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30 January 2003

I note your acknowledgement that existing government asylum policy is "unacceptable and we have to deal with it".

This is not surprising given that nearly 23,000 people applied for asylum in the UK in the third quarter of last year, a record for any three-month period, according to the Home Office. I understand that this now means that applications for asylum are being made at the rate of over 2,000 per week. Asylum applications made at this rate mean that over that period the additional "burden" on the system equates to approximately 30 times the capacity of the proposed asylum seekers accommodation centre at Bicester. This is not my calculation; this is the calculation of Home Office lawyers.

Against this background, it is not surprising that you suggested the government must now "fundamentally" re-examine the UK's obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, with particular reference to Article 3.

What is just as unacceptable, as a consequence of government failure, is the government's policy still to pursue proposals for large, rural accommodation centres, such as the one at Bicester. On 3 May 2002, a number of well-respected organisations, including the Immigration Advisory Service, Amnesty International, the Immigrations Law Practitioners Association, the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, the Law Society, the Commission for Racial Equality, Shelter, and the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, wrote to the Home Secretary in opposition to the government's proposals for asylum accommodation centres and indicating that if the government wished to establish accommodation centres then they should be sited in urban areas. The Refugee Council has also made it clear that they believe 750 bed spaces is far too large a number and that if the Home Office is determined to move forward with accommodation centres that they should be at very most no larger than 150 bed spaces and sited in urban areas, near to community support groups and other essential services, such as legal advice. There is not a single organisation which is involved on a day by day basis on policy matters relating to asylum seekers that have not publicly made it clear that they are opposed to the government's proposals.

Your analysis of the asylum problem cannot be faulted, insofar as your admittance that the key to dealing with the problem is to prevent people applying in the first place, as once they do the cumulative pressures on the system cause delays and vast expense. It is not clear that proposals for large accommodation centres give any indication that the government is anticipating a significant reduction in the number of asylum applications; if the government were, then one would reasonably expect such accommodation centres to be even more inappropriate.

The cost of such centres is not being publicly revealed on the grounds that such information will be "commercial". It is difficult to believe that accommodation centres of this scale will be any less than a vast expense.

The government has made it clear that residents at these accommodation centres will be free to come and go as they wish. In the proceedings of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, the government placed on record that 80% of asylum seekers are young, single men. It is reasonable to assume that at any time some 600 of the occupants at the asylum centre in Bicester are going to be single young men. I am not clear as to how the government is suggesting that the present proposal for this accommodation centre is intended to make the asylum process safer and more secure.

Your recent comments do not match your current policy. You are on the record saying in relation to asylum policy that "if the measures don't work, then we will have to consider further measures". I would urge you to reconsider the current proposals on accommodation centres as clearly these measures simply won't work.

Tony Baldry