Lord Bethell was Minister for Innovation at the Department of Health and Social Care during the pandemic.
The scenes we witnessed at Manston Airport in Kent this month revealed the asylum system is buckling under the number of people who are stuck in it.
Huge delays in processing asylum claims in recent years and an uptick in the number of people who cross the Channel means there are more than 100,000 people awaiting a Home Office decision.
The bottleneck at Manston was caused by a lack of onward accommodation and led to unacceptable conditions, where families were forced to sleep on floors for weeks on end.
Housing people in hotels is expensive and unsustainable, costing nearly £6 million a day. And despite the cost, conditions are often terrible. Rooms are often cramped for people and families, who are stuck in them for a year or more.
What’s perverse is that government policy gives asylum seekers no other option than to lean on the state. Many would prefer to work and pay their own way. But they are banned from doing so.
This ban on work means that when the number of people stuck in the system grows, as it has done for years, the size of the state is forced to grow. And taxpayers must foot the bill.
The Lift the Ban coalition estimates that change would boost treasury income by more than £300 million a year when you tot up lost tax and national insurance revenues, and the money spent on providing asylum support payments.
Working people can better afford their bills and spend money in our economy. Working people don’t have to be housed in hotels by the Government. Working people have agency.
No Conservative government should be wasting hundreds of millions of pounds to ban tens of thousands of people – asylum seekers or otherwise – from working and forcing them onto welfare.
At a time when the Prime Minister and the Chancellor are mulling plans to raise more from tax and reduce spending, giving people seeking asylum the right to work is a policy that would satisfy both aims.
Rishi Sunak became our new premier on a pledge to bring stability, and put the British economy on a steady footing. It was a world away from the bold pro-growth plans of his predecessor, but no less Conservative.
We are the party of low regulation and low tax, and we are the party of fiscal responsibility and sound economic management. We understand one cannot exist without the other.
Lifting the ban on work would also signal to business that the Government is serious about tackling a serious threat facing many companies up and down the UK – record staff shortages.
November’s ONS Labour Market figures revealed the good news that unemployment continues to be at a 50-year low. But they also showed the number of job vacancies remains above 1.2 million. This means we still have the tightest labour market on record, which will stifle our push for a strong, sustainable economy and growth.
Last month’s Employment Trends Survey by the CBI and Pertemps Network Group revealed that “shortages in the labour market are having a material impact on firms’ ability to operate at full capacity, let alone grow”.
Scrapping the ban will mean fewer people who need the state to provide for them, fewer people unemployed, fewer people in bad health, fewer people who need to be housed, and more people to help the economy and contribute to their communities. Margaret Thatcher said:
“Human dignity and self-respect are undermined when men and women are condemned to idleness,” she once said, adding unemployment was “the waste of a country’s most precious assets – the talent and energy of its people.”
The Government would hardly disagree. It’s at the heart of Conservatism.
Tory voters know this. It’s why many are Conservatives in the first place. In fact, polling by YouGov in March this year found that a whopping 81 per cent of people who voted for the Conservative Party in 2019 think asylum seekers should be allowed to work.
For asylum seekers the benefits are profound. Work helps future employability and integration, work helps mental and physical health, and it creates dignity and self-respect. What benefits asylum seekers, as they access work, also benefits the economy.
This week I heard the story of a father-of-two from El Salvador who has been stuck in the asylum system for almost a year. In his home country he was a successful businessman, importing cars, growing his company, employing people and creating wealth, until criminal gangs violently tried to extort him and he was forced to flee.
He was forced to live in a hotel for months. And still his skills and entrepreneurial flair lie idle, his mental health suffering as he must queue up at food and clothes banks to provide for his family as the cost of living rises.
Pitch his story and the work ban against the Government’s need to reduce spending and plan for stability and growth. They’re totally incompatible.
The number of asylum seekers stuck in the system waiting for a decision on their claim shows no sign of reducing any time soon, yet the decision to let the taxpayer pick up the entire bill is a policy choice. And it’s hurting business, communities and the asylum seekers themselves.
Lift the Ban and let them work
Lord Bethell was Minister for Innovation at the Department of Health and Social Care during the pandemic.
The scenes we witnessed at Manston Airport in Kent this month revealed the asylum system is buckling under the number of people who are stuck in it.
Huge delays in processing asylum claims in recent years and an uptick in the number of people who cross the Channel means there are more than 100,000 people awaiting a Home Office decision.
The bottleneck at Manston was caused by a lack of onward accommodation and led to unacceptable conditions, where families were forced to sleep on floors for weeks on end.
Housing people in hotels is expensive and unsustainable, costing nearly £6 million a day. And despite the cost, conditions are often terrible. Rooms are often cramped for people and families, who are stuck in them for a year or more.
What’s perverse is that government policy gives asylum seekers no other option than to lean on the state. Many would prefer to work and pay their own way. But they are banned from doing so.
This ban on work means that when the number of people stuck in the system grows, as it has done for years, the size of the state is forced to grow. And taxpayers must foot the bill.
The Lift the Ban coalition estimates that change would boost treasury income by more than £300 million a year when you tot up lost tax and national insurance revenues, and the money spent on providing asylum support payments.
Working people can better afford their bills and spend money in our economy. Working people don’t have to be housed in hotels by the Government. Working people have agency.
No Conservative government should be wasting hundreds of millions of pounds to ban tens of thousands of people – asylum seekers or otherwise – from working and forcing them onto welfare.
At a time when the Prime Minister and the Chancellor are mulling plans to raise more from tax and reduce spending, giving people seeking asylum the right to work is a policy that would satisfy both aims.
Rishi Sunak became our new premier on a pledge to bring stability, and put the British economy on a steady footing. It was a world away from the bold pro-growth plans of his predecessor, but no less Conservative.
We are the party of low regulation and low tax, and we are the party of fiscal responsibility and sound economic management. We understand one cannot exist without the other.
Lifting the ban on work would also signal to business that the Government is serious about tackling a serious threat facing many companies up and down the UK – record staff shortages.
November’s ONS Labour Market figures revealed the good news that unemployment continues to be at a 50-year low. But they also showed the number of job vacancies remains above 1.2 million. This means we still have the tightest labour market on record, which will stifle our push for a strong, sustainable economy and growth.
Last month’s Employment Trends Survey by the CBI and Pertemps Network Group revealed that “shortages in the labour market are having a material impact on firms’ ability to operate at full capacity, let alone grow”.
Scrapping the ban will mean fewer people who need the state to provide for them, fewer people unemployed, fewer people in bad health, fewer people who need to be housed, and more people to help the economy and contribute to their communities. Margaret Thatcher said:
“Human dignity and self-respect are undermined when men and women are condemned to idleness,” she once said, adding unemployment was “the waste of a country’s most precious assets – the talent and energy of its people.”
The Government would hardly disagree. It’s at the heart of Conservatism.
Tory voters know this. It’s why many are Conservatives in the first place. In fact, polling by YouGov in March this year found that a whopping 81 per cent of people who voted for the Conservative Party in 2019 think asylum seekers should be allowed to work.
For asylum seekers the benefits are profound. Work helps future employability and integration, work helps mental and physical health, and it creates dignity and self-respect. What benefits asylum seekers, as they access work, also benefits the economy.
This week I heard the story of a father-of-two from El Salvador who has been stuck in the asylum system for almost a year. In his home country he was a successful businessman, importing cars, growing his company, employing people and creating wealth, until criminal gangs violently tried to extort him and he was forced to flee.
He was forced to live in a hotel for months. And still his skills and entrepreneurial flair lie idle, his mental health suffering as he must queue up at food and clothes banks to provide for his family as the cost of living rises.
Pitch his story and the work ban against the Government’s need to reduce spending and plan for stability and growth. They’re totally incompatible.
The number of asylum seekers stuck in the system waiting for a decision on their claim shows no sign of reducing any time soon, yet the decision to let the taxpayer pick up the entire bill is a policy choice. And it’s hurting business, communities and the asylum seekers themselves.
Lift the Ban and let them work