Church aid group condemns Government over refugees

THE CHURCH aid agency Cafod has condemned the British Government’s response to the refugee crisis in a major new report released this week.

In the report, 13 agencies including Cafod, Oxfam and Christian Aid accused the Government of “turning a blind eye to suffering on its doorstep”.

The Government is failing in its responsibility to protect some of the world’s most vulnerable people, they wrote in “Safe Haven”, and its lack of adequate response to the million refugees and migrants who arrived in Europe in 2015 “created a humanitarian crisis on Britain’s doorstep”.

Anne Street, Cafod’s head of humanitarian policy, said on Thursday: “The UK has an obligation to offer a safe haven, to take its fair share of refugees and do all it can to ensure protection for people on the move, whatever their legal status.”

The agencies called for the Government to expand the safe and legal routes to reach protection in the UK, to improve conditions at borders and in transit countries, to ensure access to a fair and humane asylum system as well as to tackle the causes behind forced displacement.

The report was due out in the week that the Immigration Bill received its final reading in the House of Lords. Ahead of that final reading on Tuesday the social action arm of the Catholic Church, Caritas Social Action Network (CSAN), endorsed proposed amendments by the Catholic peer Lord Alton of Liverpool that would allow asylum seekers the right to work in the UK “Catholic Social Teaching recognises the importance of access to work as a basic feature of human dignity,” CSAN said.

“By denying asylum seekers the opportunity to work we are also denying them the opportunity to contribute towards the UK economy, as well as condemning them and their families to the poverty and destitution that reliance upon existing asylum support levels can often bring,” it added.

CSAN had called on the Catholic community to write to their local MPs and ask them to support the new amendment before the third reading of the bill. Crossbencher Lord Alton said it would end the “enforced workhouse destitution” currently experienced by asylum seekers.

“They are frustrated at being forced to remain idle and survive on benefits,” he said. “How many of us could exist on just over £5 a day while an asylum application was being considered? This is way below the poverty line. Where is the justice and fairness in that?”

At present, asylum seekers are not allowed to work unless they have been waiting for a decision on their case for more than a year.