Asylum seekers should be allowed to work in the UK to boost the economy and help West Midlands employers, Ministers have been told.

People who have come to the UK seeking asylum are currently banned from working while they wait for the Home Office to tell them whether they will be allowed to stay.

The exception is if they have waiting more than 12 months for a decision on their asylum claim, and then the right to work is restricted to specific jobs where the UK has a shortage of skilled staff - such radiographers and classical ballet dancers.

But Caroline, the MP for Meriden, pointed out that many West Midlands employers needed more staff.

She said: “A number of businesses are short of skilled labour, which is one of the things that has held our region back, yet asylum seekers waiting for an initial decision have the kind of skills that our industries so desperately need.”

Dame Caroline (Con), a former Cabinet minister, led a debate in which she urged the Government to consider ending the ban on working.

She said asylum seekers living in her constituency included refugees from Syria.

Being barred from working for long periods could damage people’s mental health, she said.

“I have seen that all too often in my constituency, because it is a dispersal area. I have seen young men in particular who are very depressed and isolated, and even suicidal at times.

“I put myself in their shoes: if I had to live on £5.39 a day, struggling to support a family while feeling that my talents, my education, and everything I had learned was wasted, I would feel really down.”

But getting work could transform their lives, she said.

“I remember well a group of Iraqi Kurdish asylum seekers who managed to get work in a food factory. While it ​was not a particularly pleasant job, the men were happy. They were only earning the minimum wage, but even that filled them with pride.”

Dame Caroline told MPs about a “very long drawn-out battle” she was involved in to help a woman from the Congo who fled after her husband was executed in front of her.

“It took me eight years to solve that case, and not surprisingly, she was deeply depressed. Many was the weekend after my surgery when I lay awake at night, worrying about this woman and her very young child.

“You can imagine how I felt when I arrived at my surgery, opened the door, and saw this young woman with a smile from ear to ear and a little thank-you card for me, as her right to remain had been granted.

“Already, she was working as a care assistant in a local care home, contributing to our economy. I am never going to forget that as long as I live.”

Allowing asylum seekers to work could save public money as well as help the economy, she said. It would provide the Treasury with an estimated £31.6 million a year from extra tax and national insurance contributions.

Taxpayers would also save £10.8 million from the cost of looking after asylum seekers, because many would be able to provide for themselves.

She asked the Government to consider “allowing people seeking asylum and their adult dependents the right to work, unconstrained by the shortage occupation list”.

Jim Cunningham (Lab Coventry South) agreed, saying: “A large number of asylum seekers have some very good qualifications, but cannot get the right to work, and some of them have young families to take care of.

“That drives them into destitution, to say the least. The Home Office now has to look at the asylum process and speed it up but, more importantly, try to give those people work where they can.”

Immigration Minister Caroline Nokes said she was “listening carefully” to the arguments, but suggested that the Government would be reluctant to change the rules.

The current rules were designed partly to protect British workers, she said.

“The policy aims to protect the resident labour market and ensure that any employment meets our needs for skilled labour.”

And the Minister said there might be a danger of asylum seekers choosing to come to the UK in order to work.

“We do not want anybody making risky or perilous journeys with the aim of an economic goal, as opposed to fleeing from persecution, but of course we recognise that they can be in a position where they cannot make a choice and have to make such a journey.”