Immigration Bill

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Ramsbotham

Monday 18th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendments that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has laid before the Committee of your Lordships’ House this afternoon. In particular, I support her remarks about Scotland and the need for proper and adequate consultation. She is right to say all those things.

The noble Baroness referred to the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, an issue to which we will return in the later group of amendments dealing with government amendment 39 and those connected to it. However, it is linked in some ways with these amendments. I will not pre-empt remarks on the amendment by addressing it in detail, other than to note that, as the noble Baroness said, 112 government amendments have been tabled. There has been no pre-scrutiny of this legislation by both Houses, and these amendments have been introduced for the first time here in Committee, which is asking an awful lot in terms of producing good quality legislation. I know that this is not the Minister’s fault, but I raised that issue with him in the excellent meeting that he organised for all Peers. To make legislation on the hoof is always a mistake.

I am not alone in thinking that. The Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association has written to us to say:

“The volume of these amendments, the late stage of their introduction and the time available means that both ourselves and the House will be limited in our ability to provide the scrutiny that this detailed legislation requires”.

That was a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, a few moments ago. We simply cannot do our job properly when we are stampeded into having to make decisions on major questions of this kind with so many amendments being placed before us at once. The ILPA also says:

“We note that new clauses introduced by the Government contain a range of new delegated legislation which will not have been subject to scrutiny by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee which reported earlier on the Immigration Bill”.

That issue will surface again when we come to the question of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority.

I do not want to be churlish, either, because the legislation that we considered last year—also introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Bates—was classic and admirable of its kind, and benefited from having been scrutinised by both Houses. It was showpiece, showcase legislation and the Government should be justifiably proud of having introduced it—as should Parliament for having enacted it. The danger in some of these amendments, and we will come to this in due course, is that they may undermine some of the excellent legislation that we enacted last year. I hope that when the Minister replies, he will therefore address the concerns raised by the noble Baroness and the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association. The noble Baroness did not describe this as hybridity, but effectively inserting an entirely new Bill inside an existing Bill at this late stage in parliamentary proceedings amounts to that. I hope her amendment will be taken in the spirit in which it has been offered, and that the Minister will address all those points.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has just said. This is not the first time during the passage of this Bill that a vast number of government amendments have been inserted. The same thing happened in the other place immediately before Report, and the same complaints were made that none of the amendments had been scrutinised properly. Indeed, there was no time to do so before the other place had to vote on amendments in Committee that they had not had time to scrutinise. Remembering my own time in the Ministry of Defence, if I were faced as a civil servant with such a huge and complex piece of legislation, with additional complexities, I would have complained to the Secretary of State and to the Permanent Under-Secretary that legislation was being made so complex that it was simply undeliverable.

We have to realise that the immigration system in this country is currently under stress. There are said to be some 600,000 unrecorded migrants in the country now and we will face not just a flood of people coming here from the Middle East but an additional flood of people from places such as Africa thanks to climate change. Therefore, we should be simplifying our legislation so that it can cope with pressure rather than complicating it in this way.