Carol Monaghan – 2022 Speech on Asylum Seeker Employment and the Cost of Living

The speech made by Carol Monaghan, the SNP MP for Glasgow North West, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons, on 14 December 2022.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bury South (Christian Wakeford) on securing the debate. Its timing is particularly good, given that we are about to go into the Christmas recess. Many of us will enjoy time with our families, and at the same time we are asking people not just to exist on £5.84 per day but live in cold and often damp housing. It is not a time of cheer for those people.

Earlier this year, I presented my Asylum Seekers (Permission to Work) Bill for First Reading. I discussed many of the issues that hon. Members have raised this morning. Ultimately, if we strip all this back and look at what the actual issue is, it is the Home Office; that is the bottom line. It is not making decisions and people are kept in limbo. Yes, we might hear about people kept in limbo for months, but for many of them—including a lot of my constituents—it is year after year of living hell. They cannot move on with their lives and they cannot do anything; they are literally just stuck there.

Christian Wakeford

If the hon. Member’s inbox is anything like mine, she will have people who are waiting two or perhaps even three years. They come to my office literally every single day just to see if we have had any news whatsoever. Unfortunately, all that we can say is, “No, but we will chase it again.” It is not being able to actually get on with life; they do not have a life, because they are not able to. They are stuck in limbo, as she said. She is absolutely right; this is fundamentally a failure of the Home Office, and it needs to be corrected now.

Carol Monaghan

Absolutely. One of my constituents has been waiting seven years for a decision. Are they an asylum seeker? Well, they are an asylum seeker—but are they a refugee or not? Surely we can come to a decision on that faster than seven years. We have a duty. If these people are not genuinely refugees, let us allow them to move on with their lives, because they cannot do that.

This is also economically stupid. We hear about the cost of housing these poor individuals. What we should be looking at instead is this: if they are working, what tax revenues can we gain? In fact, if only half of those currently awaiting a decision from the Home Office were able to work, it would generate nearly £200 million a year in tax revenues. We do not hear that; that is never put on the front of the Daily Mail. While there has recently been an increase in the shortage occupations where people can seek employment, there are still glaring gaps. Members have already talked about hospitality; I also have businesses in my constituency that are having to close because they cannot get staff. Meanwhile, literally upstairs from the café that is having to close, we have housed asylum seekers who are desperate to work. It makes no sense; when that café works, it closes. People—native Glaswegians, in my case—are also losing out, and money for the local economy is being lost. Simply by not allowing the neighbours upstairs to work, we are causing businesses to fail. It is economically stupid, but it is what we have come to expect.

Teachers are allowed to work if they teach maths, physics, computing or Gaelic, which is useful in Scotland, but there are huge shortages of teaching staff across the UK and we should be able to allow those people to come in and help. We have also seen shortages of HGV drivers, yet those people are not allowed to do such work.

In the rhetoric that we hear it is interesting that these individuals are coming here to steal all our jobs, at the same time as claiming all our benefits. That is the paradox that neither the Daily Mail nor this Tory Government seem to be able to solve. In fact, the reality is that these people do neither of those things. The majority of people are simply looking for somewhere safe to get on with their lives, where they can contribute.

Contributing is important: if we allow them to work, they contribute to the community and become part of our society. We all benefit as a result. I pay tribute to my constituent, Jean, who worked very hard with the asylum-seeker community about 20 years ago in Glasgow, when the Home Office was trying to deport people. She mobilised the local community to stop that happening. The story was told as “Glasgow Girls”, and one of those Glasgow girls, Roza Salih, is now an SNP councillor in Glasgow. Jean was the power behind the movement to stop the deportations happening. Kingsway Community Connections and people such as Jean are working hard to help people integrate and learn the language, and to show that they are welcome, which they are, but all the time we are battling against the poisonous rhetoric that causes so much difficulty.

We also hear about safe and legal routes. I would love the Minister to tell me what the safe and legal route is for my constituent’s sister, who is women’s rights worker in Afghanistan. Her brother was shot in front of her a couple of months back, by people who told her they are coming back for her. What safe and legal route is available to her? She is literally under threat of execution at the moment.

Working while waiting for a decision on an asylum claim allows for better integration, is economically sensible and allows us to learn from other cultures. It provides economic benefits to our communities and allows them to thrive. Finally, I congratulate the hon. Member for Bury South once again on securing the debate and allowing us to put on record some of the issues.