Intelligence: Russia

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have, if any, to introduce legislation “to provide the intelligence agencies with the tools they need to tackle the intelligence challenges posed by Russia”, as called for by the Intelligence and Security Committee in its the Annual Report for 2019-2021 (HC 877).

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to confirm that, as announced in the Queen’s Speech, the Government are committed to bringing forward new legislation to counter state threats and ensure that our world-class security services and law enforcement agencies continue to have the tools that they need to tackle the evolving threat and any challenging or hostile activities by any state.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, in that case, where is the Bill? This is a question of priorities. We have a number of badly drafted, long Bills before the House at present, but this is a question of national security. It is two and a half years since the ISC Russia report was published and the Prime Minister has dragged his feet ever since. Can the Minister assure us that the links of the Russian elite to the UK, to which the report refers, and its links to political parties are not part of the cause of the delay, given the amount of Russian-origin money which has flowed into Conservative Party finances?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I can absolutely assure the noble Lord of two things. The Bill will be state agnostic and linked to the actions of whichever state or actor is trying to perpetrate evil against this country; it will not be country specific. On the delay, this area of law is complex and some of this legislation has not been updated in over a century, so we must make sure that we both bring it up to date and future-proof it.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 5th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I noted that in his opening speech the Minister pledged that the Bill is based on fairness, that illegal activities will not be tolerated, that we aim to deprive people of UK citizenship in the event of the most serious crimes and, above all, that access to the UK should be based on need and not on the ability to pay. That is why I want to talk about the visa scheme that enables you to buy access to Britain—the golden visa scheme tier 1 investor visas, which allow wealthy people from dodgy countries to buy the right to live in the UK and, after a period of residence, to qualify for citizenship. It is one law for the rich and another for the poor.

In 2018, after the Salisbury poisonings, Theresa May announced a review of the scheme, which to my awareness has not yet been published. It has been reported that more than 6,000 golden visas, half of those yet issued, are being reviewed for possible national security risks, although those who applied in earlier years will by now have acquired full UK citizenship. Two Court of Appeal judgments in the last year have thrown up questions about the regulation of this scheme and the sources of the finance pledged by applicants. In four of the National Crime Agency’s major cases about illicit finance and unexplained wealth orders in the last two years, those under investigation had originally entered the UK with a golden visa.

Most golden visas have been issued to individuals from countries with a high risk of corruption. Between 2008 and 2020, a third of all golden visas were issued to individuals from mainland China and 20% to people from Russia. Other significant countries of origin included Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine and Turkey. Between 2008 and 2019, 9% of golden visa applications were refused. By comparison, 42% of asylum applications were refused. The UK has regularly been cited in magazines and other sources that appeal to the wealthy as one of the most popular golden visa regimes in the world, and one of the fastest: applications are turned around within three weeks. For UK asylum applications, the turnaround time is around six months or worse. Whether that is regarded as a fair system is an open question.

Last week, I looked at the Intelligence and Security Committee’s Russia report. I quote paragraph 49:

“the UK has been viewed as a particularly favourable destination for Russian oligarchs and their money. It is widely recognised that the key to London’s appeal was … the UK’s investor visa scheme”.

It goes on to say in paragraph 50:

“What is now clear is that … it offered ideal mechanisms by which illicit finance could be recycled through what has been referred to as the London ‘laundromat’. The money was also invested in extending patronage and building influence across a wide sphere of the British establishment … Russian influence in the UK is ‘the new normal’, and there are a lot of Russians with very close links to Putin who are well integrated into the UK business and social scene”—


and, as we all know, into UK politics, in effect corrupting aspects of British institutions and politics, extending into Parliament and the Conservative Party. The Intelligence and Security Committee’s report goes on to say that “one key measure” to limit the damage that is being caused

“would be an overhaul of the Tier 1 (Investor) visa programme—there needs to be a more robust approach to the approval process for these visas.”

I failed to find this touched on when I read through the Bill. I hope the Government will accept that the Bill provides an opportunity to develop a much more robust approach to this rather shameful visa programme.

UK Borders: Surveillance

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 18th December 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they plan to take to improve surveillance of the United Kingdom’s borders, including at smaller ports and harbours, coastal waters and private airstrips.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, the Border Force works closely with other law enforcement agencies, security services and international partners on an intelligence-led approach to identify unlawful maritime and aviation activity. It also uses a combination of cutters, radar, onshore assets and aerial surveillance to detect and stop small craft.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I congratulate the Government on the announcement that they are going to double the number of cutters around our coast from two to four. I think that means that we will have one cutter for every 3,000 miles of coastline if they all operate at the same time—rather fewer than the Dutch have for a far shorter coastline. Has the Minister read the Public Accounts Committee’s report of two weeks ago that points out that there are 21 departments and agencies in Whitehall concerned with the management of borders, not one of which is in overall control? Does she know of the report issued last March by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders, which pointed out that nearly half the small ports on our east coast had not been visited by any member of Border Force in the preceding 15 months? The leave campaign talked about taking back control of Britain’s borders. Is it not the case that we do not have effective control of British borders at present and that perhaps we ought to consider putting more effort into that?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I note what the noble Lord says but, of course, it is not a question simply of the number of cutters and RIBs that we have in the sea. We are heavily reliant on the most effective method of border control: namely, the multiagency, intelligence-led information that we have. We deploy on the back of that intelligence and risk assessment. That is the most effective way of manning certainly our maritime borders.

Security: ID Cards

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 20th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, we have many numbers that help in assuring our identity. I am not sure that this would add to the mix. I am certainly happy to look at this, but I do not think there is any evidence that a national identity number would improve security in this country. I have already outlined to the noble Lord, Lord Blair, how this country is helping to make us safer.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, under the coalition Government we found ourselves trying to check who was on the electoral register against the national insurance number and discovering that the Government do not have, across their different departments, clear rules on which identity numbers we have. I have different numbers for my passport, the NHS and national insurance. As we move toward more of a database society, is there not an argument for considering how, in the relationship between the citizen and the state, we at least move toward common rules across departments for recording who we are, where we are, where we live and so forth?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, the Government’s Verify system helps in regard to identity. We are certainly looking, for when the UK leaves the EU, at just what that residency document will look like.

Brexit: UK-EU Movement of People (EUC Report)

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, for me, the high point of this debate was when the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, remarked that picking strawberries is skilled work. I have spent most of the past three Sundays picking soft fruit, including gooseberries. I have scars all over my lower forearms to demonstrate this. To be told that this is skilled work was very pleasing. I shall go back and tell my wife, who merely did the jam, ice cream-making and other such things, that my work was at least as skilled as hers.

This excellent report emphasises that, fundamentally, movement of people is seen as an issue of sovereignty, on which the whole debate around the EU referendum was extremely confused. As the noble Lord, Lord Spicer, reminds us, the leave campaign was in favour of free trade for companies, for investment and in goods but in no circumstances for people. We are one of the most open economies in the world for foreign investment, so we welcome foreign companies but not foreigners—unless they are really rich, at which point, under the tier 1 investor visas, permanent residence can be bought. Under such visas, a rising number of Chinese and Russians whose wealth came from not entirely clear places were allowed in. Several of us have been involved in trying to change the rules on that and I am happy that the Government have now tightened them.

Given that we are a country which is remarkably open to foreign investment and is therefore dominated by multinational companies, talented young British people who want to rise to the top of those companies need to be able to work abroad and to be able to travel without the complications of getting visas to work in foreign markets. If multinational companies based in Britain, be they European, Japanese, Chinese or whatever, say to themselves: “Well, actually, promoting a Brit and making them work in Frankfurt for this year and Athens the next would be an awful nuisance because of the time it will take them to get visas”, they will promote French people, Germans and others instead. Another part of what has been wrong with our entire debate about leaving the European Union as far as immigration is concerned is that we have not thought about it as a properly two-way relationship.

Robert Goodwill has been quoted as saying to the committee that the UK Government do control their borders, at least in principle, but we have heard in this debate that, in practice, they do not manage that very well. I was struck some months ago when we had a question in this House about how many offshore patrol boats we had around the extensive maritime borders of the United Kingdom, to which the answer was a quarter of those that the Dutch have for their short coastline. I asked the Library to check this morning. I gather that we have fewer offshore patrol boats for our borders than any other EU member state except Belgium. That suggests that we are not really thinking about enforcing the rules. Many of your Lordships will have seen the NAO comment that there are more than 60 small ports within Britain which a member of any public authority, coastguard or police force does not visit for more than 12 months. Again, our borders are entirely open because we have had Governments so concerned with shrinking the state that they have given up on the idea that one must enforce control of our borders and existing immigration controls.

A lot of other noble Lords talked about the problems of statistics. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, remarked that when you do not have the facts, perception becomes reality. I am very concerned by what I see as misperception in the white working-class estates of west Yorkshire and elsewhere which voted heavily for leave. There they believe that foreigners from Romania or elsewhere are taking their social housing and their jobs. There is very little evidence of this. An excellent article in the Financial Times on Portsmouth some months ago pointed out the widespread perception that most social housing there was now occupied by immigrants from the EU. Actually, the total number of people from the EU living in social housing in Portsmouth was three. That level of misinformation and lack of information is a tremendous problem for us all.

I will spend a little more time on the question raised in chapter 4: the pull factor of immigration from the European Union and the extent to which British employers prefer to recruit directly from eastern Europe rather than to train their own or recruit directly from here. I spent some time travelling around Yorkshire over the last four of five years asking small and large employers why they recruit directly from eastern Europe rather than look for people here. The answers are, first, that you cannot get trained people and, secondly, that the sort of people you get from Bradford, Wakefield or wherever it may be are often much less motivated, they tend not to turn up on time and go sick more often. Therefore the employers prefer Slovaks, Poles and the like.

That raises some large questions—whether or not we leave the European Union, or whatever we do about freedom of movement—about the structural weaknesses of our education and training system, in particular how it affects what one must call our underclass. That is, those whose grandparents worked in the mills, factories and mines and whose parents often managed to get only occasional work. These people go to underfunded schools—we had an interesting discussion earlier this afternoon about school funding—without decent careers services and they do not find a way into jobs. It is not that they do not want to find places. I work occasionally with a social housing association in Bradford which now runs its own apprenticeship scheme for training and retaining its own plumbers, electricians, bricklayers, plasterers and the like. It took in 10 people last year. It had 400 applications. A lot of young people in Bradford want training and cannot get it. Around Yorkshire I ask what is happening. They say, “Well, the big building employers do not want to take on apprentices because they are not sure they will want to take them through and retain them for four or five years. It is easier for them to recruit people from Latvia, Lithuania or Poland”. That is a huge problem, one that we must all address. It is not part of what the leave campaign told us about.

What about the Government? Nurses and teachers have been mentioned already, with the Government reducing the level of training for nurses when we need rather more of them. I have seen rather too much of the inside of some hospitals in the last year for various reasons. The Portuguese nurses who looked after me in St Thomas’s were superb. When I went into St George’s outpatients for some post-cardiac physio, the first thing that the Polish physio in charge of our course said to me was, “Do you still want us here or do you want us to go home?”. Of course, that was just after the referendum. The answer is that we need them here. They provide a very good service to our economy. We are not training enough nurses of our own, so they are even more important.

Clare Foges in today’s Times talks about the unfortunate bias of the current debate on immigration: the suggestion that somehow voting leave could solve our immigration problems and that European immigration is the key to that. The spectre of 80 million Turks swarming into Britain successfully blurred the issue between immigration from Europe and from the rest of the world. I must say to the noble Lord, Lord Green, that Migration Watch nurtured that popular perception, in alliance with the Daily Mail and others. Yet the Migration Watch website, which I looked at this morning, says:

“In the last decade only around one third of net migration came from the European Union—the rest originated from countries outside the EU”.


The overall population of the EU is falling. The surge of Polish, Romanian, Lithuanian and Latvian migration, which accounts for about half our current stock of EU residents, is finite. There are not that many more to come. Young Poles and Latvians are not having many children. The prospect of Brexit and the falling pound are already leading to a beginning of a return. The long-term immigration challenge we face, alongside other European countries, is from the rest of the world, where population is rising, climate change is making life more difficult and nasty regimes or violent conflict combine to push people north to struggle, if they can, across Turkey or the Mediterranean. For example, the population of Africa doubled in the last 25 years and will double again in the next 25 years. Where are those extra billion people likely to try to go? They will try to get out of their countries into a safer world. That is the immigration issue we should talk about.

So we are struggling with a distorted image. There is also a distorted image popular in the Daily Mail and elsewhere that all our European immigrants are Poles and Romanians living on benefits or taking low-paid jobs from the unskilled British. The Migration Watch figures show that 400,000 of the 3.3 million EU citizens from other countries living in the UK are Irish nationals. They will not go, even if we leave the European Union. It also shows that the third largest group in the UK are 300,000 German citizens, with 200,000 each from Italy and France. Overall, half of the EU arrivals in 2015-16 came from the 14 wealthy states of western Europe, not from Romania, Bulgaria and elsewhere.

The noble Lord, Lord Green, tells me that the reason Migration Watch statistics for Germans in Britain are 150,000 higher than the ONS statistics is that Migration Watch counts children as immigrants where one parent is born outside Britain. That puts me in mind that I am about to become the grandfather of an immigrant because my son’s American wife, currently living with him in Edinburgh where he teaches at the university—

[Lord Green of Deddington]

I think the noble Lord misunderstood what I said outside. I will correct that later with him—it is not of interest to the House generally.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I was merely about to say that if that were the case, our current Queen would be the first non-immigrant monarch since Queen Anne. Under that criteria, Prince Charles would also be an immigrant since his father was born in Greece. Again, one must be careful how we handle immigration statistics on one thing or another.

To conclude, we need a broader debate about the whole question of immigration. We live in a world in which we hope that our young people will travel, and study and work abroad. Some of them will marry people from other countries and, we hope, bring them back to live here. That is the nature of the world in which we live and we do not want to make that too much more difficult. We recognise that we also live in a world in which the global population is rising and there are many insecure countries from which people want to flee. That poses huge questions for us which are nothing to do with whether or not we stay in the European Union.

Brexit: Customs and Border Staff

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what estimate they have made of the number of additional public employees needed to meet the requirements of Brexit, in particular in customs and border control.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, the White Paper published last week set out the Government’s priorities and the broad strategy for exiting the EU. There is a number of options as to how EU migration and customs checks might work once we have exited the EU. We are considering these options, so it would be wrong to set out a further position at this stage.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, half of Britain’s trade is currently within the single market, so presumably customs checks and the space needed for them will have to be considerably expanded. Two-thirds of visitors come from the EU and the EEA, so I assume that the long queues that we already have at the external border for people going through hard border controls will be immensely lengthened and that we will need to treble the number of border staff. Are the Government already beginning to plan for the extra space and staff they need? If they cannot recruit enough, perhaps we will need to recruit border agency people from eastern Europe.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, the Government will certainly be prepared, if need be, in the way that the noble Lord said. However, the advent of e-passport gates at airports has made it quicker to get through the border, and of course the facial recognition checks at those gates have proved to be very efficient.

Crime: Illegal Arms

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, we have increased our maritime capability and Border Force is an active member of the joint Maritime Operations Centre, where it works closely with partner agencies. Border Force is working to enhance its capability by training more firearms dogs and improving detection technologies. The technologies have formed a critical part of the improvement in performance in this area.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

All these criminal networks smuggling into the country are cross-border and international, and the arms which are sloshing around the African continent and eastern Europe are smuggled by links of criminals across a range of different countries. As we withdraw from the European Union we are in severe risk of losing the co-operation in intelligence and policing that we have built up over the past 40 years. Can the Minister assure the House that, as this danger of arms smuggling rises for the UK, we are taking adequate steps to ensure that that crucial co-operation in intelligence and policing continues, and can she tell us something about the framework within which it will be organised?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I can confirm to the noble Lord that we intend to keep up and enhance our joint working capabilities at the border and between member states, both during our membership of the EU and afterwards.

Investor Visas: Money Laundering

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Ludford, who is unwell, and at her request, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in her name on the Order Paper.

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie) (Con)]

While I cannot disclose the specifics of ongoing investigations, I can assure the noble Lord that the Home Office is working with partners across government and, where evidence of wrongdoing comes to light, robust action will be taken with respect to pre-April 2015 applications.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I welcome the implications of that statement. We are coming up to the anti-corruption summit, but it is clear from the numbers between 2011 and 2014—when, happily, the Government tightened the rules—that a number of Russian, Chinese and central Asian businessmen were in effect exporting corruption into Britain. It was a breach of British sovereignty, in effect, allowing these people to buy residence and, in some cases, citizenship. There are those who raise the question of criminals from abroad being allowed into this country. This was criminals from abroad being allowed to buy their way into the country. Does not that seem to be a very important issue for the Government to use their retrospective authority to investigate much more closely?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

With respect to the noble Lord, the proposition that no proper checks were carried out prior to April 2015—or, indeed, November 2014 —is not well founded. I believe that Transparency International, in one of its important pieces of work, referred to what it termed a “blind faith” period, but there was no such thing because persons wanting to invest in the United Kingdom pursuant to a tier 1 visa application were required to do that through either a broker, a bank or a lawyer, who would be regulated under the FCA and therefore bound to carry out relevant financial due diligence and anti-money laundering checks.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Keen of Elie]

The premise underlying the question is fundamentally wrong. It is not necessary to have a tier 1 visa or visa application to invest in property in the United Kingdom. Conversely, an investment in property in the United Kingdom is not a qualifying investment for the purposes of a tier 1 visa application.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Have the Government noticed the Spanish Government’s prosecution of a number of Russians resident in Spain taking place over the last week? Is the Minister aware that the Panama papers have provided a good deal of new evidence on some people who are now British citizens and where their money came from within Russia?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I am not going to comment on individual cases at this time.

Brussels Terrorist Attacks

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement made in the House of Commons earlier today. We share fully the abhorrence and condemnation expressed in the Statement about the attacks in Brussels yesterday, which were in reality yet another attack on all Europe. We support the Government in confronting this threat. Our thoughts are very much with the families of those killed and of the missing British person, with those injured and their families, and with the people of Brussels and Belgium—and indeed the people of Ankara and Istanbul, who have also been the subject of attacks in recent days.

I have a few questions and points to raise. Can the Minister say what guidance is being offered to our citizens who were intending to travel to or through Brussels over the holiday period in particular? Can he say more about the collaboration that is taking place with Belgium and other European partners, including the support or expertise that had already been given or offered to Belgium prior to this attack? If ever the case still needed to be made for closer working and collaboration and sharing of intelligence to combat these acts of terrorism, this is it.

On the issue of border security, we welcome the steps that have been taken to step up checks at our air, sea and rail borders with Belgium and France, and security on our own transport network. Are all passports now being checked on exit from the UK, as the Government said they would be by the end of last year, and were 100% passport checks in place between the UK and Belgium in advance of yesterday’s attacks?

Border Force operates juxtaposed controls at, I believe, six locations in France, covering ferry services, the Channel Tunnel and Eurostar. As I understand it, however, in respect of Belgium juxtaposed controls cover only Eurostar foot passengers and not ferry terminals. Is that the case and if so, will there be a review of our borders with Belgium with a view to strengthening them?

Further cuts are coming following the spending review. The Border Force has faced years of cuts and is already stretched. Are further cuts to the force going to be made in 2016-17? Surely now is the time to strengthen our borders, not to go in the reverse direction.

We know that a number of terror plots have been foiled in the past year and we take this opportunity to express our gratitude to all those in the police and security services who work so determinedly to keep us safe. The public, however, will want reassurance about our ability to thwart a Paris or Brussels-style attack. We know about plans to improve firearms capability in London but there is concern about the ability of cities outside London to cope. Last year a Home Office report on police firearms capability found that the number of armed officers had fallen by 15% since 2008, including a fall of 27% in Greater Manchester and 25% in Merseyside. Have the Government reviewed the ability of all major cities to respond, and can they provide reassurance that, if there were a Paris or Brussels-style attack outside London, our police and fire services would have the necessary capability to respond?

In his statement on the strategic defence and security review, the Prime Minister promised a new contingency plan to deal with major terrorist attacks, with up to 10,000 military personnel available to support the police. Can the Minister update the House on those plans and say when the full 10,000 military personnel will be trained and in place?

We know that at moments like this, great anxiety will be felt in the British Muslim community over fears of reprisal attacks and hate crime as a result of the acts of terrorism in Brussels—which are simply that, and a perversion of Islam. Do the Government recognise that concern, and will they send an unequivocal message that anyone who seeks to promote division or hate on the back of these attacks will be dealt with severely?

Will the Government also condemn the ill-informed comments from Donald Trump on UK television today and take this opportunity to distance the Government from them? Mr Trump appears to have suggested that Muslims do not come forward to report concerns in order to assist our security authorities in combating potential acts of terrorism. Generalised slurs, from whatever source, on all Muslim people, who have the same revulsion over what happened yesterday as everyone else, serve only to drive a wedge between the Muslim community and the rest of our diverse country. This is a time for maximum unity among people of all faiths—and none—in rejecting those who preach extremism. We stand together as a united country, and we stand with our neighbour Belgium in its time of need, determined that whatever it takes, and however long it takes, we will face and defeat this threat to our way of life together.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, if I may start on a personal note, while watching the television report on the Istanbul attack I noticed that it took place only a few days after I had walked down that street between meetings in Istanbul. To see the pictures of Brussels, where my wife was walking through the site the day before this happened, is to make one feel that we are not cut off from all this. This is part of our world. I find it despicable that the Brexit campaign should have tried to suggest that we could cut ourselves off from the world and that what happens 100 miles away from London, in Brussels, is no concern of ours. This was, after all, an attack by Belgian citizens in Belgium. We should recall from the IRA campaign in Britain that what was in many ways a domestic terrorist campaign also included cells and co-operation in Spain, Gibraltar, France, Belgium and Libya and that, in dealing with a series of global terrorist threats, we are forced to co-operate with others as closely as we can.

Perhaps the Minister would care to confirm this: if we were to try to secure our borders completely, we would have to return to the sort of controls that we had in the 1960s. I first began to travel between Britain and France then; all bags were opened and it often took 10 to 15 minutes for each person to go through passport control. Given the enormous increase in cross-border travel between Britain and the continent, it would be a severe disincentive to all our citizens—and, incidentally, an intense inconvenience to the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, in travelling each week between his home in France and the House of Lords. It would also be very difficult given the large Middle Eastern presence we now have, particularly in London. There are not just people from the Middle East working here and living as refugees but rich Arabs from countries from which money flows, unfortunately, to mosques and madrassahs in Britain to support a radical version of Islam. We all have to be deeply concerned about that.

I second everything that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, said about visible co-operation and contact with our Muslim community. I was extremely proud to take part in a service in Westminster Abbey some months ago in which an Imam read from the Koran, as a representative of one of Britain’s faiths in one of our national Christian institutions. I suggest to the Government that they need to do more in demonstrating how far we accept British Muslims as part of the British community, and the moderate version of Islam as the appropriate representation of their faith.

Can the Minister say a little about the importance of the Prüm convention and British participation in it, in terms of the rapid exchange of information among different services across Europe on suspected terrorists and others? I noted the reference to the counterterrorism group in the Statement which, as the Statement recognises, brings Britain together with other EU members and with Norway and Switzerland, as all are concerned with this. Can he say a little about further moves that we think may be necessary towards the closer exchange of intelligence, information and co-operation among national police and security agencies with our neighbours, all of whom are also members of the European Union?

[Lord Bates]

I thank both noble Lords for their remarks and I agree very much with their points and observations. Let me start with that point about the Muslim community. Following the experience of previous attacks, we have sadly seen an increase in Islamophobic-style attacks around our country. One of the things which we put in place to retain confidence, as part of the counterextremism strategy, was to ensure that the police are visible in those areas and offering some protection and reassurance, particularly at sensitive spots within those communities.

I also make it clear to those overseas in the United States who wish to intervene in our affairs that in this area, as in many others, a little knowledge would be helpful because the police have gone straight on the record to point out that in so many of the cases which we have had success in disrupting, the intelligence and information has very much come from within that community. It is an absolute partnership—an essential partnership—that we have with that community and anything which drives a wedge between it and the wider community in the UK will serve only to weaken our security. We do not want that to happen. I know that my noble friend and ministerial colleague Lord Ahmad, who leads on the counterextremism area and sits in the Home Office and in the Department for Transport, is working on a daily basis in that respect.

Let me go through some of the points which were raised, in order if I can. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked about the travel advice. It has already been updated for Belgium and while it does not advise against travel, it is stressing the importance of maintaining vigilance in that area. We will continue to keep that under review and change it if necessary.

On broadening the number of locations, these special juxtaposed controls which we have are of course a tremendous part of our defence. The Channel is an important part of our defence but the juxtaposed controls are a crucial part of our security at our borders. The Immigration Minister, James Brokenshire, has had meetings with his Belgian and Dutch counterparts about the possibility of strengthening relationships, particularly at some of the ferry terminals, in the light of intelligence. We hope to have more to say on that in future.

In relation to the Border Force, I know that the story is in a sense running because we have not yet announced the final budget for that. We will need to come forward with that very quickly indeed. But I hope that all noble Lords will be reassured that when we have talked about putting an extra £2.5 billion into the intelligence and security apparatus and recruiting another 1,900 people to the security services, and when we have protected in real terms the police and security budgets and announced uplifts for firearms, we are not going to do anything which would do other than strengthen these crucial front-line capabilities in the face of the threats that we receive.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, asked about Prüm. We did opt in to Prüm, which again is an important part of our co-operation with our European colleagues in this area. We have so many areas in which we co-operate with them, such as on criminal information networks and in Schengen information sharing. Prüm was very important because it has those elements of sharing data on DNA, on vehicle licensing and on fingerprints. We have signed up to those elements and they will be ready in 2017-18. Without tempting members of the Home Affairs Sub-Committee of the European Union Select Committee, if it is represented here, to leap to their feet the committee wrote a strong report saying that we need to go further and faster on that. In fact we organised a meeting with the very people who are introducing this at the Home Office, from a technological point of view. They have promised to come back with regular updates for the House on how we are doing.

I was asked what more could be done through counterterrorism. There are some items on the agenda. The Home Secretary has said that it is very important that we have passenger name records, not just for flights from outside the EU area but within it. It is vital that that happens; it was supposed to be on the agenda of the Justice and Home Affairs Council, which was to meet this week. Understandably, it has either been pushed back or, potentially, postponed. I thank noble Lords for the concerns in their questions.

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.”

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.