- The Observer,
- Sunday October 28 2001
In a U-turn on asylum policy, David Blunkett, Home Secretary, will announce this week that it is only by increasing the number of reception and detention centres for asylum-seekers that the vouchers policy can be dropped.
An end to the vouchers system, which critics have attacked for stigmatising refugees, will be welcomed by pressure groups, but concerns were raised last night about the rapid expansion of 'asylum camps' for refugees.
'Humane reception centres have to be better than the existing system,' said Sally Price of Refugee Action. 'The concern is that reception centres can easily turn into detention centres. We can only hope that decisions on asylum claims will become genuinely faster and fairer as the Government promised.'
Whitehall officials insist that, if the country returned to paying refugees cash benefits, the UK would become a magnet for asylum-seekers. Blunkett will argue that the changes will bring Britain into line with European countries such as Finland, the Netherlands and Denmark, where nearly all asylum-seekers are housed in reception centres.
Although the centres are not locked, refugees are only provided with a small 'value of living' cash allowance and so have to stay at the centre for food and lodging.
'It will look like a stick and carrot approach,' said one government source. 'It is only by putting in place a proper system of managed migration that we can tackle this problem [of vouchers]. We are not going back to a system where asylum-seekers queue up at the post office and pick up a wodge of money and disappear into the community. We have to have a system that is under control.'
Blunkett will say that vouchers will be phased out as reception and detention centres become available. It is thought he will announce a series of pilot schemes to introduce the new centres, which will have to be built quickly if they are to cope with the 70,000 asylum-seekers who enter Britain every year.
It is also believed that Sodexho, the company that runs the vouchers scheme, will be allowed to see out its contract until April 2003.
The Government has already announced the opening of two new detention centres for asylum-seekers considered at risk of absconding. The first 500-bed centre opened at Harmondsworth, near Heathrow Airport, at the beginning of October and a second, for 900 asylum-seekers, will open at Yarl's Wood in Bedfordshire next month.
Plans for Yarl's Wood seen by The Observer show it is indistinguishable from a prison. Opponents of the centres say detention infringes the human rights of refugees who have not been convicted of any offence.
In an effort to placate the critics, refugee groups have been called in to see the Home Secretary tomorrow as he prepares for a statement in the House of Commons.
They said they had not been consulted on the Government's plans or given advance notice of the contents of his statement.
Nick Hardwick, of the Refugee Council, said: 'We hope they are going further than just rebranding what we have already. It is important that what they announce is intelligent and thought through.'
