Immigration Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Debate between Emma Lewell-Buck and James Brokenshire

Thursday 5th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[James Brokenshire]

Obviously we are looking at schedule 6 provisions and the changes under the new section 95A support mechanism within schedule 6. The regulatory impact assessment sets out our best analysis of the overall savings to the public purse, and it would be invidious for me to try to provide percentage assumption rates.

This is about departures and encouraging people to leave. It is also about section 95A support where there are barriers to removal. That is likely to be where there is no documentation or difficulty in obtaining it to facilitate departure, or medical issues. Let us not forget that, in conducting its duties, the Home Office will have obligations under section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 which it will need to factor in when taking decisions.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

When referring to the impact assessment, the Minister said the cost was around £32 million. Is that not a drastic underestimation? I do not believe that takes into account the local authorities’ statutory duties under homelessness legislation, the Children Act 1989 or the principles of the Care Act 2014. Will the Minister please clarify?

[James Brokenshire]

I think the hon. Lady is alluding to some of the points I discussed concerning schedule 3 of the 2002 Act: the Human Rights Act assessments that local authorities need to undertake. We seek to continue our engagement with local authorities about the new burdens assessment.

The published impact assessment will be revisited and republished, if required, in relation to further analysis of the new burdens work. Although we have published our regulatory impact assessment based on the evidence provided at the date of the Bill’s publication, it will continue to be reviewed in the light of further discussions with local authorities.

It is not that our minds are closed on that. Rather, having given the best assessment of the savings that the hon. Lady has identified, we will keep this matter under examination. If the measures led to, or risked leading to, migrants being supported by local authorities when they would previously have been supported by the Home Office, we have made it clear through the consultation that we would wish to discuss and address those impacts and their financial implications with local authorities and the devolved Administrations in accordance with the new burdens doctrine.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I think what the Minister is saying is that the £32 million is an underestimate.

[James Brokenshire]

Not necessarily.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I am struggling with this. The Minister says that conversations are going on with local authorities, but should those conversations not have happened before the legislation was put in place? It seems a bit back to front to me.

[James Brokenshire]

No. As always with legislation, we have to have it in place and, as a result, that sometimes provokes further discussion. We have been running a consultation, which we published earlier this week, and the hon. Lady will find in it the response and the feedback, as well as some of the points that we have said we will reflect on further. That is the right and appropriate way in which to deal with the matter. We judge the provisions to be appropriate to the policy intent that I have outlined, so the clause should stand part of the Bill.

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[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. I will speak briefly to amendment 222, which would grant a right of appeal to those who are refused support by the Home Office, or whose support is discontinued. The right to appeal is important both for the individual concerned and because of the difficulties that the withdrawal of support for failed asylum seekers will create for local authorities, about which hon. Friends and I have already spoken.

It is necessary to set out the effect of clause 34 and schedule 6, to underline exactly why it is vital to have a right of appeal. The schedule as it stands will inflict destitution on families with children. Whereas in the past the Secretary of State could provide accommodation and support to help families survive, the new mechanism will impose a burden of proof on asylum seekers. They will need to show that they are destitute and that there is a genuine obstacle preventing them from leaving the country.

[James Brokenshire]

The hon. Lady has just said that the schedule will have an impact on asylum seekers; it will not. The mechanism in it relates to those whose asylum applications have been determined and have been found to have no grounds. I make that distinction because I want to underline that support is there for those who are having their asylum claims assessed.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I thank the Minister and apologise for my semantics.

We do not know what the “genuine obstacle” that must be preventing people from leaving the country means, because it has yet to be defined in regulations. We are potentially talking about denying support to extremely vulnerable families, so the House should be able to discuss and vote on that in primary legislation. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham made that point well in our evidence sessions. That definition will effectively define the scope of support given to people, and it could leave families homeless and destitute. We should be debating that definition now. It is not something to be nodded through the House at the whim of the Secretary of State.

Immigration Bill (Eighth sitting)

Debate between Emma Lewell-Buck and James Brokenshire

Thursday 29th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[The Minister for Immigration (James Brokenshire)]

Just before lunch, I was responding to the amendments tabled by the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras, and I had reached amendment 88. The hon. Member for Sheffield Central raised a point about co-tenants, and I said that I would reflect over the luncheon period and see whether I could respond to him. Where a landlord takes on a tenant and accepts rent from them, that landlord takes responsibility for carrying out the checks. That is the fundamental starting point. The tenant is responsible for right to rent checks only if they sub-let, unless they agree otherwise with the landlord. Only where an agent is acting in the course of a business under section 25(2)(a) of the Immigration Act 2014 can an offence arise. That was the point I was trying to elucidate, without the agency provisions in the 2014 Act in front of me.

To take the hon. Gentleman’s example of students, in the circumstances that he outlined they would not be acting as an agent in the course of their business, so the provisions would not apply. The provisions could operate only if there was a formal sub-letting arrangement, which is, I believe, different from the arrangement that he was describing. The luncheon adjournment has enabled me to respond to his question, and I hope that that answer is helpful.

I turn to amendment 88. New section 33E was introduced to provide a means by which a landlord could pursue eviction where a tenancy is not an assured shorthold tenancy—in other words, a common-law tenancy—even if that was not set out in a tenancy agreement by making it an implied term. Removing that would create uncertainty for landlords about when they could terminate the tenancy if they discovered that they were renting to an illegal immigrant. The hon. and learned Gentleman’s amendment would create difficulty and uncertainty for landlords and tenants, and we judge it to be unnecessary.

On amendment 89, the clause makes it clear that action could be taken only after the Home Office served a notice or notices on a landlord. Those will be issued only when the Home Office is clear that the occupiers are illegal immigrants, that they do not have the right to rent and that there is no bar to their leaving the United Kingdom. I suspect that we may have further discussion on clause 14 later on, but for now I will say that in conducting its duties, the Home Office would have to consider its responsibilities in relation to children when determining whether a notice should be issued. It is our judgment, therefore, that the system contains that safeguard and check, but I have no doubt that we will discuss that in more detail when we come on to the provisions concerning the operation of the eviction arrangements, because of the way in which the amendments have been grouped.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

I wonder whether the Minister can clear up something that I am a bit curious about. My hon. and learned Friend touched on a local authority’s duties under the Children Act 1989. If a family are evicted, will they be entitled to local authority help under homelessness legislation as well?

--- Later in debate ---

[James Brokenshire]

In response to the hon. Gentleman’s point about the tenant surveys, if we had simply done online surveys, there might be an issue, but there were also 10 separate focus groups that involved landlords, letting agents and tenants. If we were trying to base this on a single source of evidence, he might view it in that way, but the evaluation was based on multiple sources of evidence.

As the analysis highlights, there were multiple research methods, including online surveys, interviews and focus groups, as well as mystery shoppers and other steps. The evaluation did not find evidence of discrimination as a result of the scheme. Because multiple methods were used and in view of the results of the findings, the evaluation does not give me pause for thought. Rather, it indicates to me that the first phase of the scheme has produced the results that we hoped for and expected, and that we can move on to national roll-out.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I want to explore this a little. Does the Minister not accept the evidence that we heard from David Smith of the Residential Landlords Association? He said that landlords would become risk averse and that, as a result, we would see discrimination against people whom landlords perceive as non-British? Often, there will not be evidence of discrimination, because it is far more subtle than that. People who are discriminated against often do not come forward to say so, and landlords themselves are not going to say, “Yes, we’re being risk averse. We’re discriminating.” Is it worth the risk of introducing this part of the legislation, or is it better not to introduce it at all?

[James Brokenshire]

In fairness to the hon. Lady, she focuses on an important point that reflects a comment made on Second Reading by the Scottish National party Member—unfortunately, I cannot remember her constituency name off the top of my head.

Immigration Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Emma Lewell-Buck and James Brokenshire

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I have also listened carefully to the Minister, but I am confused and puzzled. If the purpose of the measure is to tackle labour market exploitation across the board, why did the Government see fit to include it in the Immigration Bill?

[James Brokenshire]

I have already responded to that point by mentioning the vulnerability faced by people who are here through immigration. Equally, the measure can be a means of ensuring that we have a good, regulated labour market that therefore does not add to exploitation, nor encourages people to come here illegally or through trafficking, which is why it sits in the overall framework of an immigration Bill. I hope that I have explained that the purpose and remit of the director is labour market enforcement. The provision is not intended to stray into the separate issues of immigration enforcement, but if cases of people who are here illegally are highlighted, the director would be duty-bound to report that and to pass on intelligence through the hub that is being created. We will no doubt have a separate debate about that when we reach the relevant provisions.