Covid-19: Support and Accommodation for Asylum Seekers

Before we move on, I would like to say that my thoughts and, I am sure, those of the House are with those injured in Glasgow at the weekend.

(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary if she will make a statement on support and accommodation for asylum seekers during the covid-19 pandemic.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for those kind words; they will mean an awful lot to my constituents.

My thoughts and those of the Home Secretary and, I am sure, the entire House are with the victims of the appalling knife attack that happened in Glasgow on Friday afternoon. I would like to pay tribute to the brave first responders who, as always, ran towards danger to protect the public. They include Police Scotland hero David Whyte, who was very sadly seriously wounded. The suspect has been named as Badreddin Abadlla Adam, a 28-year-old asylum seeker originally from Sudan. The House will appreciate that I am able to provide only limited information on this case while the investigation is under way, but I can talk about the United Kingdom’s proud history of supporting asylum seekers.

Last year, the United Kingdom made 20,000 grants of protection or asylum, one of the highest numbers of any country in Europe. We welcomed more than 3,000 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, the highest number of any country in Europe. Indeed, it made up 20% of Europe’s UASC intake.

The UK has a statutory obligation to provide destitute asylum seekers with support while their case is being considered. While asylum cases are being considered, asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute are provided with free accommodation. The utilities are paid for, council tax is paid for, and free healthcare on the NHS is available. Free education is available for those with children, and there is a cash allowance to cover other essential living needs, which recently increased by 5%, considerably more than inflation. The package needs to be viewed as a whole.

During the coronavirus pandemic, we have stepped up the help available to go beyond the statutory requirements that I have just laid out. We have paused the usual practice of asking people to move on from supported accommodation when their asylum claim is decided either positively or negatively, so that they can remain in supported asylum accommodation. As a consequence of that decision, which was implemented on 27 March, around 4,000 more people are in supported accommodation than was the case at the end of March, because people are still coming into the system, but nobody is moving on. We have therefore been frantically procuring additional accommodation around the country to meet that additional need. The circumstances in Glasgow are slightly different, but I suspect we will come on to the specifics of Glasgow, so I will answer those questions in due course. That is the principal measure we have taken to ensure that people seeking asylum have been looked after and protected during the coronavirus epidemic.

There have been two deaths in hotel accommodation in Glasgow Central since the start of lockdown: Adnan Elbi in McLays Guest House at the start of May, and Badreddin Abadlla Adam, who was shot dead on Friday after carrying out a shocking knife attack, which left three asylum seekers, two Park Inn hotel staff and Police Constable David Whyte in hospital. My thoughts are with them and their loved ones, and my thanks go to the emergency services who so bravely and swiftly dealt with a terrifying situation.

The Minister came to the House less than two weeks ago to hear the concerns raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens). Our concerns persist. At the start of lockdown, the Home Office contractor Mears moved 321 people from initial accommodation in serviced flats across Glasgow into city centre hotels. It did not consult, as it is obliged to do, with Glasgow City Council or anyone else. Contrary to the oral and written evidence given to the Home Affairs Committee by Mears boss John Taylor, those people included pregnant women, trafficked women, torture victims, family groups and vulnerable people, young people included, two of whom ended up in hospital on Friday. They were given little notice: according to the Scottish Refugee Council, one family with food on the hob and clothes in the washing machine were given half an hour to gather their belongings.

One of my constituents was a friend of Adnan, who died in McLay’s Guest House. He has faced extreme trauma because of that and has asked to be moved, but is still in that guest house two months later.

I have some questions for the Minister. First, which Whitehall source led the BBC to report that three people had been found dead, which was not true and caused a great deal of distress in my constituency? Mears has misled Committee members—elected Members—and has now admitted that no vulnerability assessments were carried out. When did the Minister find out that Mears had lied to everybody about this, and will he suspend its contract? Will he immediately reinstate the meagre £5.37 a day to allow asylum seekers a small but important degree of dignity? Will he halt any evictions while this outbreak is going on? Will he work with Glasgow City Council, organisations in Glasgow, the Scottish Government and asylum seekers themselves to return them to appropriate accommodation as soon as possible? Will he authorise an independent inquiry into asylum accommodation, which is very urgently needed? Lastly, will he take responsibility and apologise for a saga that has heaped trauma on to already vulnerable people in Glasgow and across the UK?

I thank the hon. Lady for those questions. She started by asking about the move of 321 people in Glasgow from serviced apartments into hotel accommodation, which occurred around the end of March. That was a separate process from the one I described earlier, involving the extra 4,000 places. The contractor, Mears, moved those 321 people from the serviced apartments into hotels because it was judged that, as the coronavirus epidemic took hold, the serviced apartments were not appropriate and not safe. It was done for safety reasons, and that has been entirely borne out by the subsequent statistics. Glasgow accommodates slightly over 5,000 asylum seekers, as the hon. Lady will know—many of them are in her constituency—and during the coronavirus epidemic over the last three months or so, of those over 5,000 service users, only two have tested positive for coronavirus, and both, I am pleased to say, have fully recovered. Among those people accommodated in hotels there has not been a single confirmed case of coronavirus. So the steps being taken to safeguard the public, and to safeguard the asylum seekers in particular, have been successful.

The hon. Lady asked about the plans for the future, and I can confirm that it is our plan to move people out of those hotels into more regular mainstream accommodation as quickly as possible. That was always the intention; it was only ever a temporary measure, and that applies to hotel accommodation, of course, in the rest of the United Kingdom as well as in Scotland. But I would say that these hotels are of good quality. The one involved on Friday was a three-star Radisson hotel; it was a good hotel with substantial facilities, including en suite showers for every single room.

The hon. Lady asked about evictions and whether people are being asked to move on, as would ordinarily be the case. That is currently not happening, as she knows, following the announcement on 27 March, but in due course, as life returns a little bit more to normal and now that the ban on moving home has ended, we will be returning to normal over time, but it will be done in a very careful and phased way. Nothing will be done in a rush, and I would point out that those who have successful asylum grants will actually be better off with universal credit when they move on, so it is in their interests as well.

May I start, Mr Speaker, by associating myself with the sympathies you offered to the people of Glasgow on this horrible attack?

I agree with my hon. Friend the Minister that we have a proud history of helping those most in need. Does he agree that those who abuse asylum make it harder for those who are genuinely vulnerable, and can he confirm that the Home Office is committed to reforming the system, so that it can make swifter judgments and truly work for those most in need?

I thank my hon. Friend for his question, and he is right. Some asylum claims are meritorious—obviously, many are—and we should work quickly and humanely to grant those applications and offer help on integrating into UK society. But where there are meritless asylum claims, we need to make sure those are equally identified and rejected quickly, because it is unfair on the British public as a whole and on genuine asylum claimants if unmeritorious claims take up too much time in our system.

Let me start by thanking the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) for securing this important urgent question and the Minister for his initial response. Once again, I wish to pay tribute to the extraordinary bravery and dedication of our emergency service workers. I know that the whole House is united in sending our gratitude to PC David Whyte and our best wishes for his recovery, just as we send our best wishes for the recovery of all those injured in this tragic attack. PC Whyte was part of a policing team who responded quickly and skilfully to keep people from danger, and he and his colleagues will have our heartfelt admiration and respect. Working alongside our magnificent NHS, they were able to save lives on Friday, but this worrying incident clearly poses a number of serious questions.

We are sympathetic to the speed with which additional accommodation has had to be sought for asylum seekers, at different stages of the asylum process, in the interests of public health when we were going into lockdown. However, this tragic attack is an important reminder of why it is vital to deliver the correct, balanced approach to housing and related support services for asylum seekers, as well as supporting the wider community. As a result, there are a number of questions I would like to ask the Minister.

At the weekend, the Home Secretary suggested that this type of accommodation had been allocated because of the covid-19 crisis. However, we know that there is an ongoing problem, which predates the crisis, of people having been housed in what is deemed to be “initial accommodation” for prolonged periods before being moved into more appropriate dispersal accommodation. Can the Minister clarify how many asylum seekers are in initial accommodation compared with the number in dispersal accommodation across the country? Will he update the House about the duration of stays for asylum seekers at the Park Inn hotel in Glasgow? Will he share with the House what vulnerability and risk assessments the Home Office and service providers are currently conducting when placing people in asylum support accommodation, in order to ensure that people have the support they need, including access to mental health support? Finally, what work is being undertaken to identify the risk factors that could have been spotted in this attacker, and how will that change future practice?

I thank the shadow Minister for her question. I should take this opportunity to welcome her to her place, and I look forward to many exchanges across the Dispatch Box in the months and perhaps, if we are lucky, years ahead. She asked about the numbers of people being supported in asylum accommodation. We currently have 44,000 people being supported under section 95 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 and some 4,000 people being supported under section 4; pre-coronavirus, we had about 48,000 people supported. The number has increased dramatically in the past four or five years—it has almost doubled in that period—so we are growing our asylum accommodation estate in order to cater for that increase. Of course, we are trying to get people into dispersed accommodation—the more stable accommodation—as much as we can. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) pointed out, the more we can make sure we can look after meritorious claims quickly but dismiss unmeritorious claims, the less pressure there will be on asylum accommodation in the first place.

Every asylum seeker is subjected to a risk assessment, on health and on other grounds, at the point of receipt into the system. I do not want to comment too much on this individual’s case, but when he first made one of his asylum claims—he made two—he flagged a health vulnerability, but it was a minor physical vulnerability, not anything that could have had anything to do with what happened on Friday. I assure the hon. Lady that those assessments do take place and there are round-the-clock facilities for asylum seekers to report any health or other issues that they may have.

I thank the Minister for his answers thus far. Clearly, he is right to extol the virtues, which we in this country hold dear, of extending our hands and arms to those who are fleeing and who are extremely vulnerable. Many of them will have come from war-torn areas of the globe. Some of them will be dangerous to other asylum seekers and the British public, so what measures will he look at to assess those individuals’ risk of violence towards the British public and other asylum seekers?

My hon. Friend, as always, makes a very good point. As I said in response to the shadow Minister a moment ago, risk assessments take place at the point of arrival and on an ongoing basis. I assure him that with asylum seekers, whenever UK Visas and Immigration identifies risk to others, appropriate action will always be taken. Everybody’s vigilance will be elevated to even higher levels after the incident on Friday.

This was a devastating incident, and we, too, wish all six who are in hospital a full recovery. We pay tribute to Constable Whyte and his colleagues in the emergency services for their bravery. Our thoughts are also with the wider asylum community in Glasgow.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) is absolutely right; there must be an independent inquiry, because huge questions persist as to why there was a mass move to hotels, how it was implemented and the extent to which vulnerabilities were or were not assessed. A huge gap has grown between the system that the Minister describes and reality as it has been described to us by people working on the ground.

For now, our focus must be on supporting people, so will the Home Office contribute funding for vital counselling and other support? Will the Minister reinstate even the pitiful cash support for individuals who are still in hotels? Will he ensure that the exit strategy is shared and consulted on with Glasgow City Council and other key partners? Will he maintain the pause in evictions? Will he speak to the leader of Glasgow City Council—a vital partner—as well as the Scottish Government? Finally, will he acknowledge that people are angry about what has happened, and that there are concerns that the Home Office’s approach to the asylum system has become so hands-off that it risks becoming a Cinderella service?

The hon. Gentleman asked whether we would have discussions with Glasgow City Council about the ongoing asylum accommodation estate in that fine city, and of course we will. I believe that discussions took place this afternoon—in the last two or three hours—between Home Office officials and Glasgow City Council on the very topic of moving people out of hotels and into more stable accommodation.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned healthcare. Healthcare for asylum seekers, wherever they may be in the country, is taken care of by the local NHS or, in the case of Glasgow, by the Bridge Project, which is co-ordinated by Glasgow City Council. I have every confidence in the service that Glasgow City Council and the NHS in Scotland provide.

The hon. Gentleman asked about meeting Glasgow City Council, and I would be very happy to meet its leader at any time. As I mentioned, I will be meeting Glasgow MPs, if not later this week, certainly next week. On the question of restarting move-ons, I have been very clear that as the country returns to normal, so we would expect the asylum system to return to normal. In a measured, phased and careful way, we will return to the system as it was before, which worked extremely well, but we will be extremely thoughtful in the way we do that.

What marks a society out is how we treat our most vulnerable. I believe that the UK has a strong track record and should be proud of being one of the few countries during the covid lockdown still to take in unaccompanied minors. However, I am concerned about what will happen next year if we do not have replacement schemes in place. Can my hon. Friend give me assurances that those schemes will continue next year, especially for unaccompanied minors and for family reunion?

My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to our extremely proud record. I have already referred to the fact that we took in more unaccompanied asylum-seeking children last year than any other European country. We also took in some Dublin children during the coronavirus epidemic. About six or eight weeks ago, we took in a number from Greece who had been accommodated in the camps. We were pretty much the only European country allowing Dublin returns of that kind during coronavirus, which says a great deal about this country’s proud track record.

In terms of the future, clearly we are in the process of negotiation at the moment. An amendment to the Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill, on Report tomorrow, has been tabled but, as required by statute, the Government are negotiating with the European Union in good faith to secure a replacement agreement for Dublin, to allow the reciprocal reunification of unaccompanied children—in both directions. A few weeks ago, we tabled a detailed legal case to facilitate that, and more negotiations are happening this week, I believe. I am sure that all of us in this House hope that those negotiations on a reciprocal basis are successful.

We will debate those issues tomorrow. It is important that there are guarantees that young people can join family who are here and who can care for them, whatever reciprocal arrangements are in place.

May I ask the Minister specifically about support for asylum accommodation? I join you, Mr Speaker, and Members across the House in sending our best wishes to those affected by the awful incident in Glasgow. The Home Affairs Committee has been told repeatedly of serious concerns about asylum seekers being left in hotel accommodation for long periods and about the rushed move of so many people into hotel accommodation in Glasgow during the crisis. Given that the Minister must have been asked about and consulted on those moves of people into hotel accommodation, why did he not consider providing additional financial support—otherwise it is withdrawn from people in hotel accommodation —that they could have used for things such as hand sanitation, additional food needs or basic provisions that they could not get?

The reason for the rapid move, which we discussed earlier, around the end of March, was the unsuitable conditions in the serviced apartments. That is why those 321 people were moved. As I said, it has been successful in that not a single one of the people moved into hotels in Glasgow has tested positive for coronavirus.

The right hon. Lady asked about the financial element. When someone is in dispersed accommodation or a serviced department, they get the allowance, which is principally to cover food and some other essentials. When they move into a hotel, all those things like food, the hand sanitiser she referred to, hygiene products, laundry services and so on are provided by the hotel, removing the need for the cash grant.