Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con)

My Lords, I declare my interests as chairman of the Human Trafficking Foundation and chairman of the Task Force Trust, which I will come on to later. I extend my best wishes to those mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord German, who are not able to be here because of illness, and wish them well. I support the amendments on the right to work, particularly for domestic workers and those in the NRM. I have been an advocate of this for some time. Call me psychic, but I do not think the Government will accede to this for the very reason the noble Lord, Lord German, gave: the pull factor—although that has never been proved—or whatever. In my capacity as chairman of the Task Force Trust, we have had a very interesting set of projects through Action Asylum—I would be very happy to show the Minister an evaluation report we got from the University of Nottingham—that get asylum seekers and refugees to do voluntary work, particularly in the environment field: things such as beach cleans, tree planting and a lot of other similar things. This is so important because it has been shown that, in local communities that are not always the most keen on what they perceive asylum seekers to be, they see them as real people, they see them as families and they see them doing things. It has been great for cohesion, but also a great thing for the asylum seekers themselves, to make them feel valued and part of the community, and it has helped their mental health. I think it is something that should be looked at more. As I said, I would be very happy to pass on a copy of this evaluation report from the University of Nottingham that shows the value of it. There are other projects I have been aware of. For example, the Marylebone Cricket Club has a foundation which has been getting asylum seekers to play cricket. The Saracens Foundation has also involved refugees and so on into sports. I cannot help feeling that this is the way forward—at a time when we know full well that there are frictions out there in our communities—to make sure that they realise we are talking about actual people. It is a lateish hour and there are plenty more speakers. I just say to my noble friend Lady Lawlor, on her amendment, I think the question of driving licences for these people is a valid one, but it is slightly discriminatory to say it is just for overseas people. There are plenty of other people around. It may be that she thought it was a cunning way to get the issue raised, but I do not think this is really part of this. With that, I will sit down, but I am very happy to meet the Minister, or pass him this report, because I think it is a very valuable idea in terms of community cohesion.