National Security and Investment Bill

Debate between Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts and Lord Bates

Committee stage & Lords Hansard
Tuesday 2nd March 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for her reply. I do not think I heard whether future pre-emptive actions under the new regime will be the subject of a statutory instrument or will just happen from the Secretary of State’s desk. Perhaps, she could answer how this or the other House will know what is happening.

I am grateful to everybody who spoke on this. It is obviously a tricky area. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. Undesirable, uncertain and impractical—I could not have put it better myself. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, for drawing attention to the question of the difference between two years and five years, and what will happen in that three-year period other than causing uncertainty among investors. The noble Lord, Lord Fox, raised very practical points.

Let me meet my noble friend Lord Lansley some of the way. I do not think that this will happen very frequently, but, like the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, I am not convinced that the three additional years are really needed. The point my noble friend makes, which has certainly eluded the Law Society, is the interplay between the six-month trigger and the five years. In the tech sector, these companies grow like Topsy: they are nothing now, and they will be quite big very quickly indeed. You could have a situation where some event, ex post, could have been described as a trigger event but was not picked up as such at the time. It is unfair for people to have that uncertainty lasting for five years. The Secretary of State could say, “I never became aware of that, so I have more time to start the unwinding process, as long as it isn’t within the five-year period.” I see my noble friend’s point, and I accept that it is a rare occasion, but I still think there is something to be teased out about how the different pieces fit together, particularly in sectors of the market where very fast growth occurs.

I would be grateful if the Minister could tell me about the statutory instruments and how publicity of pre-emptive actions is to be provided.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Bates) (Con)]

Does the Minister wish to respond?

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Bates) (Con)]

The Minister is saying she will respond in writing. Is the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, withdrawing his amendment?

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

The Minister is going to write, is she?

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Bates) (Con)]

That was the indication.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

Was it the fact or just the implication?

World Bank: Selection Process for President

Debate between Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts and Lord Bates

Thursday 28th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

I do not accept that description of the World Bank’s work. It does an incredible amount for the world’s poor through investing in infrastructure and food—for example, for the Rohingya population. It is absolutely committed to eradicating extreme poverty around the world, which is why we support it.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, once the nomination process has closed, will my noble friend let the House know when he expects the shortlist of candidates to be published?

[Lord Bates]

The nomination process will close on 14 March. The candidates will then be assessed by the executive board of directors and a decision will be made ahead of the spring meetings in Washington between 12 and 14 April.

Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts and Lord Bates

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

I thank my noble friend Lord Hodgson for ably introducing this amendment. A substantial part of my speaking notes is remarkably similar to those for Amendment 2, when I responded to the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, on early reporting. Again, we have made some progress, so let us perhaps just leave that on the record.

I will make a couple of specific points about my noble friend’s amendments, and those which the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, has put her name to as well. These amendments would require the Government to lay reports on the use of the power every six months, rather than every year; to set out why the power would need to be used; and to include a table setting out the provisions of the EU legislation that have or have not been transposed into domestic legislation, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, mentioned in an earlier debate. Again, I can assure noble Lords that the Government’s intention has always been to set out such reasoning and detail as part of the reports referenced in subsections (8) and (9).

As to the frequency of the reports, the current drafting has been designed so that the reports will provide an overview of how the powers have been used in the first year, and how the Government propose to use them in the second year. The intention behind this is to allow enough time to pass for a meaningful report to be drawn together. I hope this helps to clarify the Government’s intention to be as transparent as possible in the exercise of these powers.

As with the amendments tabled earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, I have listened carefully to the arguments being presented on all sides, and particularly in this instance by my noble friend Lord Hodgson. It may be that we need to consider further exactly how such a process can run, so that we can provide the House and Parliament with the necessary assurances that it seeks. In that regard, I ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment, given my commitment that we will look again at this issue and seek to make some constructive suggestions on a new way forward at Report.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

I thank all those who have taken part. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, for his two-thirds of a loaf, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, whose amendment I should have referred to in my opening remarks; it was rude of me not to have done so. A table of derivations and destinations is what I think such a table would be called in UK law; it would be a very helpful addition to the schedule to the reports that we have in mind. My noble friend was smooth—to the point that I thought he was going to turn me down on, but at the end the horse swerved in and jumped the fence. I am glad that he has agreed to put this into the mix. I am grateful to him and happy to withdraw the amendment for the time being.

Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts and Lord Bates

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 6th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

That is right. We are certainly not going to shrink from the commitment from the previous Prime Minister, with which the current Prime Minister is in agreement. We want to see that happen. We have also, of course, taken certain actions in relation to this area. For example, the annual tax on enveloped dwellings, known as ATED, was introduced in April 2013 to ensure that those who place UK residential property in a company pay a fair share of tax.

My noble friend Lord Hodgson asked whether the number of purchasers was increasing. The anecdotal evidence and the facts suggest that. The ATED receipts in 2015-16 were £178 million, a 53% increase on the previous year. It is at least an indicator of the scale of the undoubted challenge. We stand by the commitment made earlier this year. However, because we lead the world in seeking to be the first major economy to have such a register, there are legal consequences. The same lawyers who do the conveyancing will be reading through the fine print of any legislation that comes forward. We have to make sure that it is watertight to ensure that the right people are affected by it and, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, said, that other people are dissuaded from making those investments here.

With those reassurances and the commitment to meet again, I hope that my noble friend will withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in support of this amendment: the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker—he has shown that his investigative nose is as sharp as ever—my noble friend Lord Freeman, the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, and the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury.

My noble friend Lord Bates defended his wicket a great deal better than the English test team has been doing in Australia. He quite fairly drew attention to the Government’s efforts in relation to additional tax for properties owned inside a company and so on. But we have been round the familiar arguments, and nine months after the consultation closed seems a very long time for careful consideration.

I think we will take the Minister up on the invitation offered by his friend for a meeting. I am concerned that there will be a response early in the new year, just as we wave goodbye to this piece of legislation. I am not clear whether this requires additional primary legislation. If so, how will it be fitted into our programme? It could be tacked on to this Bill but once it has gone I am not aware of much else coming down the track where this register and all the other stuff could be included

We have been round this a great many times. I am grateful for the Minister’s initial response. He understands the strength of feeling on all sides of the House that this situation should not be allowed to continue. We look forward to the meeting and, in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Immigration Bill

Debate between Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts and Lord Bates

Monday 18th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

I have to say that I have some sympathy with my noble friend Lord Horam about the importance of not narrowing the gateway too much in terms of the work of the Director of Labour Market Enforcement. The wording in Clause 2(2)(a)(i) allows for a very wide remit: it seems to me to be important to preserve this. It is very easy of course to see this only through the prism of the victims—and indeed there are terrible victims who need protection—but the director should surely be able to identify practices, behaviours and trends not only relating to the protection of workers.

I am a keen supporter of employee share ownership. Every year the Employee Ownership Association has a dinner in your Lordships’ House, which I am proud to sponsor. Last year I was sitting next to one of the biggest companies in the field of imports, which brings a lot of stuff across the Channel in containers. He said to me, “Do you know that up to about a year ago, once a year a container would have people inside it; two or three times a week now, you open the container in Cowley and six or seven people jump out and disappear into the dark. They have a baseball bat and you can’t stop them—and talking to my colleagues in other firms this is an increasingly prevalent practice”.

It seems to me that this is the sort of issue that ought to be publicised and the director ought to be able to raise. It is not about protection of workers, though that is a very important part of his job. It is about what is happening in the labour market generally. It would be a grave mistake if we allowed ourselves not to think about these activities as well, and make sure that the director could comment on them and make suggestions for improvement. It is in the interests of everybody, but particularly those who are victimised, that this should be publicised—and the other side of the coin should be publicised as well. I hope that my noble friend will bear that in mind when he comes to consider his reply to this set of amendments.

[Lord Bates]

I first thank the noble Lord, Lord Rosser for moving this amendment. I am glad we are on the same page in terms of tracking the amendments. As I do that, let me remove another lever-arch file, with a message from the Box, which I thought was a very timely one: if noble Lords would kindly tell us when they plan to degroup an amendment, then we will try to do better at telling people when we intend to lay an amendment. But I suppose it is the first day in Committee and we are all finding our way through that postbag.

This has been a useful exchange. Under this particular group, as I see it, the Committee is seeking to understand better the nature of the role of the new Director of Labour Market Enforcement and to flesh it out, to understand something more of the resources and to understand where the immigration enforcement boundary and the role of standards in the labour market actually connect. While I appreciate the desire to include upfront a strong statement of the remit of the Director of Labour Market Enforcement, a role that has been welcomed on all sides of the House and in the other place, I believe that amendments on the subject are unnecessary. The role and remit of the director are clearly set out already in Clauses 1 to 7. We want the director to bring co-ordination across the whole spectrum of breaches in employment law, from employers who do not know the rules right through to the organised criminal exploitation of workers.

I should say here—this is relevant to the contributions from a number of noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich—that we often find that the rogue employers, underpaying employees with regard to the national minimum wage, and the unscrupulous employment agencies that deduct far more than they should from employees’ salaries are often the same people, who will be guilty of abuse across a whole range of different headings. That is the essential value that the information gives us, and the essential value of the overall role.

I will send around to noble Lords a very useful schematic. I know that schematics are not favoured by your Lordships’ House because of the difficulties that they convey to the Official Report in communicating them, but this one is a good way of illustrating that at the moment a number of disparate functions are prosecuted in different silos. We are seeking to be much more effective by bringing those silos together, not just in terms of their strategy but by placing the Director of Labour Market Enforcement above them to ensure that scarce resources are allocated most efficiently, and that we learn the maximum that we are able to about exploitation.

Where we set the director’s primary purpose in legislation as enforcement, as the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, seeks in Amendment 4, we are prejudging the best way to secure compliance. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, seeks in Amendment 5 to give the director the purpose of protecting workers from exploitation. Exploitation is not universally defined and means different things to different people. Concerns have been expressed that the director will get involved in enforcing our immigration laws. I reassure noble Lords that that is not part of the role of the Director of Labour Market Enforcement. I know that there was some discussion about the exchanges in Committee in another place on this, but I am happy to place on record again my remarks in my letter of 8 January:

“I want to reassure colleagues”,

following Second Reading, that immigration control,

“is not part of the role of the Director of Labour Enforcement. Nowhere in this Bill is the Director given the power or purpose to do that … they would be acting outside of their statutory powers”.

It is useful to get that very clear statement on the record in Committee. Concerns have been expressed that the director will get involved in enforcing our immigration laws, and I want to ensure that that is not the case.

I turn to the annual labour market enforcement strategy. The Government’s position is that it will be successful only if it includes an assessment of threats and obstacles by “turning over stones”, telling Ministers where the gaps are and making proposals for how they can be addressed. Similarly, a successful strategy will be based on the evidence of what enforcement has happened in previous years, including what remedies were secured for victims. These are both already covered by the Bill so Amendment 7, in our opinion, is unnecessary.

Amendments 8 and 10 cover the director’s role in the funding arrangements for the enforcement bodies. It is the Government’s intention that Ministers in the Home Office and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills should continue to set the overall envelope of spending available for labour market enforcement and should recommend how best to allocate this between the three bodies and the different activities they undertake, based on their assessment of the likely nature of non-compliance in the following year. I cannot support these amendments. While the Government intend that the relevant Secretaries of State will take the director’s proposals on resources into account in their discussions with the Treasury about funding, it is right that the Government set the overall level of resources devoted to labour market enforcement in the context of the totality of pressures on public spending.

Amendments 18, 25, 28 and 32 relate to the power to change the scope of the labour market enforcement strategy by regulations. While at present we believe that the director’s remit is sensibly defined, it may make sense in the future to extend this if it becomes clear that the risk of abuse and exploitation is changing. It is appropriate for such extension to be made by secondary legislation to ensure flexibility and to enable us to act quickly, subject of course to the appropriate degree of parliamentary oversight.

Amendments 33 to 35 relate to the director’s strategy-making role in respect of offences committed against workers under the Modern Slavery Act 2015. The clause or the proposed amendments would not redefine “worker”—as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford—for the purposes of the Employment Agencies Act 1973, the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 or the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004. The existing coverage of the respective Acts continues to apply. This means that the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate and the GLA will still tackle non-compliance by employment agencies, businesses and gangmasters regardless of whether the affected workers have the right to be—or work—in the UK. We see the director’s focus as improving the way we enforce labour market and employment law rules—making sure workers who are properly here are protected better. However, we are committed to tackling serious crimes committed against individuals, whatever their status, as the noble Baroness will know from the work she and others did on the Modern Slavery Act last year—a landmark piece of legislation.

I turn to the contents of the director’s annual report. The Bill already requires the annual report to include an assessment of the extent to which the strategy had an effect on non-compliance in the labour market. There is no need to specify the other details. If the strategy identifies threats and obstacles to effective enforcement and makes proposals to address them, the effectiveness of these throughout the year must be covered in the annual report. Similarly, as the strategy will set out how the enforcement bodies are to exercise their functions, including seeking remedies for victims, the success of this must be covered by the annual report. Therefore, I believe the majority of Amendment 36 is unnecessary.

The point was made that we need to focus our attention on victims. Victims have been protected, for example, by the recovery of unpaid earnings, by making sure that employment agents who persistently abuse contracts or unfairly treat their employees are no longer allowed to register as agents, and by the Gangmasters Licensing Authority not renewing certain licences.

The final amendment in this group concerns the publication of the annual strategy and annual report. The legislation as drafted states that any strategy or annual or other report prepared by the director and laid before Parliament must not contain material that has been removed for very specific reasons. These reasons are where the publication of such material,

“would be against the interests of national security, … might jeopardise the safety of any person in the United Kingdom, or … might prejudice the investigation or prosecution of an offence under the law of England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland”.

These are pretty standard exclusions that we have come across in previous legislation. The Bill as drafted requires the Secretary of State to remove information from a publication if he or she considers it to fall into those categories. The Government believe that this is essential and strikes the right balance between transparency and safety. Indeed, it replicates provisions in Section 42 of the Modern Slavery Act regarding the strategic plan and annual report prepared by the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner. I hope that my answer will reassure noble Lords on that point.

Finally, we have put on the face of the Bill, in Clause 1(4):

“The Secretary of State must provide the Director with such staff, goods, services, accommodation and other resources as the Secretary of State considers the Director needs for the exercise of his or her functions”.

That is a statutory statement. My noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe announced in the previous debate that the amount of money that has gone into national minimum wage enforcement has increased by £4 million. While it is right to press us to spell out in more detail exactly what is intended for the role, I think that there is a logic there, which my noble friends Lord Horam and Lord Hodgson have reinforced. I hope that, with that reassurance, the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.

UK: Population

Debate between Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts and Lord Bates

Thursday 16th July 2015 Grand Committee

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Green, for tabling the debate on this important subject. I declare an interest: immigration is a subject which is dear to my heart, on account of a certain young lady who came to this country 25 years ago from China. Therefore, I will also commence my remarks by recognising the incredible contribution that the immigrant population has made to the UK, both to our culture and our economy.

However, the Government recognise that uncontrolled immigration makes it difficult to maintain social cohesion —a point to which my noble friend Lord Hodgson referred—puts pressure on the UK population and public services, and can drive down wages for people on low incomes. I will therefore take this opportunity to update the Committee on the actions the Government are taking across the system to bring net migration down to sustainable levels while ensuring that we continue to attract the brightest and the best migrants to the UK.

As all noble Lords referred to, the UK population increased by almost half a million—the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, put it in more precise terms of 1,200 per day—or 491,100 between mid-2013 and mid-2014, with 53% of the growth in the UK population accounted for by net migration. Net migration currently stands at 318,000. These figures show how far the Government have to go to reach our goal of reducing net migration to the tens of thousands—but also why it is important that we continue to do so.

As we have said for some time, we have been blown off course by net migration from within the EU, which has more than doubled since 2010. The figures show that by focusing on key areas we can make a big difference to net migration. In 2014, 86,000 EU migrants came to the UK looking for work as opposed to having employment to come to. There was a gap of 91,000 between non-EU students who came to the UK and those who left. Some will have stayed legally; many will have not. These two factors alone added nearly 200,000 to net migration. This is why the Government are determined to deliver the manifesto commitments on reform in Europe and tackling abuse and overstaying by students.

The immigration system today is very different from the one we inherited in 2010. Over the past 5 years, we have taken steps to control immigration and have fundamentally changed the approach taken by the previous Labour Government. Our reforms are geared towards an immigration system which works in the national interest, attracting skilled migrants for occupations where we need them instead of unskilled workers who drive down wages, and genuine students for our world-class universities instead of bogus colleges, almost 900 of whose licences we have revoked.

The Immigration Act 2014 is making it much tougher for illegal migrants to remain in the UK by restricting access to work. In this regard I note the comments on housing, benefits, healthcare, bank accounts and driving licences. Since July 2014, under the Act we have revoked the driving licences of more than 10,000 illegal migrants and deported almost 1,100 foreign criminals who would have had a right of appeal. The immigration health surcharge has stopped people from outside the EU using the NHS for free healthcare and has generated more than £20 million in net income. We have also clamped down on fake brides and grooms entering into sham marriages to stay in the UK. The Government will go further. The new immigration Bill will create a new offence of illegal working and extend our “deport first, appeal later” approach to ensure even more illegal migrants are removed from the UK.

The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked what the thinking was within government and what research was being done on the issue. We have commissioned the independent Migration Advisory Committee to reduce economic migration from outside the EU. We will form our labour market rules to crack down on the exploitation of low-skilled workers. As the Prime Minister has set out, we will address the incentives for migration from the EU—which has led to mass immigration from Europe—in informed negotiations. We will deliver these proposals and our commitments in the manifesto with a new immigration task force, chaired by the Prime Minister, which will ensure that every part of the Government plays its part in helping to control immigration. That is not ducking the issue, nor is it not taking the issue seriously. The Prime Minister is committed to addressing this important matter.

While the Government are committed to controlling immigration, that desire is in no way at odds with how proud we are of our diversity and we will continue to welcome the brightest and best migrants to the UK. All those talented workers who have come to work hard and the brilliant students who have come to study at our world-class universities will help Britain to succeed and add enormously to our economy. The Government have been clear that there is no cap on the number of overseas students who come to study at our world-class universities and since 2010 there has been a 16% increase in the number of visa applications for UK universities and a 30% increase in the number of visa applications for our world-class Russell Group universities, underscoring that the policy is working.

I noticed today that Portland Communications had published its soft power index. It measures soft power—cultural power, diplomatic power, media, digital, education, which is a key part of it, architecture, buildings, attitude and the respect in which the country is held in the world—and I was delighted to see that the United Kingdom is number one in the world. We beat Germany into second place and the United States is now in third place. That shows that it is possible to make the tough decisions necessary to bring immigration to the UK down to sustainable levels.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

My Lords, could my noble friend write and give the Committee an estimate of how many students have overstayed their visas? There is clearly a major concern that while a great deal has been done—he has told us about that—nevertheless there is still a great deal of overstaying going on and morphing into the workforce.

[Lord Bates]

I mentioned early in my speech that the figure was 91,000 for the coming year for non-EU students. Overstaying is a significant problem that we face. The accuracy of that figure will increase significantly now that we have introduced exit checks at our borders. People who come here to study should study. If they want to come here to work, they should go back and then apply to come back to work here. In fact, from a technical point of view, tier 4 applicants, people who are studying here at bone fide universities, are able to transfer to a tier 2 status, which is graduate-level employment, so that they can continue to contribute to the economy. They can do that directly and there is no limit on the number who can progress on that route. We want to get that message out.