'This is a clear and simple way for Christians to put their faith into practice.' The Revd Lance Stone, minister of the United Reformed Church, Hackney, east London, was referring to the ecumenical venture centred on his church which was helping a new group of destitute and homeless people. These are people who are seeking asylum, but who passed through immigration controls before making application for asylum, or people who have been refused asylum and are appealing against that decision.
The Government has removed from them the right to claim social security benefits while they await the outcome of their applications for asylum. Legally, they cannot work and they can claim nothing from the State. They are outcasts, not only from their own countries but also in Britain.
Among those who have publicly stated their opposition to the removal of benefits are the Social Services Advisory Committee, The United Nations High Commission for Refugees, two Appeal Court judges, the refugee agencies, Amnesty International, the Archbishops of Canterbury and Westminster and the Moderator of the Free Church Federal Council.
There can be no doubt that in helping these refugees a number of Christian groups in London, Edinburgh and other large cities have found a new way of responding to Jesus' injunction: 'I was a stranger and you took me in ... in as much as you did this to the least of my brethren, you did it to me'. By their actions, such groups have helped to avert a major tragedy, so far. Not that Christians or members of other faiths have been alone in giving this help.
But perhaps things are more complicated than Mr Stone suggested. Issues of justice are also involved. Averting a tragedy has, in a way, let the Government off the hook. Had Londoners, for instance, been confronted with people starving on the streets, public opinion might have forced the Government to think again. The humanity of those who have helped out has, in some measure, covered up the inhumanity of the legislation, which is not to say that charity was misplaced. It most clearly was not.
We must take the issue of justice further. As Earl Russell has pointed out, the 1993 Asylum and Immigration Act upholds the right to seek asylum and incorporates the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees into British law. The denial of benefits threatens the right to seek asylum, though the Government refuses to admit this.
The Government undermines the right to seek asylum by making it virtually impossible for people who are deprived of benefits to pursue an asylum claim properly. Quite apart from the acute anxiety and illhealth which will result from destitution, it is difficult to see how someone who may be without food and reduced to sleeping rough (and in spite of charitable initiatives, some people have been) can be expected to find advice and to pursue an asylum claim, since this involves being able to give an address so that one can be called for interview or for an appeal hearing. And where can such people find the money to pay the fare needed to attend the interview? The Home Office has stated categorically that such practicalities are no concern of theirs. Yet if an asylum seeker fails to attend interviews, his claim will be automatically rejected.
Further, what the Appeal Court judges described as the government's 'uncompromisingly draconian' measures are supposed to be directed only against 'bogus' asylum applicants. Genuine asylum seekers will not be affected, Parliament and the public have been repeatedly told. In fact, nearly three quarters of those recognised during the first four months of 1996 as Convention refugees were people who applied, not as they passed through immigration controls on arrival, but afterwards: precisely the people who will be penalised by loss of benefit as a result of the new legislation; not 'bogus' but genuine asylum seekers. This, too, will seem to most people who honestly try to think through this issue to be manifestly unjust.
The Government's action is also intended to save money: one fifth of one per cent of the total social security bill. But this is not primarily a matter of money: it is primarily a matter of justice. And, yes, justice costs money.
The Archbishop of Canterbury opened a debate recently in the House of Lords about the nation's morality. Less than a week later, the House of Commons failed its first ethical test when it passed these inhumane measures into law and threw out a Lords amendment which would have given asylum seekers three days after arrival in which to claim asylum without loss of benefit.
Charity to asylum seekers must now be continued, but it is even more important for the sake of the nation's moral wellbeing that a way be found of restoring justice to these marginalised people in our society.
Louise Pirouet is a joint coordinator of Charter 87 for Refugees.
October 1996