Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 16th July 2025 Lords Chamber

However, the Government know what the impact will be; they say so in the impact assessment. They have provided no evidence at all that there is a problem to solve. So there is no other way to put it: with this Bill, the Government are knowingly and deliberately damaging the life chances of the most vulnerable, particularly young people trying to get their first step on the employment ladder, and for no apparent tangible benefit. I urge them to think again. In the absence of constructive commitments from the Minister, I will support the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, if he decides to press his amendments.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 49 and 50 and Amendment 51, to which I have added my name. I agree with the case that my noble friend Lord Sharpe of Epsom has made, and with the arguments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden.

I point out that the detail of the arrangements for improving protection against unfair dismissal was one of the areas that provoked the widest debate in Committee. Some 21 noble Lords spoke, and nearly all were concerned about the perverse effects of completely removing the two-year qualifying period. When we discussed my concerns in Committee, the Minister said that when I saw the Government’s implementation plan I would be reassured. However, while it is generally helpful, all it says on this matter is that in summer/autumn 2025 they will consult on:

“Giving employees protection from unfair dismissal from ‘day 1’, including on the dismissal process in the statutory probation period”.


So we still do not know what the rules will be.

I believe that the approach the Government are taking of making up the vital detail of legislation after Bills have passed, so well exemplified here, as the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, has said, is profoundly undemocratic. This is giving too much power to the Executive. The Minister should be able to tell us categorically today that employers will be able to dismiss unsatisfactory staff without risking a tribunal during a probation period of six or nine months.

I will not repeat all I said in Committee from the historic perspective of a good employer like Tesco. We even had a unique partnership with the trade union USDAW, seemingly very different from some of the public sector unions dominating this Bill. My main current concern, as the Minister knows, is that day-one rights will make employers extremely nervous about taking on new employees, especially the young or those with a risky track record like the unemployed or the disabled. This will kill growth. My noble friend Lord Sharpe talked about the disincentive to hire. That sums it up perfectly.

There is government evidence to support this. DBT’s economic analysis of 21 October 2024 admits, in section 16, on unintended consequences, that:

“There is some evidence that employment reforms make employers less willing to hire workers including evidence specific to the strengthening of dismissal protections. For example, the OECD noted that more stringent dismissal and hiring policies involve an inherent trade-off between job security for workers who have a job, and firm adaptability to changes in demand conditions or technology”.


In other words, lower growth.

The provisions will require significant extra internal resource to ensure compliance. It will be necessary to implement cumbersome administrative procedures across all businesses for all employees from day one, and indeed in the public sector. It will make the introduction of Making Tax Digital look extremely easy in contrast. It is a looming tragedy for smaller businesses already drowned in regulation. Above all, it will increase costs, adding to the jobs tax in the last Budget, and at a time when the Chancellor is promising to reduce red tape. Another certainty, as we have heard, is that the changes will increase the traffic through employment tribunals. There is already a tremendous backlog of 50,000 cases in the system. I know someone whose case has been listed for 2027.

Because it is important, I am extremely keen to help the Government find a way out of this unfortunate set of circumstances. The fact is that sometimes, appointments do not work out, and it is no one’s fault. I accept that that should normally be clear within six or nine months, which I believe the Government are contemplating for their probation period, but we need certainty on this and probably a government amendment before the Bill becomes an Act. For me, this uncertainty, which is why I have chosen to speak from the Back Benches on an area outside my own responsibility, could prove to be the very worst aspect of this Bill. I hope that, even at this late hour, the Government will think again.

[Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers (CB)]

If there is not to be a sensible probation period, is any employer going to have the courage to take on an ex-offender?

UK Modern Industrial Strategy

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

I thank the Lord for that question. He makes several very interesting observations. The reason we have published this industrial strategy is what I mentioned earlier about the global trading environment, but we also have a very clear goal. We want to drive growth. I know many noble Lords have mentioned it, but it is still the number one mission of this Government, and we can achieve that only by better and increased investment. The noble Lord is right. Previous Governments have published investment strategies, but why is this investment strategy different? Past growth plans have often been felt by businesses as being done for them, so it looks as though government knows better and this is what the industrial strategy is for, whereas with this industrial strategy, we work with businesses every step of the way. We have meetings with business representative organisations—in fact, I have learned a new word, “BROs”; we work with trade unions and investors so that this strategy is not only a government strategy but a whole-of-business strategy. That is the first difference. The second difference is that we have listened to the needs of businesses, the need for long-term certainty. Every business that I have spoken to wants three things: certainty, stability and less regulation. That is what the Government are trying to solve through their strategy to reduce regulation by 25%. This is still very much a work in progress, but it is what we are aiming for. We hope that this strategy is different from previous strategies.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I want to ask the Minister about the apparently “Cinderella” areas of retail, hospitality and tourism, which have all been hit terribly hard by the Chancellor’s NICs hikes, especially the reduction in the NICs threshold to £5,000, which has led to shop and cafe closures in my home area of Wiltshire. There is barely a reference to their contribution in the industrial strategy, yet in the Conservative and Blair years there was an understanding of the innovation, growth and jobs for which retail, hospitality and tourism were responsible, with minimal cost to the Exchequer. Can the Minister explain why they have been abandoned?

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

We are not abandoning any industry or sector. This strategy identifies the top-growing sectors, the IS-8 as we call them, which make up 30% of the total business sector in this country but contribute some 60% of the national economy. Obviously, it is the Government’s position to support them. As for retail, hospitality and others, we have other support plans in place; for example, the business rates scheme.

Let us not beat around the bush: the high street is changing and people’s shopping habits have changed but, at the same time, we need to revitalise the high street. Hopefully, when we publish the small business strategy in due course, it will cover how we will revitalise the high street. In other parts of the hospitality sector, be it cafés, restaurants or pubs, it is a very mixed picture. Some pubs are closing down, but not because we have come into government; they were closing down way before then. In the case of the pub in my village—a very small village pub—a year ago it seemed only a matter of time before it closed down. It was sold to a young couple, they changed it and now it is flourishing; you cannot even get a table there. So, pubs need to change.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 8th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 65A refers to

“any other sector where the core duties require in-person collaboration, physical presence, or real-time operational responsiveness”.

That could well be argued to be teaching, of course.

As my noble friend Lord Katz said, flexible working is not just working at home—it has a whole range of other alternatives and ways of doing it. The lack of the ability to work flexibly has real consequences for the delivery of a profession that I know a lot about, which is teaching. Some 76% of teachers are women. The biggest proportion of teachers who leave the profession every year are women in their 30s.

I declare an interest in that I am chairing the commission on teaching. We have commissioned some independent research on this issue from the Key foundation, which finds that women in their 30s with children leave teaching in huge numbers. It was 9,000 last year, the biggest number on record of women leaving the profession. They leave when they have children because their requests to work part-time or flexibly are denied.

The noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, asked whether employers were just routinely refusing flexible working. Well, in education, yes, they are. The rate of flexible working among graduate professions is about 46%. In teaching, 2% of teachers last year asked whether they could work flexibly. Those requests are routinely denied by employers who have a very poor understanding of what flexible working involves and, frankly, by employers who refuse flexible working because of a one-size-fits-all policy and then find that the teachers who are so precious to them leave the profession.

Last week I spoke to a young teacher with two children who asked whether she could have two registration periods off a week—she would make up the time in other ways—because her youngest child, who is three, was finding it difficult to settle at nursery. That was refused and she has now given in her resignation.

Work on this has been done by the Key foundation and by the Missing Mothers report from the New Britain Project, authored by Anna McShane. When she looked at the reasons for women leaving the profession in their 30s, she found that overwhelmingly they leave because they do not feel that they can manage the demands of the job full time and the demands of bringing up a family. The main recommendation in that report was that flexible working should be supported and encouraged. So, if an amendment that refers to

“any other sector where the core duties require in-person collaboration, physical presence, or real-time operational responsiveness”

were to be included in the Bill, it would be used up and down the land by education employers as a “get out of jail free card” for flexible working requests. As the Minister said, that means all sorts of things, including the right to flexible working—and the DfE defines flexible working as flexible and part-time.

We have to get out of the idea that there are whole swathes of the economy—education being the one I know most about—where flexible working is just not possible. We have to start thinking differently about this. If this amendment were agreed, it would make doubly difficult the right to request and to engage in flexible working, which would have such an effect on retaining teachers in the profession and on raising educational standards in our schools. So I think it is a very poor amendment.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I will ask one simple question: what is flexible working? Perhaps the Minister could reply to that. I have a lot of sympathy with what has been said; I have always encouraged people who want to work part time, dual workers and so on. I have worked at a senior level in business and in government, both as a civil servant and as a Minister, and the truth is that you have to show some flexibility when things are difficult. That is what my noble friends are trying to capture in the amendment they have put forward.

We need to try to find a way through on this, to encourage flexible working. However, we also have to consider the needs of the employer. That will be true in the business sector—which I know—in the enterprise sector, in the charities sector and of course in government. It is a very important debate and any light that can be thrown on it by either the Minister or my noble friend Lord Murray, with his legal hat on, would be very helpful.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, this debate has been more interesting than I expected. In looking at Amendment 65, we should acknowledge that the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, with his former ministerial responsibilities, had considerable interaction with the services that he described, so we should take him seriously.

In Amendment 65A, he sets out certain sectors. However, in seeking to deliver unambiguity, I think he has introduced new ambiguity. Sector-specific exemptions are bringing their own problems. I asked the noble Lord, Lord Murray, what a journalist is. Is it a card-carrying member of the NUJ or is it someone who blogs and calls themselves a journalist, or a group of people? That is just one example of the ambiguity that a sector system brings in. So I am drawn to the idea that we have something like subsection (1ZA) in Clause 9(3).

If noble Lords are worried about the wooliness of it—I am not sure that was the word that the noble Lord, Lord Murray, used—we can work to firm that language up. But to describe the job, rather than try to think of every single job title we want to include in primary legislation, is a better way of going about it. If the description is too difficult to nail, I am sure it is not beyond the wit of us all to find a better way of describing it.

Had the noble Lord, Lord Murray, been here a little earlier, he would have heard the shortcomings of the tribunal system being well exercised, and some comments from the noble Lord to the effect that the MoJ is looking at it. To return to that point, in my speech on the last group I asked for a meeting, so perhaps the Ministers could facilitate a meeting with interested parties on the Bill and the MoJ to find out how it is moving forward on tribunals; we need some line of sight on that. It is something of a capitulation if we say, “The tribunals are no good, so we’re not going to make the right legislation because they won’t be there to uphold it”. We have a duty to make the right legislation, to put it in place and to make sure that the tribunals can deliver.

Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that question and for all the work he has done in the actuarial sector itself. Let us not get ahead of ourselves. The Government are committed to publishing a draft Bill in this Session of Parliament. Until such time, it is important that we do not pre-empt the contents of the Bill.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, the Chancellor has written to other regulators encouraging them to look at ways to help the economy to grow and be more competitive. What are the plans in this area for encouraging growth and competitiveness?

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes a very good point. It is important that, whichever regulator we have, it is effective. Currently, the regulator has some weaknesses in its powers; the new regulator will, I hope, address those weaknesses. It is important that, when anyone looks at the accounts, investors have confidence to make investment decisions. That will drive business and growth.

Migration and Border Security

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

First, on that point, legislation was passed in 2014 by the then Conservative Government, which the then Labour Opposition supported. I was the shadow Minister. It was to ensure that we crack down on illegal working in a range of establishments, for two reasons. First, individuals who are here illegally should not be exploited by unscrupulous employers. Secondly, in employing people illegally, those unscrupulous employers are undercutting the ability to pay decent wages and give decent conditions of service to people who work legally, while undercutting the costs of other businesses. Therefore, it is not appropriate. The Government are trying to up that, building on the legislation that was passed. I hope that I have noble Lords’ support in this. We are also looking at building on that legislation to ensure that we can take further steps accordingly.

The noble Baroness also mentions two aspects. One is asylum hotels. This is difficult, but it is the Government’s intention to end the use of asylum hotels at an early opportunity. We will be progressing that. At the moment, give or take one or two hotels, we are at the same number that the Government had in July, but we are aiming to reduce that significantly, because it is a cost to the taxpayer and, as the noble Baroness says, it is not conducive to the good health and well-being of those people who are in our care for that period of time. Again, that is a long-term objective. On her first point, we are trying to speed up the asylum system in an accurate way to ensure that asylum claims are assessed quickly. Then, where they are approved, individuals can have asylum, and, where they are not approved and people have no right of abode, they can be removed. At the moment, that system has no energy in it, to the extent that we want it to have. We are trying to put some energy into that system.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The Minister mentioned the work of the Migration Advisory Committee, looking at skills. It rather sounded as though we would be allowing additional people into the UK on its recommendations, whereas I believe the focus should be on upskilling UK young people and UK unemployed so that they can fill the skills gaps that we have. The shadow Minister made a point about the winding down of the scheme to encourage integration in the UK and to encourage people to learn proper English, as you see in other countries. Could the Minister kindly answer the question that was asked?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

On the first point, I hope that I can reassure the noble Baroness that the purpose of the Government discussing this aspect with the Migration Advisory Committee is to look at the question of skills shortages and where individuals potentially can add to the gross domestic product and contribute to society as a whole. There may well be some skills shortages, but we are reviewing that in relation to the potential for a range of matters. This will be allied with the White Paper, which looks at the level of net migration and how the net migration target that was set previously is managed by the new Government.

The noble Baroness’s point about integration is extremely important. Let me take away the points that she and the noble Lord made and give them both a fuller answer as to the outcome of that discussion.

Retail Crime: Effects

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I very much welcome this debate and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hannett of Everton, whom I regard as a noble friend—not in the sense used in our House but in the sense used outside it. We worked together at Tesco for many years. In that time, Tesco grew rapidly. That helped me as an executive, but it also helped the noble Lord, who often topped the table in new trade union membership as a result. He and Sir Terry Leahy had a shared love of Everton’s premier football team. Few people know that the packaging for Tesco value lines were blue and white because of that love.

I will talk about two things this afternoon: first, and very positively, the need to deal much better with retail crime and my support for that; and secondly, but only briefly as it is a wider issue, my concern about the negative impact of the Budget on retail.

Retail crime was a major concern when I worked in the retail sector—now 10 years ago—and the work we did together in the British Retail Consortium and with the police made a huge social contribution. We invested a lot in security measures and our security suppliers built up export-earning businesses overseas. At that time a lot of the theft was by individuals stealing to feed their drug habit. I remember the sadness of arresting such people when I started my Tesco life in a store in Brixton, which was cited by the noble Baroness, Lady Hazarika. Then, it was bottles of Nescafé down women’s trousers and cuts of meat smuggled out with the help of a blind eye at the check-out, but now the position is much worse. Organised crime groups are increasingly involved in systemic, large-scale retail theft, amply justifying a major initiative to tackle this.

I welcome the £7 million in the Budget for funding both the national policing intelligence unit, Opal, to combat organised gangs that target retail, and the National Business Crime Centre on prevention and the tackling of crime. However, this is funding over three years. It does not feel enough, given not only the ever-growing risk and the way gangs in one area use the proceeds of crime to expand into other areas but their growing use of knives and violence. My noble friend Lord Kirkham described this extremely graphically.

The truth is that retail crime in the UK has risen sharply, as the noble Lord, Lord Monks, explained. The graph in the excellent Library note shows how seriously the number of offences has increased, and we know that even that is an underestimate. According to the BRC, retail crime cost businesses £1.8 billion in 2023, which was double the previous year’s figure. Thefts rose to 16.7 million, up from 8 million. That is 45,000 theft incidents every day. Equally concerning is the incidence of violence against retail workers. It has skyrocketed, rising by 50% to 1,300 incidents a day. The noble Lord, Lord Hannett, explained the compelling numbers in this area.

I could see this coming during the passage of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in 2021 and although I worked well from the Back Benches with the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and secured some changes to sentencing guidelines, I would have liked Labour support for an actual offence of the kind that we introduced at that time for health workers. It was a missed opportunity, so I am delighted by the Government’s promise to create a new offence for assaulting retail workers. Please can they advance this quickly and introduce the necessary Bill? I believe that they will also expand electronic tagging and the use of facial technology.

The House of Commons is crying out for meaty Bills that contribute to growth rather than devoting so much time to debates, so I look forward to hearing the Minister’s plans for legislation and enforcement, and the £200 threshold. Will he agree to look at deterrent tariffs for this new assault offence and for retail crime more generally? These need to be tough enough to attract police time and police priority. One of my sons works for the Met, although not in retail, so I know how these things work. Moreover, we need dedicated resources for the police to address retail crime and capture the gangs. We are crying out for much-improved police response times to show that the damaging criminal behaviour seen in retail is taken seriously. I will strongly support tough measures.

This brings me on to the negative. Noble Lords will know that retail is vital to the UK economy and our high streets. It employs 3 million hard-working people and 2.7 million in the supply chain, contributing over £100 billion annually to GDP. What is so disappointing is that the Budget has created unmanageable costs for a sector which employs millions of people and yet runs on very low margins. The new policies are estimated by the BRC to add costs of £7 billion a year by 2025, threatening jobs, insolvencies and more inflation. That is £2.2 million on national insurance, £2.7 million on the national living wage increase and—another slap in the face—a packaging levy of £2 billion. Of course, retailers’ rates bills are also expected to increase in April. This does not leave much for the security measures that the industry needs to tackle crime, which cost it £1.2 billion in 2023—up from £720 million the previous year.

This is a very important and timely debate. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hannett, for his eloquence, his passion and his work on “freedom from fear” and for bringing us all together today. I trust that it will lead to early action.

Metropolitan Police Service

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

The noble Lord points to the very good work that the police often do, and to non-policing work that the police often do. He mentioned mental health problems, which the police very often deal with on a Friday and Saturday night, and probably other nights of the week as well. I recall that, some time ago, we made a decision not to put people with mental health problems into custody suites because it is clearly the wrong thing for them, and never to put children into custody suites. He also brought to mind the benefit of a multiagency approach. We all need to work together to tackle these problems so that it is not solely the job of the police.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, we have had some sobering exchanges but, like the previous questioner, I want to go wider. My noble friend knows how much I care about improving effectiveness and value for money. I also have a son in the Met, although I have not been able to talk to him today. However, I know that policing is difficult. I am keen to know from her what is being done in training and guidance to the police—and, indeed, through the multiple legislation that we put through this House—to decrease the huge burden of paperwork and bureaucracy and allow the police to be freed up to do their job properly and professionally.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My noble friend mentions a number of things there, and training is critical to the effective functioning of the police in what they have to deal with. We have talked a lot recently about the training of police to deal with domestic violence issues, which I think has much improved over the past few years. There is complexity. Some bureaucracy is obviously necessary, because if things go wrong, processes have to be followed. On judgments of effectiveness and efficiency, HMICFRS makes those judgments regularly.

Immigration (Restrictions on Employment and Residential Accommodation) (Prescribed Requirements and Codes of Practice) and Licensing Act 2003 (Personal and Premises Licences) (Forms), etc., Regulations 2022

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

As noble Lords have said, we have discussed this sort of thing several times before; I will be quite brief. When faced with this sort of legislation, of which I do not have first-hand experience, I tend to read the briefings we get from NGOs very well, get ideas from other places and even check Green Party policy. This time, I read the briefings and I just thought, “Why? Why are you doing this to some of the most vulnerable people, who are migrants displaced from their countries by war, famine, environmental conditions and all sorts of reasons?” They come to this country in search of some sort of safety and well-being. Why can the Government not design an accessible, inclusive system?

It is not as though there are no ideas. We hear quite a lot from individuals in the Cabinet saying, “This is a good idea because nobody else has any ideas.” Actually, we do have ideas in this House and quite often the Government completely ignore us. I will mention a number of organisations whose briefings were very good: the Anti Trafficking and Labour Exploitation Unit, City Hearts, the Snowdrop Project, Hongkongers in Britain, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and the3million; they give a voice to EU citizens in the UK. I come back to the question of why? Why have a system that is so difficult and will create even more pressure and distress for people who may already be distressed? I just do not understand.

The Government have talked about e-visas as though they were something wonderful—modern, streamlined and so on. They are clearly not. They do not work particularly well, they are difficult to access and they create more pressure. If the Government tried to do this to British citizens, or, let us say, Tory MPs—actually, not Tory MPs as they would probably get their staff to do it, but British citizens anyway—there would be a public outcry. People would not like this. We all like to have a document. I always carry my Covid vaccination certificate in my purse. It is a tiny little card but I carry it as a useful reminder for myself and because I could perhaps use it another time. Everybody likes some sort of paper copy.

Not only is this not appropriate for secondary legislation—particularly in view of the resistance there has been in your Lordships’ House already—but it is not a good piece of legislation. Again and again, we see poorly thought-through, poorly drafted legislation, and this is another example. Please—we need an inclusive, accessible system. The noble Earl mentioned using a QR code, for example; there are better ways of doing this. I find this hard; I have a lot of friends on opposite Benches and I believe them to be good people but, again and again, we see legislation like this going through and you cannot help feeling that it is a spiteful and cruel way to treat people.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for initiating this debate on a system that has, of course, already come into operation. I look forward to hearing my noble friend the Minister’s explanation of these measures and their desirability. However, I have had a very helpful and reassuring briefing from her officials, for which I thank her.

I am sorry that there is no impact assessment. Large numbers of organisations and individuals are potentially involved—businesses, landlords and others. The Explanatory Memorandum suggests that there may even be savings in costs for them. Frankly, it would be worth detailing this for review, if there is a good story to tell. Perhaps I could make a wider point. We now have human rights and climate change statements on Bills and equality assessments on everything, but we have forgotten the importance of cost-benefit and impact assessment, which can be vital to productivity and growth. Perhaps the department could consider its approach for the future and talk to Mr Rees-Mogg as part of his quest for efficiency and opportunity and fight against bureaucracy, which often needlessly costs money.

In the absence of such an analysis, could my noble friend outline the response of businesses to these various measures, from employers generally and from landlords? Will a largely digital system be manageable by small businesses, especially if there are IT problems of the kind that some previous speakers have described? I believe that there is a new telephone helpline, and it would be good to know how it is coping and to hear about reactions to the move to digital. Finally, I understand that new codes of practice have been devised for employers and others, which I have not been able to find, and I would very much appreciate a summary of what they are trying to do, and a link.

I look forward to the Minister’s comments, and very much hope to be able to support her in the Lobbies.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

I thank the noble Baroness for introducing an element of farce into today’s discussions. The thought of the “Minister for the 18th Century” trying to navigate his way through a digital platform—or, as he is rather elegantly known, the Minister for Brexit Opportunities, for which, unfortunately, the acronym is the Minister for BO—is beyond belief, really. I shall try to put it out of my mind while I get my thoughts together.

When I looked at the briefing for this statutory instrument—I did not actually try to read it, because by the time you have got halfway through the title you need a drink—I wondered whether this was an example of the law of unintended consequences or an example of the law of intended consequences. Having read the briefings, which are very good, and having listened to my noble friend Lord Clancarty and the noble Lord, Lord Oates, talk in great detail about it, it is quite clear—and it must be clear to the Home Office—that there are a great deal of things in the system, as it is currently trying to operate, which are not working properly. There is no acknowledgement whatever in any of this, or in any impact assessment, that that there is room for considerable improvement.

What we are faced with is an SI that does not acknowledge what appears to be the case, which is that the system is currently not working properly. It is inconveniencing a great many people, many of whom are not necessarily the best equipped to try to navigate their way through these complexities. Adding insult to injury, it is now going to be made mandatory for a very large group of people, without any proper impact assessment.

My conclusion is that we are witnessing the law of intended consequences, because the Government and the Home Office are well aware that currently the system is not working, and that they are proposing to enact something which they know will not work. One definition of insanity is trying to make the same mistake again and again. This Government appear to be particularly gifted in that area. I ask the Minister and her officials to reflect on what they are doing. If any Ministers, Members of Parliament, Members of this House, advisers on this statutory instrument, or people whom they know, had to go through the indignities, inequalities and ineffectiveness of the current system, they would not put up with it, and nor should we.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Would my noble friend be able to give us a copy of the economists’ assessment of why no cost-benefit analysis seems to be needed? It is appreciated that an equality assessment is being made available. As I said, the Government are very good about always doing those. My worry is that cost-benefit is no longer considered important and that is a problem when we have an economy that needs to grow.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I can certainly take my noble friend’s point back for her.

We have made it clear that the Government’s ambition is to phase out physical documents before the end of 2024. In terms of developing our digital products, we are bearing in mind and taking into account vulnerable users. We have taken full account of the recommendations from the beta assessment and designed our digital services and products to be used easily. We also have support services in place for those who need them and the move towards digital is justified and proportionate, as it ensures that individuals without lawful immigration status cannot access employment or accommodation in the private rented sector.

We are focused on delivering a fair and effective immigration system and, as I have said, these measures will allow us to strike the right balance in pursuit of that aim. With that, I ask that the noble Earl withdraws his Motion.

Homes for Ukraine: Visa Application Centres

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Thursday 28th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harrington of Watford (Con)]

I can assure the noble Baroness that I will ensure that there is no discrimination at all in the way Ukrainians settle here. I will write to her on the specific point regarding of the Act of Parliament she mentioned.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for the online briefing he has been giving to parliamentarians, and would like an assurance that this will continue because it helps to answer our questions. The visa process has been slow, if robust, and I am interested to hear the total numbers we are planning for.

[Lord Harrington of Watford (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that question. Yes, I am continuing the online briefings. I have tried to have some online and some face to face; I do a weekly one for MPs. Today, I am circulating a programme right through to the Summer Recess, hopefully, for when these facilities are available. On the second point, I can do nothing but agree with my noble friend.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 26th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly—although I did think my noble friend Lord Horam, having been an MP, had a common-sense perspective.

I do not agree with Motion D1. The proposed right to work after six months here would be a significant pull factor, in addition to those already outlined by my noble friend Lady Stroud. It could even undermine the points-based system that is already leading to the UK welcoming many more people and more students now that Covid is largely behind us.

As noble Lords will recall, my main concern during the passage of the Bill has been the constantly expanding numbers of people arriving across the channel in small boats, sometimes with tragic consequences. The Rwanda proposal is a brave attempt to discourage the large number of young men, resident in France—which is a free country—who wish to come to the UK, mainly for economic reasons. Sadly, the vociferous critics of this proposal, some of whom we have heard from today, have no alternatives to propose. So I shall be supporting the Government today. I thank the Minister for all she has done to engage and for doing her best to progress this obviously difficult Bill.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I rise with some hesitancy because I feel I am likely to be chastised for rambling, saying the wrong thing and going on too long. But let me see if I can entertain you.

I think that this is a very important and serious moment in a discussion on a very important and serious matter. I do not feel that this Bill will resolve it. I have been critical throughout on a range of issues and I feel that the Government have wasted opportunities —but I am not going to remind noble Lords of that.

At this point in the passage of the Bill, having listened to the considerations in the other place, we should recognise with a certain humility that the failure of the Government or Parliament to deal with the arrival by irregular routes of so many people is seen by so many citizens of this country as making a mockery of border control. This has led people to welcome the Rwanda solution as “At least somebody is trying to do something”. People will ask, “What would you do about the boats crossing the channel?” It is fair enough for people to say that, if something appears to be a deterrent, maybe we should try it.

As it happens, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Horam, that there are not enough legal routes. I would like to open up a debate about more economic migration for unskilled workers. This might not go down well with my fellow citizens, but I should like to try to win that argument. I am fed up with having to describe people who want to come into this country as asylum seekers, when I know that many of them want a better standard of living—and why should they not have it? I defend them.

But we are not even having this debate. In this House, all the emphasis is on international obligations and the rule of law. There is little discussion about our obligations to the sovereignty of this country or the rights of British citizens of all ethnicities who worry about the fact that borders are not controlled. Perhaps I may remind noble Lords who are sighing that in a different context people are perfectly happy to grandstand about nation states, national sovereignty and the importance of border control—but that is only when you are talking about Ukraine. This is a different question.

On the Rwanda scheme, while I do not think that subcontracting our responsibilities to refugees to another country is against the nature of God, I actually do not like it. It is largely a cowardly decision. Despite what I have said, I would not choose this method. Over many years I have argued against such an approach, because I have always thought that any organisation that outsources or subcontracts its obligations on migration—particularly to heavily beleaguered countries—to police its borders on their behalf is washing their hands of a problem that they should tackle.

When I was criticising other places for doing this, I was criticising the EU—fortress Europe—which, for decades, has had a history of dumping asylum seekers on its non-EU neighbours. In 2016, the EU signed a deal with Turkey in exchange for £6 billion. President Erdoğan—that democrat—promised to stop Syrian refugees crossing the Turkish border into Greece and Bulgaria, and anyone found to have entered Greece was illegally deported to Turkey. The EU’s outsourcing of its migrant policy to, first, Colonel Gaddafi and, when he died, to warlords and militias or EU-funded Libyan detention centres has been a humanitarian disaster with torture and slavery at its heart. As it happens, Rwanda is not in that category, but I am always nervous about outsourcing to poor African countries that need the money; it seems unsavoury and cowardly. The reason these policies, which I feel avoid difficult problems, are greeted as they are by people is that they want something to be done. It equally avoids the problem and washes our hands of it to describe everyone in small boats as genuine refugees, and anyone who does not say that is seen as unkind. It also avoids the problem when you do not have an honest conversation about economic migration. It is equally cowardly and indulging in moral grandstanding to imply that “evil Tories” have turned into Nazis because they are actually putting forward a policy when no one knows what other policy to put forward. This does not help improve the level of debate about a very difficult situation.

Finally, and briefly, I support Motion D1, on the right to work, because it is ridiculous that we do not encourage people to have the right to work. In this instance, when the Government say that all claims should be settled within six months, I say to them: if they could get all the claims of the tens of thousands of people settled in a matter of months, we might not have a crisis where people say, “Bring in the Rwanda situation”. The claims go on and on for years and no one really trusts the processes to be done efficiently by Home Office civil servants in the background—no disrespect intended—so people sit around unproductively for years. For those who think that this would mean that they might undermine the wages and salaries of British citizens and workers, which is always a concern, let me tell noble Lords that, when they are sitting around for months and years, most are working but they are just working on the black market. That is perfectly legitimate because we will not let them work responsibly. Alternatively, if they are not working, they are sitting around doing nothing for years and years. That is not a very positive contribution to the UK, even if you are going to ask them to leave after their asylum status has been assessed eventually. I urge the Government, in this instance, to reconsider.