UK: Asylum support
01 November 1999
While the government is spending almost a year putting in place its asylum support scheme, which will switch provision from local authorities to a home office bureaucracy, the National Asylum Support Service (NASS), its interim support provisions, which came into force on 6 December, show every sign of having been rushed through in haste. They could result in hundreds of asylum-seekers spending Christmas and millennium new year on the streets.
Until now, all asylum-seekers who are ineligible for income support and housing benefit - which includes those who did not apply at the port, and all whose claim has been rejected - are eligible for basic support under the National Assistance Act if they are destitute. The support - which has varied from authority to authority but is generally hostel accommodation and vouchers - has continued for as long as they remain in the country. But the Immigration and Asylum Act's interim provisions make it unlawful for authorities to continue to provide support to single asylum-seekers whose claims have been rejected on appeal, whose need for support "has arisen solely because of destitution or the physical effects of destitution". Thus, it will be illegal to support a rejected asylum-seeker who is starving and suffering from malnutrition, although one who is suffering from a disease which is not a disease of poverty will remain eligible for National Assistance.
The ban on support applies even to those asylum-seekers who cannot leave the UK, either because they don't have travel documents, or because they are ill, or even because their country is in the grip of civil war. The home office is, for example, not returning rejected asylum-seekers to Sierra Leone or Algeria, because of the civil wars going on there. Rejected asylum-seekers who are taking judicial review proceedings are also disqualified from support if they are single. Local authorities were advised to issue two-week eviction notices to all their single rejected asylum-seekers on 6 December, to expire on 20 December.
The Home Office was strongly criticised for this total withdrawal of support (which is also a feature of the main asylum support scheme which comes into force on 1 April 2000), and so, under pressure from critics, it agreed to set up a "hard cases fund". It suggested that refugee groups such as the Refugee Council and Refugee Action, which are signing contracts with the NASS to provide a package of reception facilities and support under the main scheme, should also sign up to administer the "hard cases fund". But the charities have been warned that by taking on this role, they would make themselves vulnerable to legal challenge by asylum-seekers refused help, and so have decided not to touch the fund. It is not known what, if any alternative arrangements the Home Office has made.
Single men and women at the end of the appeal process will therefore have no access to any kind of help from local authorities, and will either be taken in by friends or refugee communities or will be on the streets. There they are likely to be joined by asylum-seekers who reject compulsory dispersal from London, either not going when they are told to, or returning to London. Before 6 December, 80 percent of asylum-seekers stayed in London and Kent. On 6 December, these areas were deemed "full" and new asylum-seekers arriving in London and seeking support will almost invariably be dispersed to another area, probably in the north-east or north-west. Only those with very compelling reasons for staying in London, such as the need for specialised treatment for torture, will be allowed to remain there. Receiving authorities will assume total responsibility for the asylum-seekers sent to them. Up to now, dispersal has been carried out informally, and the sending authority retained responsibility. Local authorities will receive a grand total of £150 per week per single asylum-seeker, £220 for a family, with which to provide<