Column

Enough is enough: defend refugees’ rights

The Medical Practitioners Union is launching a petition and campaign for appropriate health services for refugees and asylum seekers.

The campaign has two aims: to challenge the myths and falsehoods about refugees and asylum seekers; and to call for decent and appropriate services for them. Specifically, it is calling for section 55 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, which allows the denial of benefits to asylum seekers who fail to register within three days of arrival in the UK, to be amended.

The petition, and a report from the MPU’s seminar last November, is being launched to coincide with an article in The Lancet by MPU president Ron Singer. The petition will run over the summer and the MPU will then organise an event to present it to the home secretary or similar senior government minister.

What the petition says:

As health workers and professionals we wish to state our growing concern about the government’s policies against refugees and asylum seekers in this country. In a clearly systematic campaign the human rights of refugees and asylum seekers are being stripped away, to the point that they have almost no rights at all. The consequences for their health, both physical and psychological, are profound.

Enough is enough. When the state sanctions suffering and ill health in the manner described in the accompanying leaflet we have a duty to speak out. We invite all health workers, as individuals and organisations, to join us in making the following demands:

• Reinstate the right of all asylum seekers to full NHS care
• Scrap section 55 of the NIAA
• Reinstate benefits for ‘failed’ asylum seekers
• Recognise the enormous contribution of immigrants to the NHS.

We will refuse to identify asylum seekers for the purposes of depriving them of NHS care, or to sanction the removal of state benefits from them.

For further information and copies of the petition or the report United Kingdom: a place of refuge? contact Carol.English@amicustheunion.org, visit www.mpunion.org.uk. or write to Carol English, national secretary, Medical Practitioners Union, AMICUS, 40 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3UD.