seekers have to stay very often for years in a state of limbo before knowing their position, whether it is to be accepted or not, it is unnecessary.”