Immigration Bill

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Monday 10th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry that prior engagements meant that I missed part of the Second Reading debate and could not speak then on this important Bill, which I support. I start by thanking my noble friend the Minister for the briefing he kindly provided on the residential tenancy provisions. I thank noble Lords opposite for initiating a debate on Clause 15, as it gives me the opportunity to probe the Government’s intentions and the “workability” of the provisions, to quote the noble Baroness.

I come at the subject as a business person, although I should declare an interest as the part-owner of a son’s flat which is currently let while he works out of London. We are asking the landlord community, nearly 2 million of us, to be part of the enforcement service for immigration. This is a new burden, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, has said. I understand that, for 62% of landlords, the required documentation is already available to satisfy the provisions. But that leaves a lot of people burdened for the first time, and required to keep copies and records that they do not have to worry about at present. I suspect that many will not know about the new rules and that they risk a civil penalty—£1,000 for the first offence, £3,000 thereafter— if they let to somebody whose papers are not in order.

I have a fear that the immigration authorities, in order to hit targets, could turn their attention to the easy task of cracking down on landlords who make a mistake, rather than the labyrinthine task of fighting illegal immigrants through the courts. Can my noble friend give landlords, especially small landlords who do not use expensive letting agencies, some comfort on these issues?

This is an important Bill, as I have said, and it is clearly essential that the new provisions are communicated really well. I have two thoughts on this and would be glad to hear the Minister’s reactions before we accept the provisions on landlords in Clause 15 and subsequent clauses. One is to use the web properly. We should place on gov.uk, in one user-friendly place, all the new rules for landlords, wherever they are set out, including the new online checking resource that is planned; briefing on the new biometric residence permits, which will ease landlords’ task of identification; the contact details for the phone inquiry line; and the 48-hour e-mail immigration checking service, which I agree will need to be adequately staffed, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, has said.

A different version could also be provided for tenants, including, perhaps—having listened to earlier debates—students, from whom I believe the paperwork requirements may be relatively light. It would be good for all of those people to know what the rules are and be able to check them in a simple place on the web. With modern techniques, prospective tenants could easily translate this briefing using an online app, obviating the need for expensive advice and lawyers.

Secondly, we should ask the landlords’ associations to prepare model clauses on the new immigration controls to be added to their standard shorthold lease. This would make it less likely that the new requirements were overlooked and the tenant would have to make an undertaking, which would be helpful, for example, in avoiding illegal sub-letting.

Finally, I would like to understand the Government’s intentions on timing, a point which links to Amendment 51 on a possible pilot. I believe that the Government plan to trial the new arrangements in a specific area or areas, which is an excellent idea that I would like to see applied to more areas of regulation. However, what would the timetable look like, and will the Government, as suggested by the noble Lords opposite, feel able to feed back to this House what they have learnt before the new system goes nationwide?

As a supporter of the Bill I am very keen that it should work well and not lead to an adverse reaction by small landlords or a reduction in available accommodation because people do not want to risk a fine or the hassle involved in the new scheme. The money-laundering laws were no doubt good in intent, but the repetitive bureaucracy they have introduced into every aspect of asset purchase certainly comes at a cost which affects UK productivity. I am keen to know whether we have learnt from this experience in establishing this important new regime for landlords.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, we have a number of amendments in this group: Amendments 56B, 56D, 56G, 87A and 89. As other noble Lords have said, there must be a pilot. I was glad to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, say that she has come to the view that it should be a single pilot. However, like her, I agree that there is a world of difference between a pilot and phasing the rollout. I have a number of probing amendments in this group and some in later groups. I will deal with particular concerns amendment by amendment rather than speaking generally to the clause stand part.

On the pilot issue, in my mind this is not probing but something that has to happen, and in a single area. We are not talking about different housing markets; all noble Lords who spoke about this are concerned about what I wrote down as “bureaucracy”, although “administrative burden” is the politer way of putting it, is it not? Concerns were also expressed about discrimination and how landlords, tenants, agents, occupants—people who are not tenants in the sense in which we normally technically use that term, but who are actually tenants under the Bill as they are defined—would cope. We are also concerned about tenants and occupants who have a right to be in this country and to rent. “Workability” was the term used, which is very much in my mind. I will not take up the Committee’s time by quoting from evidence to the Public Bill Committee in the Commons, but I, like others, was struck by the sheer number of small landlords there are in this country.

We talked about a pilot, and that pilot needs to be assessed. Of course the public response to a pilot will be the overall assessment, but it occurred to me that we need a more rigorous critique, being clear and careful about the factors to be assessed and evaluated. Our Amendment 56G would require a report before the provisions come into force about the matters which should be assessed and the basis for evaluating their assessment. I have not attempted to spell those out at this point; that is a piece of work that needs to be quite careful and detailed, to be subject to discussion and to be discussed. I have said that a report should be laid before Parliament by your Lordships. I also agree that the code, which must seek to ensure against discrimination, should have parliamentary involvement.

On Amendment 56B, the dangers of discrimination are inherent—that is an issue in itself—also because of the implications for those who are entitled to be in the country and to rent, as well as for everybody else.

Your Lordships will understand that with a name like Hamwee and coming from the background that I do, I knew people whose names were not familiar to landlords when people of my generation were seeking to rent. Unlike the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, when they turned up on the doorstep they were greeted with, “Oh gosh, you’re white!” That is just as bad a discrimination, of course.

I think that there should be a review following the pilot—that may be implicit in Clause 28, but I think that we should say so—and parliamentary process for each revision. Our Amendments 56B, 87A and 89 are not just little wrinkles at the end of the Bill but amount to a substantive amendment to require clear stages to the process. I can also see that we should consider a mechanism for Parliament requiring a view if that is not a review forthcoming from the Home Office, although I thought of that only yesterday.