Baroness Ludford (LD)

My Lords, I strongly support these amendments and agree with all the speakers, particularly my noble friend Lord German. We on these Benches have consistently supported the right to work, and I did so as a Member of the European Parliament. As my noble friend no doubt knows, the reason that so many European countries have a provision on the right to work is that it is in one of the EU’s asylum directives that the UK opted out of—or technically did not opt in to, not least because it included a right-to-work provision. That is a shame. This does not make sense. We are in the worst of all worlds. Everybody knows that there is considerable work in the black economy. I think I caught on the radio this morning that there was a new BBC investigation into a criminal network that is recruiting people to work in mini-marts, as it called them, which I suppose are small local supermarkets. Journalists can find these people. We do not seem to have much labour market enforcement or inspection—the Government must forgive me if they do not agree with that—but it is amazing that journalists can find out about this while it goes on seemingly largely unchecked. We have a reputation for being a country where asylum seekers and irregular migrants can work, which has a considerable amount of truth in it. But these people are open to exploitation and are not paying tax and national insurance, so we get the bad reputation without the benefits, either to the state and the taxpayer or to the individuals concerned, of them working above board in the regular economy. Successive Governments have dug themselves into a hole on this, which is completely unnecessary. I think it was the right reverend Prelate who quoted the polling statistics. The public are ahead of the Government on this. They can see the perfect sense in allowing people to support themselves, and therefore reduce the burden on the public purse, whether from asylum hotels or the frankly miserable amount that these people get to sustain themselves. My last point reinforces what others have said. Some people wait for years for their asylum claim to be determined. I remember one case I had when I was an MEP, dealing with a doctor from Syria, I think—it could have been somewhere else in the Middle East. He had waited nearly four years for his claim to be determined and, in the meantime, his personal resources and his whole professional standing, as well as his status within his family—he came from quite a patriarchal system—had utterly deteriorated. Even if he were granted asylum the very next day, it would have needed a great deal of effort by him personally, with support from training organisations and the NHS, to get him usefully into working as a doctor. It really does not make any sense whatever. If the barrier to this is that the Government think that people should not work, I say: they already work, but in an irregular system. There is a great public perception that there is very little enforcement of the law, whether it is street crime, fly-tipping or whatever. People just have a sense that criminals are getting away with it. Here, there is a chance to crack down on the criminals by allowing people to be regularised into the mainstream economy to support themselves and for their dignity and their humanity to be recognised.