Cardinal Vincent Nichols has called for the Home Office to suspend rules that mean some asylum seekers and refugees have no recourse to public funds such as housing support, as charities warned that thousands face being made homeless in the wake of the pandemic.
Cardinal Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, told BBC’s Newsnight: “This is an exceptional time. This is a time in which the pandemic might be fading, but its impact is not - in fact, its impact is unfolding. I think, as the Prime Minister said, the roll of thunder is beginning, and in these circumstances, when there's a downpour, you can't just simply push people out.”
The condition applied to people with temporary immigration status and migrants without leave to remain in the UK is “no recourse to public funds”. It blocks them from accessing state benefits, including housing support. Almost 15,000 people were housed in temporary accommodation such as hotels and hostels during the pandemic, but charities estimate that almost half of them have no recourse to public funds, and so will not be eligible for further support when the emergency housing scheme comes to an end this month.
Cardinal Nichols told the BBC: “Of course, some people are here without proper paperwork, of course they are, we know that. But at this point we should be prepared to put all those things to one side and deal with the person in front of us. This is a human being whose life is full of trauma, they are here, we need to respond to that humanity in front of us, recognising the innate dignity of each person and not simply consign them into an abyss.”
His comments came as the heads of a number of Catholic homelessness charities co-signed a letter to the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, calling on the Government to suspend the NRPF condition.
“As things stand, restrictions on the support that can be provided to some people make it unclear how our collective ambition to end rough sleeping for good can be achieved,” the letter reads. “Specifically, legal limits on the benefits, housing and related support that public bodies can provide to some EEA nationals and to people who have an immigration status with no recourse to public funds make it almost impossible to secure long-term homes for many rough sleepers.
“Without urgent action to address these issues we risk facing the unthinkable tragedy of rough sleeping going back up, even while the threat of Covid-19 remains. Locally in our boroughs and across our city we are determined to do all we can to make sure that does not happen, however the restrictions on some EEA nationals and people with NRPF are not ones that can be overcome at a local level.”
The letter, which was co-signed by the chief executives of DePaul UK, The Passage and Caritas Anchor House as well as representatives of a number of London borough councils, called for the suspension of NRPF conditions and blocks on access to Universal Credit and housing support for the duration of the pandemic. It also calls for immigration cases to be accelerated, so that people who have NRPF because of their immigration status can have their cases heard.
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