The local press in Dover has dubbed them “tunnel rats”, while the Home Office is proposing to ship them to dispersal centres. What can social services do to ease the pain and pressure for asylum seekers, asks Judy Hirst

The local press in Dover has dubbed them “tunnel rats”, while
the Home Office is proposing to ship them to dispersal centres.
What can social services do to ease the pain and pressure for
asylum seekers, asks Judy Hirst

The local press in Dover has dubbed them “tunnel rats”, while
the Home Office is proposing to ship them to dispersal centres.
What can social services do to ease the pain and pressure for
asylum seekers, asks Judy Hirst

ALIENSHORE

Victor is a bright, articulate 17-year-old. He wants to go to
university to study computing, and is working hard for his A levels
in maths, biology and physics. With his near-perfect estuary
English, he looks and sounds much like any other teenager in the
Channel port of Dover.

There’s just one difference between Victor and his mates. Unlike
them, he arrived in this country as an “unaccompanied minor” in the
back of a lorry, at the age of 14. And unlike them, he could be
sent back to his home country, Albania, at any time.

Alena is a Romany from Slovakia. She fled here in 1996 with her
children, to escape persecution. She was attacked several times by
skinheads in her home town – once with an iron bar when she was
pregnant with her third child. “The police were no help – they
threatened me and ransacked my house,” she says.

Victor and Alena are just two of the 1,300 asylum seekers
(including 600 school-age children) being supported by Kent social
services. Many of them are Kosovars, Albanians and Czech or Slovak
Roma. Most are from areas of conflict, where age-old animosities
have recently become inflamed. Many bear the physical and emotional
scars of their trauma. Now, in the sleepy seaside towns of Kent,
they face intense hostility of a different kind.

“Tunnel rats” is how the local papers describe incoming asylum
seekers, who are collectively accused of “taking you for a ride”.
Stories about Slovakian women selling sex “for the price of a
potato” and spreading sexually

Not fair, and fraught with danger

Not fair, and fraught with danger

The government’s Immigration and Asylum Bill will mean radical
changes to the way asylum seekers are supported and will affect
local authorities’ responsibilities towards one of the most
vulnerable groups in our society, writes Nick Hardwick.

Asylum seekers will lose all rights to state welfare benefits
and local authorities will no longer have responsibilities to
destitute asylum seekers under the National Assistance Act 1948 or
the Children Act 1989. Instead asylum seekers will receive support
in kind from a centrally funded agency. These changes have far
reaching implications for all asylum seekers and those working with
them.

The government proposes the following support arrangements for
asylum seekers:

n No entitlement to welfare benefits. Vouchers and direct aid
will be given to those who are destitute. For the first time those
with children will be included in the cashless system. Long-term
items will not be funded because the government says it will deal
with applications quickly.

n Destitute asylum seekers will be offered accommodation in
“designated areas” where there is a “ready supply of housing
stock”. There will be only one non-negotiable offer and the asylum
seeker will not be able to choose where in the country she or he
wants to live.

n Local authorities will be asked to help provide housing
accommodation.

If not enough volunteer there will be obligatory designated
areas, chosen for their spare housing accommodation.

n All unaccompanied asylum seekers under 18 will continue to be
dealt with under the Children Act 1989.

The biggest objection to the proposed system is that it excludes
asylum seekers from the minimum standards of social support
normally provided in this country, separates them from friends,
family and community and leaves them living in accommodation
rejected as unfit by others. It is difficult to see how such a
system will work in practice without cash to buy bus tickets,
toiletries and necessities for children. It is alarming that for
the first time the Children Act is to be amended to exclude asylum
seeking families from some of its provisions.

The proposed system has been welcomed by local authorities as it
places responsibility for service provision back on to central
government. One of the intentions is to relieve the pressure on
many London authorities by dispersing asylum seekers throughout the
country. Local authorities, which previously may have had little
experience in meeting the needs of asylum seekers, will need to
prepare for the steep learning curve ahead. Access to education,
social services, health services and interpreters will be of
primary importance.

Asylum seekers are already one of the most impoverished
communities in the UK and the new proposals will further exacerbate
the problems of social exclusion.

If the government is intent on taking asylum seekers out of the
welfare benefits system, the following are essential:

n Accommodation should be in areas with proper support
facilities such as education and legal advice.

n They should be given a reasonable cash allowance.

n They should have some choice over where they are sent.

n The numerous powers to make secondary regulations contained in
the Bill should be clearly defined and subject to proper
Parliamentary scrutiny.

The government has the opportunity to remedy some of the damage
created by previous reforms of the system. Let us hope they do not
squander the chance by taking tough and unfair measures.

Nick Hardwick is chief executive, The Refugee Council

Victor is a bright, articulate 17-year-old. He wants to go to
university to study computing, and is working hard for his A levels
in maths, biology and physics. With his near-perfect estuary
English, he looks and sounds much like any other teenager in the
Channel port of Dover.

There’s just one difference between Victor and his mates. Unlike
them, he arrived in this country as an “unaccompanied minor” in the
back of a lorry, at the age of 14. And unlike them, he could be
sent back to his home country, Albania, at any time.

Alena is a Romany from Slovakia. She fled here in 1996 with her
children, to escape persecution. She was attacked several times by
skinheads in her home town – once with an iron bar when she was
pregnant with her third child. “The police were no help – they
threatened me and ransacked my house,” she says.

Victor and Alena are just two of the 1,300 asylum seekers
(including 600 school-age children) being supported by Kent social
services. Many of them are Kosovars, Albanians and Czech or Slovak
Roma. Most are from areas of conflict, where age-old animosities
have recently become inflamed. Many bear the physical and emotional
scars of their trauma. Now, in the sleepy seaside towns of Kent,
they face intense hostility of a different kind.

“Tunnel rats” is how the local papers describe incoming asylum
seekers, who are collectively accused of “taking you for a ride”.
Stories about Slovakian women selling sex “for the price of a
potato” and spreading sexually transmitted diseases to the locals
are also staple fare. The coverage reached a crescendo in December,
with bogus reports that local people had been denied NHS treatment
due to disused wards being reopened to accommodate an influx of
Romanian Roma.

In this climate of race-hate, there have been anonymous threats
to torch the buildings where asylum seekers are housed – and death
threats to Kent social services director, Peter Gilroy, on his
ex-directory home number as well as at work. His staff have also
been threatened and abused.

“It’s been a very difficult time. A certain amount of abuse and
displaced anger from the public comes with the territory,” says
Gilroy. “But this is different. The racist nature of the response
has been a shock.” As far as he’s concerned, by providing for the
needs of destitute asylum seekers – at an annual cost of £4
million to Kent social services – his staff are simply doing what’s
required by law: “Some people believe the ratepayers are losing
out, or claim the asylum seekers are illegal. But it’s not our job
to make value judgements about whether these people should be here
or not.”

Kent is not the only authority struggling to cope with its role
as an unofficial support agency, created by the withdrawal of
benefits from large numbers of asylum seekers in 1996. Since that
time it has been the responsibility of local authorities to
accommodate and support destitute asylum seekers under the National
Assistance Act 1948 and the Children Act 1989. And following a High
Court ruling, this has had to be done in a cashless form, via
vouchers, meals-on-wheels or other services in kind.

Nationally the number of asylum applications rose from 32,000 in
1997 to 46,000 in 1998, with the majority concentrated in London
and the south-east. Geoff Alltimes, social services director for
Hammersmith & Fulham – and Association of Directors of Social
Services spokesperson on the issue – says that a number of London
authorities, including his own, now have more asylum seekers on
their books than elderly people or looked-after children. “Last
year it cost us £11 million, and not all of that is paid back
by government grants. There’s enormous pressure on resources in
London, and a real shortage of suitable accommodation.”

This has led to desperate measures, such as plans (since
dropped) by five authorities to house asylum seekers on a ship on
the Thames; some councils, such as Southwark, taking over major
hotels for this purpose; and growing numbers of asylum seekers
being transferred from London boroughs to far-flung parts of the
country, such as Liverpool, Leeds and Stoke, as well as to other
parts of the south-east.

This state of affairs, which Alltimes says is a direct result of
“the problem being dumped on us by central government”, has led to
some unseemly spats between local authorities. In Kent, for
example, social services staff claim that some London councils have
been sending back asylum seekers who are not the county’s
responsibility, but had arrived at a local port of entry; whole
families have apparently been turning up in the early hours at Kent
social services offices, having been “returned to sender” by London
colleagues.

Kent County Council has issued a statement to London social
services directors about their respective responsibilities. But it
has also taken the lead in initiating a southern England
“consortium” of local authorities, to co-ordinate the placement and
dispersal of asylum seekers on a regional basis. Martin Ayres, who
oversees asylum-seeker policy in Kent, describes it candidly as an
act of self-interest. “Basically we decided there was no more room
at the inn. All the hostile media coverage has made it even harder
to get B&B accommodation for asylum-seeker families, and
community tensions are rising. We think it’s better to deal with
the situation in a planned way.”

The Local Government Association and the Association of London
Government are heavily promoting the idea of regional consortia
nationally, and embryonic partnerships are emerging throughout the
country. The government strongly backs the concept too, because it
hopes the consortia will provide a transitional system for the
dispersal arrangements that are central to the new Immigration and
Asylum Bill.

Under the proposed legislation (see panel), the Home Secretary
will have reserve powers to create “reception zones” to house
asylum seekers in local authorities outside south-east England.
Asylum seekers will have no choice about where they live, and all
remaining rights to welfare benefits will be abolished. Instead
they will face a subsistence system based on vouchers, plus a
weekly cash allowance of a few pounds. The Children Act and other
legislation are to be amended to remove responsibility for
destitute asylum seekers from local authorities. The entire system
will be overseen by a new Home Office-run national agency, which
will probably sub-contract work regionally and locally.

Local authorities – particularly in the south-east – have
welcomed the fact that central government is resuming
responsibility for supporting asylum seekers. But there is disquiet
among social services staff about the voucher-based subsistence
system, which they know from bitter experience is often chaotic and
unworkable; and outright horror on the part of agencies working
with refugees and asylum seekers at the national dispersal
arrangements. “It’s a nightmare scenario,” says Naaz Coker, senior
adviser on race and diversity at the King’s Fund. “Many asylum
seekers come here having already been badly treated. Some are
victims of torture. Many have lost or left behind family and
friends. Now they face the prospect of being foisted on communities
that are unwilling and unprepared to take them, without the
specialist health and advice services they need.”

She fears that the hostility to asylum seekers witnessed in Kent
could easily be repeated in isolated areas around the country. The
Refugee Council and Asylum Aid share similar concerns, and point to
the shortage of immigration lawyers and interpreters outside of the
London area as a serious practical problem.

Alison Harvey, parliamentary liaison officer for the Medical
Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, is particularly
worried about the implications of removing local authorities’
obligations to asylum-seeker children and families. “There will be
tremendous confusion on the part of social services departments
about their duties to asylum-seeker children in need, or adults
with disabilities or mental health problems. The idea that the Home
Office agency is going to find suitable accommodation and transport
for these people, or enable them to access local supermarkets with
their vouchers, is frankly laughable.”

The voucher system is a fraught issue in itself. In East Kent,
where Peter Brown runs the nine-strong social services
asylum-seeker team, an inordinate amount of time is spent sorting
out wrangles with the electricity board or local supermarkets over
whether or not to honour the tokens. And for the asylum seekers, it
instantly marks them out as different when they turn up in shops
with their vouchers. “It’s an administrative nightmare, very
demeaning for the people using them, and thoroughly inefficient.
Vouchers are definitely not the answer,” he says.

However, the government has set its mind against any return to
the benefits system, on the – totally unsubstantiated – grounds
that this would act as an irresistible magnet for anyone from
eastern Europe, Afghanistan, Somalia or Sri Lanka thinking of
coming here. In fact, far from Britain being a “soft touch” for
foreigners, we spend much less on asylum seekers than many other
European countries, and come 11th in terms of the number of
refugees per head of population. According to Medical Aid, if the
government believed its own claims about creating a faster, as well
as firmer and fairer, system, it would be logical to return to
benefit payments, which in the short run work out cheaper than
vouchers or other support in kind.

But perhaps that’s not really the point. Despite all the
official denials about dumping asylum seekers on sink estates in
unwelcoming reception zones, the likely outcome of the new support
arrangements could be just that. At stakeholder group meetings
ministers and civil servants are talking enthusiastically about the
number of asylum seekers reaching a “critical mass” in the new,
dispersed “cluster areas”, creating a welcoming environment for the
35-40 per cent who are eventually allowed to stay.

As an exercise in New Labour social engineering, it sounds
audacious. But back in the real world, the message coming across is
that is will soon be even harder and less attractive to seek asylum
in the UK than ever before.

For the moment, in Dover, Alena and her children count
themselves among the lucky ones: they’ve just been granted
exceptional leave to remain. Meanwhile Victor, who barely speaks
Albanian any more – and has everything to fear from a country where
his father was thrown into jail – has had his asylum application
turned down a second time. “All I want is to finish my studies and
get a job,” he says – adding, without a trace of irony, “and a
chance to live in the Free World”. CC

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