Immigration Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2016 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

144B: Clause 80, page 65, line 7, at end insert—
“(3A) Regulations under this section must provide for exemption from a charge under subsection (1) in the case of an application for entry clearance or leave to remain made—
(a) to fill a skills gap directly concerned with the provision of education;(b) by an institution whose primary function is the provision of education or skills training;(c) to fill a skills gap directly concerned with the provision of health services; or(d) by an institution whose primary function is the provision of health services.”

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the immigration skills charge is a major innovation in UK immigration policy and very difficult to debate this late in the evening. Since Committee, however, I have had representations from the British Medical Association, Oxford and Cambridge universities, Universities UK, the Russell group and a very large number of other research institutes which regard this as a very important issue. I hope that the Minister will be able to provide at least some information, because we have not had any communication from him since we raised questions in Committee, nor have we had any letters. There is a real problem here of how we address a major innovation which the Royal Society, on behalf of the national academies, says will cost universities £25 million a year merely to deal with short-term secondees from foreign universities working on two-year post-doctoral fellowships in British universities. This is a serious issue to have to discuss late at night.

The idea was first floated by the Prime Minister in a speech last June. He stated that he would ask the Migration Advisory Committee to report on the subject. The Migration Advisory Committee reported on 20 January this year, after the Commons considered the Bill and had spent five minutes at the end of its Committee stage discussing this clause. In other words, it was not considered properly at all in the Commons. The Government have not yet had time to respond to the MAC report. The chairman of the MAC will be giving a briefing to parliamentarians on this issue tomorrow, the day after we have completed our Committee and Report stages. We raised a number of questions in our short Committee stage to which Ministers, as I have just said, have not responded.

The Minister, in responding in Committee, could assure us only that,

“details about the rate and scope of the immigration skills charge will be set out in regulations to be laid before the introduction of the charge. At that point there will be an opportunity for an informed debate on the details ... There are likely to be legal implications of introducing exemptions”.

I understand that to mean that the Government do not think they necessarily can introduce exemptions from the charge for some sectors. He went on:

“the Government need time fully to consider the evidence about the likely impact … and whether any exemptions should be applied”.—[Official Report, 9/2/16; col. GC 174.]

I am told there are discussions under way with representatives of the universities and the medical profession and that various suggestions of ways forward have been hinted at but nothing has been made available to Parliament to guide any scrutiny of the proposals. Those consulted are not yet happy with the Government’s responses. Yet Clause 88(4) sets out that:

“Section 80 comes into force at the end of the period of two months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed”.

That is far earlier than most other provisions of the Bill. So much for the Prime Minister’s proposal last June that:

“As we improve the training of British workers, we should—over time—be able to lower the number of skilled workers we have to bring in from elsewhere”.

So much for the Minister’s comment in Committee that,

“the Government need time fully to consider the evidence”.

The immigration skills charge is to be rushed into effect before the beginning of the next school and university year—I assume deliberately—to catch recruitment from outside the EU of teachers and academics for the 2016-17 year. I cannot see how either House of Parliament will have time or opportunity to consider the necessary detailed regulations that will be required between May and July this year, or how the Home Office, BIS, the Department for Education and the Department of Health will be able to agree by then what those regulations should spell out.

Amendment 151A seeks to delete subsection (4) of Clause 88. If the Minister cannot provide a justification for this rush to implementation, we may wish to return to this question at Third Reading.

I stand shoulder to shoulder with the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, in accepting that the failure to train sufficient British citizens in skills in demand is one of the most powerful pull factors in UK immigration. When hospital trusts announce that they need to recruit 15,000 nurses from outside the EU, when head teachers are searching Australia, west Africa and Asia for maths teachers, and when IT companies are forced by shortage of skills within Britain to look for recruits in India, large numbers of additional migrants are pulled into the UK. That represents a long-term failure of labour market policy stretching back over several Governments. Net migration, as we all recognise, will not fall until vital parts of both the private and the public sector are able to train enough skilled workers from within the UK workforce.

The promise of 3 million apprenticeships by 2020 should do much to close that gap, if the Government are successful in hitting the target. But we do not yet know enough about the apprenticeship scheme either. I read the Grayling public affairs comment on last Thursday’s Budget, which warned that,

“a current lack of policy clarity and consistency … may undermine the government’s target of 3m apprenticeships … With so little information available, employers will rightly be concerned about how the … system will work”.

Last June, the Prime Minister stated that improvement in training would come first, and then reduction in skilled immigration, but here we are presented with charges to reduce skilled immigration before the training scheme has been set up. We are promised an institute for apprenticeships from April 2017, the details of which also remain unclear. The skills charge is supposed to flow towards funding a scheme which will not be in operation for 12 to 18 months after it is imposed.

Of course, many skilled jobs are not subject to apprenticeships within the UK. Nurses are not apprentices and teachers are not apprentices. University researchers and teachers come with advanced degrees, not apprenticeship qualifications. Logically, therefore, such professions should be exempt from the levy. However, the Minister suggested in Committee that there may be legal problems with this. Can he confirm whether the Government see this as a universal charge on all entrants under tier 2 visas or whether exemptions for health and education, for example, are envisaged? The idea of charging Health Education England for visas for overseas doctors coming here for advanced training, or hospital trusts for recruiting nurses, seems absurd—funding them with one hand and fining them with another.

There is a large air of unjoined-up government about all this. We have just had announcements from other Ministers about extending maths teaching in schools, and the whole apprenticeship scheme depends on finding additional teachers in specialist subjects and skills. But there has been no announcement about a crash scheme for training extra teachers in maths or IT within Britain, no more than there has been any announcement on an emergency scheme to train more British citizens as nurses. Are we going to search for extra teachers from around the world and then penalise the schools and FE colleges that take them on?

Imposition of the charge on universities would be even more damaging, as many of those who have been in touch with me have argued. I am sure that they have sent similar briefings to other Peers. The global standing of British universities depends on the global circulation of academic researchers and teachers, with British citizens studying for advanced degrees abroad and experts from other countries researching and teaching here. Do the Government really want to discourage our universities from international exchange? Would they be happy if other advanced countries outside Europe followed this example and imposed penalties on British researchers whom they invited to join their research teams? None of us yet knows enough about the implications of what the Government are proposing in this highly permissive clause, and I see no sign that the Government understand the implications either. We cannot leave such important issues to regulations that have clearly not yet been drafted. I beg to move.

[Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn (Con)]

My Lords, I support this amendment in so far as it applies to the university sector and, indeed, to university research. It is the role of universities to employ the best people internationally and it is very important that they should be free to do so without the imposition of a charge which might, one gathers, amount to about £1,000 per researcher. That would have an unfortunate effect on many universities. It would cost several of our greatest universities several hundred thousand pounds a year and could be very detrimental, so I hope that the Minister will say a word or two to indicate that it would not fall directly on the university sector in so far as international research goes.

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[Lord Bates]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, for moving the amendment. We have to remember that what we are seeking to do here is to introduce a levy in order to bring about some behavioural change in the way that people think about recruitment. For far too long it has been an automatic thought to recruit people from outside the European Economic Area without giving proper attention to whether those skills are there in the resident labour market. The immigration skills charge is seeking to provide some funding, first, to see if it causes the organisation to stop and think about whether there are alternatives from the resident labour market and, secondly, to provide some additional support through the funds raised by the levy.

Given the hour—and of course the noble Lord is familiar with the points I made in Committee—I am happy to put further thoughts in writing to him if that would be helpful. I will just deal with some of the particular points that he and other noble Lords raised.

There are exemptions to the charge. An exemption will be applied to migrants undertaking occupations skilled to PhD level. I would have thought that the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, in terms of academia—

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am very interested to hear that. It was suggested to me in an email I had the other day from one of the groups that the department has been consulting that this had been floated but had not yet in any sense been agreed. Can the Minister guide me to where I could discover the status of such a proposal?

[Lord Bates]

In that case, I will return to my speech and go through it in context. This is something additional. The Government have considered advice from the Migration Advisory Committee and additional views from employers. Following careful consideration, I am able to announce that the immigration skills charge of £1,000 per migrant per year will be paid by employers who sponsor tier 2 migrants. The charge will be collected by the Home Office.

A reduced rate of £364 per annum will apply to small businesses and charities as defined in the Immigration Rules. This is consistent with other lower fees applied to these organisations. In addition, an exemption will be applied to migrants undertaking occupations skilled to PhD level. A list of these occupations is included in the Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations. They are primarily science and research roles. There will also be an exemption for graduates who switch from tier 4 to tier 2 in order to take up a position in the UK. These two exemptions build on the Government’s strong post-study work offer for international students and are intended to protect the UK’s position as a centre of excellence for education and research.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has confirmed that it will continue to consult with stakeholders. Indeed, when the Migration Advisory Committee was asked to look at this measure, it consulted with a wide range of groups, including the Russell Group of universities, of which of course Cambridge is an eminent member. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is continuing to engage with stakeholders, including devolved Administrations and other government departments, on how best to introduce these skills.

On the proposition that the legislation mandates an independent review one year from the date that the implementing regulations come into force, the Government believe in consulting those affected by proposed changes, and we have done that. As is good practice with any new measure, the Government will review the operation and impact of the immigration skills charge after a suitable period of operation. In addition, the Migration Advisory Committee will continue to provide independent advice to the Government on the UK’s migration policy.

The skills charge will help address issues that I know are of concern to many of us here: net migration and skills shortages. However, I hope that a commitment to a reduced rate and the exemptions I have described, together with a commitment to publish the draft regulations setting out the detail of the charge, will assure the noble Baroness and the noble Lord of the Government’s commitment to implement the charge in a balanced way.

The noble Lord, who has a distinguished academic background himself, rightly talks about the impact of this on universities. We are very conscious of our leading role in this area and will of course continue to engage. But it has to be remembered that, in the international competitive marketplace, other countries such as the United States, Australia and Singapore, all of which have both highly sophisticated labour markets and distinguished academic institutions, operate a similar levy. Of course, when the Migration Advisory Committee looked at this, it looked at international examples before agreeing to set the rate.

I hope the noble Lord will accept this in a spirit of generosity. In his Amendment 151A, he raises a point about the timing and when Clause 80 will come into effect, which the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, also mentioned. I hear the points that the noble Lord makes and I give him an undertaking that we will reflect on this and come back at Third Reading with, I hope, something which addresses the concerns that he expressed. I hope, in the light of that commitment, that the noble Lord may feel able to withdraw his amendment at this stage.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Minister has been able to provide some reassurance, but not yet very much, and I would like to ask for a great deal more information. I have been able to discover a little about the levy in some other countries—I was not aware that the United States had a levy on skilled workers, let alone teachers at that level—and I would welcome, as I think would all noble Lords interested in this area, some more comparative information on this.

We have touched on the university question, which, given the strength of the academic lobby in this Chamber, is something which a large number of noble Lords are likely to be concerned about—although not just them. As I think I said to the noble Lord on an earlier occasion, I have talked to several head teachers in the last three months who have said to me that they are scouring the world for maths and computer science teachers. They cannot find them in Britain. The Government’s response to that has to be either to say that for the next two years they will exempt from any immigration skills charge people who are going to help build up the skills within the younger workforce in this country in those key areas or to provide a crash course for training people and encouraging them into those professions—or possibly both. The same is true of nursing. We need a joined-up government approach and to expand rapidly the numbers of nurses in training in this country. Otherwise, we will go on importing large numbers of people from the Philippines, South Africa and elsewhere.

I am only half persuaded that the Government yet know what they are doing. An active labour market policy and signals to the private sector seem to me to be very important. But I look forward to hearing further from the noble Lord—perhaps he would like to arrange an all-Peers meeting before we get to Third Reading so that we can discuss some of these things in detail with those around the Chamber who are interested in it. We need a lot more information before we can be confident of what the Government are saying. On that basis—

[Lord Bates]

The picture I am trying to paint for the noble Lord is that we have listened very carefully, including to the advice from the Migration Advisory Committee. BIS continues to consult and engage with stakeholders on this. On the particular point he raises about teachers of mathematics, schools do not just have to scour Britain but can seek maths teachers from the whole European Economic Area market. They can also recruit them from among people who have graduated from tier 4, and we have a PhD level which, to give a little more information, covers chemical scientists, biological scientists, biochemists, physical scientists, social and humanity scientists and natural and social science professionals not elsewhere classified, including researchers in research organisations other than universities.

My point is that we have done quite a bit. We have listened to the Migration Advisory Committee, we have consulted and I have said that I will give further consideration as to when they are introduced. On the other points which the noble Lord raises, if he really feels strongly about them, our position is that we have made our case strongly and that he should test the opinion of the House.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, it might help the House if the Government could tell us when their response to the Migration Advisory Committee will be published. The committee made the strong statement that the impact of this immigration skills charge on the public sector was such that it should be carefully phased in, perhaps over a number of years. Will that be one of the issues that the Government will address in their response to the MAC report?

[Lord Bates]

With the leave of the House, I will just say that I have recounted our response to the Migration Advisory Committee. We have listened to what it recommended on this. I said that we were looking at phasing it, which is in the noble Lord’s Amendment 151A. On the other amendments, we believe that the policy is very important. We will not change our position between now and Third Reading and, if the noble Lord wishes to test the opinion of the House, he should.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, a quarter to one in the morning is not the ideal time to test the opinion of the House. The Labour Benches appear to be almost entirely empty—they have abandoned their position. On that basis, I will not test the opinion of the House at this stage.

[Lord Bates]

I should just say for the benefit of the record that I notice on the government Benches a significant number of colleagues here present and very interested to listen to this debate and the Government’s position. The fact that the noble Lord’s Benches and the opposition Benches may be a bit thin at this hour of the morning is not the point; a lot of people are here who are interested in this debate.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

There is a strong argument that the way to make legislation on important issues is not in the early hours of the morning. However, on the basis that will have extensive further information and further consultation from the Government between now and Third Reading, I will withdraw my amendment.

[Lord Trefgarne]

No.