A new Chief Executive at the UK Border Agency takes office this week. The fairness and effectiveness of our asylum system will fall squarely within Rob Whiteman’s responsibility. It seems an appropriate moment, then, to look at the way the Coalition has approached this dysfunctional area of public policy.

When politicians talk about asylum, they invariably remind their audience that the UK has a proud historical record protecting people who have fled chilling human rights abuses abroad. Polls consistently show substantial public support for ensuring protection for those who need it. And these were the opening notes struck when Nick Clegg addressed the Refugee Council back in May.

This is always welcome, of course. But it can also make asylum advocates a little wary. Behind this well-rehearsed acknowledgment of our past, what difficult questions aren’t being addressed? In particular, is anyone in Government asking how and why the generosity shown to previous generations of refugees has slid into a modern asylum system best characterised by mutual distrust?

It was encouraging, therefore, that the Deputy Prime Minister proceeded to cover some of that neglected ground. This included conceding shortcomings in the way that some asylum seekers are dealt with now, including people facing types of persecution that would not have been imagined when the Refugee Convention was being framed against the backdrop of the Cold War in 1951. The horrors from which women, for example, might need protection today – such as ‘honour’ killings, forced genital mutilation, so-called ‘corrective rape’ – did not inform the work done sixty years ago.

In asking how we could improve the way women are treated at every stage of the asylum system, Clegg addressed a set of questions that has engaged Asylum Aid and other NGOs for many years.

He asked rhetorically if there was “an inherent unfairness built into the system” for women and girls, a proposition with which we would agree without hesitation. He asked why women refused asylum by the Government were disproportionately likely to see this decision overturned by an independent immigration judge, a disparity identified in the research report Unsustainable which we published earlier this year and confirmed by the Border Agency’s own internal data. And he promised to respond to these issues by being part of a Government that built an asylum process “sensitive to the needs of women and girls”.

It is unsurprising that Clegg focused on the rate at which decisions are overturned on appeal, given its obvious implications for public confidence in the Border Agency and the spiralling cost of the system as a whole. But we believe that establishing appropriate, gender-sensitive procedures at every stage of the asylum system would go a long way to addressing the problems Clegg identified.

In 2008, Asylum Aid published the Charter of the Rights of Women Seeking Asylum. The Charter was written as it became increasingly clear not just that the Border Agency weren’t considering the specific needs of women seeking asylum, but that it saw no reason even to try.

This short document insists that women seeking asylum in the UK must be treated with fairness, dignity and respect, and it makes a series of practical recommendations that would help make this a reality. It commands a growing list of endorsers, which now stands at 279 organisations across the UK. More than 150 Charter endorsers have written to Mr Whiteman this week to press the need for reforms.

Addressing the Home Affairs Select Committee in his final turn as Acting Chief Executive of Border Agency, Jonathan Sedgwick promised the Committee that the Agency would put in writing its ongoing and future work towards a gender-sensitive asylum system. I await this with interest. And so too, I hope, does the Deputy Prime Minister.

* Maurice Wren is the Director of Asylum Aid.