Month: July 2024

28 July 2024: Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network welcomes measures to restore asylum rights

Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network (QARN) welcomes some of the changes being made by the Labour Party in its initial weeks in Government, specifically the ending of the use of the ‘Bibby Stockholm’ and other inappropriate housing, abolishing the policy to remove people seeking asylum to Rwanda, lifting the ban on people claiming asylum who arrive in UK for example on small boats. We will celebrate when the UK re-engages with the Refugee Convention and European Convention on Human Rights.

We wait to see how the Government intends to manage its promise to ‘fast-track’ asylum claims and to tackle the backlog which has held so many people waiting to build a life over many years. We hope to see proven alternatives to immigration detention rolled out and existing detention centres closed. In addition, the UK should work constructively with other countries, especially in Europe, to assist refugees. This includes creating safe routes, so people do not need to risk their lives.

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22 July 2024: Guardian: Failed Rwanda deportation scheme cost £700m, says Yvette Cooper

Home secretary describes Tory policy that Labour has axed as ‘the biggest waste of taxpayer money I have ever seen’

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/22/failed-rwanda-deportation-scheme-cost-700m-says-yvette-cooper

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19 July 2024: Guardian: Home Office will decide asylum claims of thousands stuck in Rwanda scheme limbo

Previous UK government had built up backlog of 90,000 people whose claims it deemed ‘inadmissible’

Thousands of asylum seekers left in limbo for more than two years as they awaited a decision on the Rwanda scheme will now have their cases decided in the UK.

The decision, revealed during a high court challenge on Friday, is a sharp shift in position from the previous government, which had passed various laws declaring that the claims of those who arrived after January 2022 were “inadmissible” – and so could not be processed in the UK.

But on Friday, the court heard how the new home secretary had pledged to process the claims of those threatened with removal under the Migration and Economic Development Partnership (MEDP) in Britain. Keir Starmer scrapped the Rwanda scheme upon entering Downing Street.

A preliminary hearing in London had already been scheduled, however, in order to hear the progress of the claims of two asylum seekers who had claimed the Home Office had acted unlawfully by delaying its decision over their applications.

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20 July 2024: Open Democracy: Revealed: Investigation finds Home Office has no complete record of companies housing almost 100,000 asylum seekers

The government is failing to monitor private firms holding asylum accommodation contracts worth billions of pounds, openDemocracy and Liberty Investigates can reveal.

A joint investigation has found that the Home Office holds no centralised data on the performances of its three main accommodation providers – Serco, Mears and Clearsprings Ready Homes – which together house almost all of the 100,000 asylum seekers in government accommodation.

In 2019, these firms were awarded public contracts initially estimated to be worth £4bn over 10 years, though costs have since spiralled. Earlier this year the National Audit Office said it expects the Home Office to have spent “£3.1bn on hotels” in the financial year ending in March 2024 alone.

The three companies often act as middlemen – placing asylum seekers in hotels or other accommodation owned by firms in their networks. But our investigation has revealed that the Home Office’s most recent lists of all the subcontracted providers are five years out of date.

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15 July 2024: Guardian: ‘Sheer torment’: Home Office apologises after asylum approvals retracted

Some asylum seekers told to cut up residence permits after believing they had been granted leave to remain

The Home Office has apologised to asylum seekers granted leave to remain in the UK who then had their decisions retracted.

In some cases applicants were sent residence permits before being told by officials to cut them up.

Charities said they had seen a number of cases where people celebrated getting leave to remain and believed they were safe at last only to be told days or weeks later that a mistake had been made. Officials declined to say how many people had been affected by this error.

In one case an asylum seeker was jubilant after receiving a letter from Home Office officials stating: “Your claim for asylum has been successful and you have been granted refugee status and five years permission to remain in the UK.”

“I was so happy to receive this letter,” the asylum seeker said. “I and my family had been left in limbo for two years not knowing what was going to happen to me. But then a few weeks later I got another letter telling me the Home Office had made a mistake, that I hadn’t received refugee status after all and that I had to destroy the biometric residence permits they sent me.”

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We look for justice and compassion in our asylum and immigration system, and truth, transparency and integrity in the work of this new Government

This is the Labour Party’s Immigration and Border Policy just prior to being elected into Government on 4 July 2024: https://labour.org.uk/updates/stories/labours-immigration-and-border-policy-stop-small-boats/

This is our vision: QARN – What do Quakers hope for, after the 2024 General Election:

Continue reading “General Election 2024: For the Record”