BBC On The Record - Broadcast: 18.02.01

Film: David Grossman reports on the government's failure to stop the influx of asylum seekers to the UK.



DAVID GROSSMAN: Two dozen miles from the English coast, the disused aircraft hangers of the Sangatte Red Cross camp on the edge of Calais. This is, according to the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, a base for illegal immigrants to make repeated attempts to enter the UK. The French authorities neither process nor repatriate the 850 people at Sangatte. After travelling for thousands of miles to get to the UK they're held up on the very doorstep. The British Government's response to the hundreds of thousands of people moving across Europe has been one of deterrence, trying to stop them attempting to get into Britain. But that policy say critics has clearly failed. Indeed, most of the people I've spoken to at this camp are trying to get across the Channel. What's needed it's argued is a rethink MARTIN LINTON MP: We don't have an adequate mechanism for ensuring that (a) illegal immigrants don't come in in the first place and (b) where they do, and they apply for asylum and are refused, that they do return to their countries. So we do need a quicker system, a better system, better technology and we do need also some better degree of internal checks to make sure that the system works. ANNE WIDDECOMBE MP: The government system has failed completely, it has failed to deter flimsy and insubstantial applications, it has produced record numbers of applicants, it has failed abysmally to remove those who are refused and it has failed the genuine asylum seeker who is caught up in a very complicated bureaucratic system that he doesn't understand. GROSSMAN: The route from the Sangatte to Britain is well trodden. Calais' busy ferry port is just a short walk from the gates of the camp The British Government's trying to deter those with no right to asylum by replacing cash benefits for applicants with vouchers, yet the flow of people continues undaunted. Dover bound lorries are plentiful. All that's needed is a loose tarpaulin or a willing driver. Pressure groups have attacked the vouchers for stigmatising asylum seekers - but in terms of the government's own aim of deterring it's clear they haven't worked. NICK HARDWICK: I think vouchers have absolutely no role to play in why people do or don't come to the UK. The idea that people in Afghanistan are sitting down, making a calculation as to whether they're going to come to France or England on the basis of you know where they can get vouchers and how much they're worth is absurd. PROFESSOR ELSPETH GUILD: From the research which has been carried out, we certainly have indications that benefit levels are not a factor which attracts or deters. If we look at the rise in the number of asylum seekers since the introduction of vouchers, it would, following the government's logic, indicate that vouchers actually attract asylum seekers. In terms of efficiency, are vouchers an efficient way of taking care of asylum seekers? That would seem to be clearly answered in the no, the ministers have admitted to Parliament that vouchers are much more expensive than keeping asylum seekers in the benefits system. GROSSMAN: The government says that between April and September of last year vouchers with a total face value of 5.1 million pounds were distributed to asylum seekers. But the administrative cost of running the voucher scheme over the same period was 6.1 million. The government is reviewing the voucher scheme after claims that it causes hardship, but ministers seem unclear as to whether it provides any real deterrent. Do the vouchers work? Do they deter? BARBARA ROCHE MP: We think that the voucher scheme is working reasonably well but they've been criticisms that have been made at it. There are some people, for example, who object to it in principle. We are looking at the scheme at the moment and we're looking in detail at those criticisms. GROSSMAN: Do you think they deter? ROCHE: I think you have to look at I think you have to look at the whole picture. What is it that we want to do? Clearly, we want to deter people who come here for a variety of reasons. For economic reasons. To take advantage of a cash benefits system. GROSSMAN: At Calais docks the trucks are searched prior to loading. These aren't French officials but employees of P&O. The British Government has introduced fines of two thousand pounds for each illegal arrival detected, so it pays the company to make sure everything's shipshape. But many are still getting through, last year over seventy-six thousand people arrived in Britain and requested asylum. No-one knows how may more entered the country undiscovered only to disappear, with no ID cards Britain is very easy to hide in. LINTON: If you can get through the border controls as an illegal immigrant and into the UK, once you're here there are surprisingly few checks on your right to remain here. And the same applies of course if you're a visitor or a student and you over stay. So that compared to France or even Denmark or Germany where you're constantly being asked for your identity or your national insurance number, in this country you can do pretty well anything, short of maybe applying for a job in the Civil Service and nobody is going to check up. GROSSMAN: The Home Secretary, Jack Straw, says that just as the problem of asylum seekers is an international one - so any solution must come through international agreement, particularly between EU states. But negotiating any agreement promises to be very difficult and the success record of asylum treaties is at best mixed. There are two main agreements that govern Britain's responsibilities to asylum seekers. The 1951 UN Convention signed with Nazi atrocities fresh in the world's memory, obliges governments to shelter those fleeing persecution. More recently there's the 1990 EU Dublin convention which says that refugees must apply for asylum in the first member state they reach and that if they don't they can be sent back to that country later on. Even the Conservatives who signed the Dublin convention admit it is fatally flawed . WIDDECOMBE: Of course it's very difficult to prove which was the first safe country, by the time somebody arrives at Calais, they can have crossed several European countries, never mind by the time they arrive in London, or wherever. So it is actually quite difficult to prove which was the absolute first safe country that they came to. GROSSMAN: Steering thirty-thousand tons of steel across the busiest shipping route in the world takes some doing. The route could get a little bit busier if Tony Blair has his way. He wants the French to take back all the illegal arrivals that come from France. While Mr Blair believes he's plotted a rather neat course around the obstacles of the Dublin convention, the French seem less than ready to join the excursion. Indeed it's very difficult to see what's in it for them. At the Cahor Summit earlier this month, the French president, Jacques Chirac, was understandably none too keen on the plan, but did at least agree that the Dublin convention needs changing. ROCHE: We have called for there to be a radical rethink of Dublin, that's actually taking place and if you look at the summit that was in France - the Anglo-French Summit that took place last week - there was a reaffirmation there, by France and by the UK, by Tony Blair, by the Prime Minister, that we would reaffirm our commitment to looking at Dublin and that the EU should look again at Dublin and that's to be very much warmly welcomed. GUILD: Even if we could get France to take them back, and we managed to put them on a boat, what's to prevent them turning round and coming back again? The system doesn't work because it..it does not involve the agreement of the individual. The fact that asylum seekers can move from France to the UK, apparently without a huge amount of difficulty, indicates the difficulty of relying on the myth of border controls, that they are in fact effective. GROSSMAN: Britain's asylum system is entering uncertain waters. If supposed deterrents like vouchers aren't working and we can't rely on our European partners to check the flow of migrants, what can be done? According to opposition parties, the simple answer is to speed up the way asylum applications are processed. At the moment, there's a backlog of over sixty-six-thousand claims and even when a decision is made, sometimes the appeals process can go on for years. LINTON: We still have people in my constituency who have been waiting six or seven years just to get their asylum claims heard. Now, that has not only been an enormous waste of time keeping them here, you know, I mean ridiculously long time to consider them for. But also it is as you say in itself a pull factor. They come here because it's going to take so long and secondly, even when they have their asylum case heard and it's refused and they appeal and the appeal is refused and they're due for deportation back to their countries of origin, even then it's taken so long up to now for the enforcement procedure to actually get hold of them and put them on a flight and send them back home. So that's another reason why they come. Because it's... they know it's going to be so difficult to send them home. GROSSMAN: If someone can avoid detection long enough to get into Britain and they're determined to stay, the odds seem firmly with them. Last week the Immigration Officers' union said forced removals were running at only about twelve per month. The government disputes that figure. But the Home Affairs Select Committee says the government's been dilatory in enforcing removals, a factor which the committee says is a big part of Britain's attraction. SIMON HUGHES MP: There's never been a very good system for dealing with people after their application has been dealt with. I have many constituency case experiences, as do many Members of Parliament, where the Home Office don't know what's happened to people, let alone anybody else. The Home Affairs Select Committee came up with a report on an all party basis the other day, which suggested a way forward. It suggested that you do have a system of better monitoring and better tracking people through the process. ROCHE: Well what I think the Select Committee are saying in their Report is that we need to do more. I think they recognise that we made record numbers last year of nine-thousand, doubling the Tories but we need to do more and ... GROSSMAN: Dilatory, doesn't sound .... ROCHE: Well, what Select Committees are there to do, quite rightly - I was a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee myself at one stage, are to make sure that the government, the Executive, does more. We agree with them, we do need to do more. GROSSMAN: Journey's end in sight. But this is a view that the tens of thousands of economic migrants who arrive here every year never see, hidden as they are in the back of lorries and vans. But it's not the scenery but jobs which attract them. With no legal route open for unskilled economic migrants, claiming asylum becomes the only way. HUGHES: If you have a system whereby many people can apply as economic migrants, apply from their own country, apply in another country and get permission to come and work here, then many people who at the moment are claiming right to asylum, who actually may have a less strong right to that, but are determined to stay in the country, are getting round the system and failing, instead of having a system that works both for our interests and theirs. GROSSMAN: The streets of Dover are where the thousands of new arrivals first see the UK. It's clear that Britain's serious duty to provide asylum for those in desperate need has become hopelessly entangled with the understandable desire of thousands more for a better life. But with an election coming - and the issue already keenly contested - the chances of getting any fundamental change in policy soon, seem slim.
NB. This transcript was typed from a transcription unit recording and not copied from an original script. Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy.