If ministers are to “start work on plans to identify innovative efficiencies and reforms, delivering the remaining consolidation over the next four years” (Report, 21 July), can we suggest that the Home Office saves substantial costs by ending the inhumane and unjust practice of indefinite detention for immigration purposes? People are locked up, without trial, for an indefinite period, for no more than an administrative convenience. This practice costs the taxpayer £166m a year, £75m of which is spent on locking people up who are then just released into the community.
Suzanne Fletcher
Chair, Liberal Democrats for Seekers of Sanctuary
• We view with alarm proposals to introduce a flat rate of support for all asylum seekers, including children (Report, 17 July). This would mean a reduction in support to children of £16 per week which, the Children’s Society has pointed out, would push some families 60% below the poverty line. Asylum seekers of whatever age have suffered enough. Why must they have to endure this added hardship?
We implore the government to think again. At the very least we ask that it commissions an independent review of support rates and that the new rates should not come into force until it has reported.
Dr Edie Friedman, Executive director, The Jewish Council for Racial Equality, Rabbi Charley Baginsky, Rabbi Lisa Barrett, Rabbi Dr Barbara Borts, Rabbi Richard Jacobi, Rabbi Natan Levy Jewish Social Action Forum, Rabbi Lea Mühlstein Northwood and Pinner Liberal Synagogue, Rabi Jeffrey Newman, Rabbi Sylvia Rothschild, Rabbi Professor Marc Saperstein, Rabbi Larry Tabick, Rabbi Jackie Tabick, Rabbi Alexandra Wright Senior rabbi, Liberal Jewish Synagogue
• My experience is that most asylum seekers are brave people who have opposed dictatorships at risk of their own lives. They should be allowed to work in Britain where their skills would both reduce public expenditure and also contribute to taxes. In 2008, Iain Duncan Smith set up an investigation called Asylum Matters: Restoring Trust in the UK Asylum System. Made up of members of asylum charities and asylum seekers themselves, it called for a more just and humane system. Duncan Smith agreed supportingits “practical solutions for restoring the UK’s tradition of providing a welcome to some of the most vulnerable people in the world.” Will he now persuade his fellow cabinet ministers to do just that?
Bob Holman
Glasgow
