Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill (Second sitting)

Afzal Khan Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 12th February 2019 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

That is better.

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

Q 109 I thank all three of you for coming today. I will start with the TUC, although I will probably bring all of you in later down the road. What in the Bill do you see as a threat to social security or as increasing the potential for exploitation?

Rosa Crawford: The TUC is very concerned that the Bill opens up a wide scope for increased exploitation and insecurity among not only European Union citizens in this country, but UK citizens abroad. To focus on the first part of your question, we are worried that the legislation, by removing EU rules on social security co-ordination, paves the way for the Government to bring in plans to restrict EU social security entitlements for EU citizens, such as jobseeker’s allowance.

We have also seen in the White Paper plans to bring in an immigration health surcharge on EU citizens. From a welfare point of view, we are very concerned that that will mean 3.8 million citizens facing increased poverty and having to pay health charges. The TUC absolutely opposes the immigration health surcharge both for EU citizens and for all migrant workers.

Also, in the context of the Brexit negotiations, it seems reckless to suggest that we will introduce restrictions on EU citizens claiming social security entitlements here in the future when we know that more than 1 million British people live in the EU, many of whom now claim pensions, or will do soon. It is expected that EU countries may well reciprocate, with restrictions on British citizens abroad claiming sickness insurance and unemployment insurance and on claiming their pensions abroad, which is obviously a huge injustice. People have paid all their lives in one country and expect to be able to claim in another. We are very worried about the increasing social insecurity and the welfare repercussions for British people abroad.

On the second half of your question, on exploitation, we have said that the Bill will not only make life harder for EU citizens and workers in this country, but have the effect of making conditions worse for all workers. We say that because, by ending EU rules on free movement, and the right to change employers freely that comes with that, the Bill also paves the way for a more restrictive work visa regime, as the Government outlined in the immigration White Paper. What we have seen of those proposals is a recipe for increasing worker vulnerability.

We know that time-limited visas of the kind the Government have said they want to introduce—specifically the 12-month time-limited visa for low-skilled workers—would increase worker vulnerability exponentially by limiting people’s legal status in a country to their employment. If workers have a limited time to move from one employer to another, we know that will be an incentive for them to stay in abusive forms of employment, because of the difficulty of getting another legal form of employment.

If workers leave an abusive employer and cannot find another, legal form of employment, they become undocumented workers and, under the terms of the Immigration Act 2016, they are committing a criminal offence by working. That means that if they are then abused in an undocumented form of employment and go to the authorities, they could face a jail term and deportation as a result of reporting abuse.

We at the TUC are absolutely opposed to those measures, because they just encourage exploitation. As I said, they make it easier for bad employers to use irregular migrants or those with question marks about their immigration status, who accept lower conditions and undercut UK workers on terms and conditions and on pay. We already see that happening in agriculture, distribution and some sections of cleaning and care. The Bill will make it easier for that exploitation to happen, which is why we are calling on MPs to oppose it.

[Afzal Khan]

Q What protections are needed to make sure that the Government’s proposed seasonal agricultural workers scheme and temporary 12-month work visas do not lead to exploitation?

Rosa Crawford: The TUC has said that the Government should scrap all the proposals in the Bill and that we should instead continue to have the current system in place for EU workers to come here, work freely and have all the legal protections in place. For any temporary visa migration system, as I said, time-limited visas bring the inherent risks that workers will face further exploitation because their condition of employment is linked to their legal status in the country.

An important change that would mean that all workers were less at risk of exploitation would be to make sure that workers, regardless of immigration status, could enforce their employment rights. That is in line with the International Labour Organisation’s recommendations. Employment rights are human rights—it is not a crime to work and it should not be a crime to try to claim your right at work. An important step would be to roll back the provisions in the Immigration Act 2016 that criminalise undocumented working. As I said, we have grave concerns about the introduction of any temporary visa scheme for EU citizens, because it would just increase exploitation and make it easier for bad employers to commit undercutting.

[Afzal Khan]

Q The next question probably applies, in different parts, to all three of you. What experience do you have with the current system for non-EU migrants, and what do you make of the Government’s proposals? I would particularly like for Universities UK and the Royal College of Nursing to comment on the current tier 2 route, and for the TUC to comment on the proposed 12-month temporary visas.

Vivienne Stern: Perhaps I could start with a comment on the tier 2 route? For a long period, we have had some concerns about the way that the visa regime is working for universities for non-EU nationals, particularly the compliance system, the burdens of the compliance system and the overall effect on the attractiveness of the UK as a place to come and work. The extension of that regime to European economic area nationals raises some significant challenges because of the dependence of universities on EEA workers in some areas; because of the really rather significant increase in the compliance burden that could result—although I understand that there may be opportunities to think about how that can be reduced—and because of the impact of the proposed salary threshold on universities’ ability to recruit in some occupations where it has historically been quite difficult to fill roles with UK-domiciled workers.

Professor Dame Donna Kinnair: We would add to that. We think that we, as a country, are dependent on nurses coming from overseas, so we are absolutely dependent on overseas workers. We know that the impact of the threshold would damage our profession if it were applied to it, because its emphasis is on “Agenda for Change”. The £30,000 is an arbitrary figure and we do not understand where it has come from. Most skilled nurses that come into the country from overseas are not getting that.

We know that there have been some exemptions, but the whole process is arbitrary and we think that it would impact negatively on the workforce on which we are highly reliant. The nursing workforce are one of the major planks that this Government are using to fill shortages in the nursing profession, particularly in social care. It is highly important that the unintended consequences do not apply to the profession, because otherwise we will not have the people to care for our patients.

[Afzal Khan]

Q Can I ask the other two witnesses to comment on the effect that the £30,000 minimum would have on their sectors and members?

Rosa Crawford: The TUC is very concerned about the impact of the £30,000 threshold. We are concerned about it now—it applies to non-EU workers—and applying it to EU workers would have a devastating impact on many sectors. The Government estimate that 80% of EU workers would fall below the threshold. It is not only nursing and other parts of the health service, but distribution, hospitality and many parts of industry, that are heavily dependent on EU workers. There would be a really negative impact on those workers if that threshold was introduced.

The TUC is saying that, in the long term, there needs to be action on pay so that more workers receive a better settlement. The Migration Advisory Committee has suggested that this threshold would be an incentive to improve pay, but unfortunately that is not what we have seen. The pay cap has been in place for seven years, and we are only just moving out of that. The TUC is still calling for a fully funded settlement to ensure that workers are decently paid and that their wages keep up where they have fallen behind for the last seven years. We have not yet seen that.

Unfortunately, there are not enough employers in the private sector paying workers decently, so many million workers are still in insecure contracts and are not being paid a living wage. We want action on pay alongside action to ensure that the workers we need now to fill the critical shortages that Donna has talked about can come in. We need not to have the £30,000 threshold, and we need serious action on pay in the public sector and key parts of the private sector to ensure that everybody is treated decently and that migrant workers and UK workers receive decent pay for their work.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

Q Professor Kinnair, the chair of the Migration Advisory Committee gave evidence to us this morning, and he said that he did not feel that immigration should be used to deal with staff shortages. He argued that we should be paying people significantly higher wages. Is it not true that the RCN should be lobbying for nurses’ pay, rather than trying to keep wages down by promoting immigration to fill the gaps?

Professor Dame Donna Kinnair: You will have seen that the RCN has been lobbying for an increase—we lobbied long and hard on “Scrap the Cap” for nurses—but we are where we are. We have a shortage of 42,000 nurses at the moment, and it is predicted that it will rise to about 100,000 in the next 10 years. Those are people who look after our patients. We are where we are.

Of course we need to increase the domestic supply of nurses, and that includes paying them appropriately. We fully support that, and we have been lobbying on that basis. However, the people who gave evidence to the Select Committee about the Government’s plans talked about three areas: international recruitment, return to practice and retention. We know that you cannot have a nursing workforce fit for the needs of the population of this country unless you increase the domestic supply. As you will have heard, we have been lobbying up and down the country. Unless we get the right staff in the right organisations, we will also seek legislation on staffing. We know that if we do not have the right number of people, care falls, and that is damaging to our patients.

In summary, we are lobbying. We do not understand the proposal about low-skilled workers, because who in nursing is a low-skilled worker? What does that mean? The 12-month visa does not allow continuity of care, because by the time someone has got to grips with the culture of this country, they are ready to go. It is also contrary to people being able to bring their dependants into the country. Many nurses have families. Are we going to split up families? Are we asking them to leave their children while they come and provide care for the UK population?

[Maria Caulfield]

Q I have a follow-up question on that. This Bill is about ending freedom of movement for EU workers—EU nurses and midwives. The latest figures from the Nursing & Midwifery Council show that the greatest increase in the number of nurses registering with it has come from non-EU nurses—2,808—so there is clearly a group of nurses from outside the EU who want to register and work here, but it is difficult for them to do so because of the restrictions in place. Do you welcome the level playing field that would enable nurses from outside the EU to come and work in the NHS as easily as EU nurses and midwives can do currently?

Professor Dame Donna Kinnair: We welcome the fact that there is one system. The less complex a system is, the better it is, because people can navigate it. It has been a particular Government intention to turn to non-EU nurses, and once we knew that we were coming out of Europe, they sought to draw in nurses from outside the EU. We have concerns because we believe in ethical recruitment. We do not believe that we should be raiding countries that require their nurses, despite the risk of not increasing our domestic supply.

[Afzal Khan]

Q May I ask Universities UK to comment on the £30,000 minimum income threshold?

Vivienne Stern: For the university sector this is primarily a question of access to specific sorts of skills, and competitiveness. Overall, almost a quarter of academic staff in the university sector come from outside the UK, and in some disciplines and roles the reliance is much greater. EEA nationals make up 11% of all staff in universities, and they comprise 17% of academic staff. For staff on research-only contracts, that figure is 27%. In particular subject areas the concentration of EEA nationals can be even higher, particularly in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, as well as areas such as economics, where more than 30% of academic staff come from outside the UK.

Universities require specific skills, sometimes at relatively short notice, and the pool of talent is geographically distributed in some funny way. For example, the University of Cambridge has a world-leading strength in Arctic and Antarctic research, and it requires a pool of technicians who are able to analyse certain sorts of geological data. Quite often, those teams of individuals are deployed at relatively short notice when the climate conditions are right and boats are available, and it all comes together at the last minute. A group of individuals in Italy possess those skills, and historically Cambridge has called on them, and recruited from Italy to staff up those teams when they need those skills. That does not mean that over time we could not generate our own labour force with those specific skills, but in the short term if we moved from one regime to another, would institutions simply be unable to access the specific skillsets they need for one reason or another? Would they be less able to compete effectively and perform their research because they are constrained in that regard?

Overall, our particular concern relates to staff in technician roles, 63% of whom earn below the £30,000 threshold. That is why we propose that the Government should consider a lower threshold. We would like to suggest £21,000 as the level at which the majority of staff—particularly in those technician roles—will be able to continue to come to the UK. That would be a compromise. We also suggest that for staff whose jobs fall under the shortage occupation list there should be no salary threshold. As others have argued, a salary threshold is not a good proxy for skill level.

[Afzal Khan]

Q The NHS and universities were both part of the pilot for EU settled status. What feedback have you had from your members on issues with that system so far?

Vivienne Stern: My concern right now is the low level of take-up of that scheme. I think the last I heard was that the Department for Education estimated that something like 20% of the staff who should have gone through that process had done that, so for us right now, there is a communication effort to make sure that staff are aware of the scheme and how to apply. There were some early glitches. There was a bit of frustration about the app in the very early days, but I think those problems were pretty swiftly resolved, and I am not aware of any significant concerns about the operation of the scheme.

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

Q I have a few questions, which I want to put first to the TUC representative. You talked about having a system that would allow EU citizens similar access to the UK as they enjoy now. How do you think that that would square with the referendum result in 2016, and the clear indication that people wanted to end freedom of movement?

Rosa Crawford: I think you can take many things from the referendum result in 2016. What is clear is that we need working people to not suffer as a result of that referendum result. As I have outlined, the provisions of the Bill make it easier for bad employers to use one group of workers to undercut other groups of workers, at the cost of everybody’s rights. We want a Brexit deal that ultimately delivers ongoing protections for UK workers at EU levels of rights, as well as tariff-free, barrier-free trade, and that ensures that there is no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. For us, probably the best way to achieve that at this stage would be ongoing membership of the single market and a customs union.

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[The Chair]

We will now take evidence from Liberty and Justice. I welcome our witnesses. We have until 4 o’clock for this session. Please both introduce yourselves.

Gracie Bradley: I am Gracie Bradley, the policy and campaigns manager at Liberty.

Jodie Blackstock: I am Jodie Blackstock, the legal director at Justice.

[Afzal Khan]

Q What concerns do you have about the Henry VIII powers granted to Ministers by the Bill?

Jodie Blackstock: At Justice we have deep concerns about the potential reach of clause 4, which provides extremely broad delegated powers to the Minister of State in connection with repeal of the current free movement provisions relating to EEA nationals. Of course the provisions have to enable the repeal of those measures after we leave the EU, but it is not at all clear from the Bill what is intended to replace them. We consider that a number of changes are necessary, and we will provide separate detail on those subsequently in our written evidence—I apologise for not having that before you now, but we will provide the detail this afternoon.

First, the primary policy aims ought to be stated on the face of the Bill in primary legislation, so that Parliament has the opportunity to scrutinise those principles and amend them as appropriate. Those provisions would be to enable the accrued rights of EEA nationals who currently have settled status in this country to remain and for the transitional provisions surrounding those rights to be introduced in a clear way. Currently, the Government have proposals on both issues, and we see no reason why they could not put them on the face of the Bill. I can come back to that in more detail.

Secondly, we consider that the delegated powers set out in clause 4 should be substantially limited. The memorandum on delegated powers that the Government have provided seeks to explain that the two key aims of that clause are to deal with technical amendments to remove references that are no longer appropriate to the EU from legislation and also to protect the accrued rights of EU and EEA nationals. If that is the intended aim, those can be the powers as set out in the Bill, and we would propose that it be constrained in that way, through a provision relating to technical amendments and a power to provide consequential amendments that will give effect to accrued rights.

In our view, there are additional consequences from that relating to section 3 of the Immigration Act 1971, which provides for the immigration rules. In these circumstances, which to a certain extent are unique and will create the biggest change to immigration policy since the Maastricht treaty in 1992, we suggest that the power to make those changes ought not to be left simply to immigration rules but should be set out in the Bill, or the use of section 3 of Immigration Act to do so should be specifically constrained as an alternative to the Bill. If you would like me to go into any of those points in a bit more detail, I can do so, but I wanted to set out our primary concerns about the way the delegated power operates.

Gracie Bradley: Liberty would echo those concerns. We are really quite concerned about clause 4, and particularly the fact that the purpose of regulations under the clause may be not just in consequence of the repeal of retained EU legislation relating to free movement, but in connection with that purpose. In our view, essentially any change to the immigration system for the foreseeable future will be in connection with the end of free movement, and therefore we are delegating a huge amount of power to the Secretary of State, effectively sidelining Parliament in a really significant policy change.

[Afzal Khan]

Q The Bill would bring EEA citizens under UK immigration law and into the hostile environment. What do you think the impact has been of the hostile environment thus far? What would be the effect of extending it in the Bill?

Gracie Bradley: The impact of the hostile environment has really been laid bare by the Windrush scandal, and I would like to set Liberty’s comments in that context. We have seen people who had a right to be here made destitute, losing their livelihoods, and potentially being unable to come back into the country that they have called their home for decades. Some people have died as a result of the stress.

That is the impact of the Windrush scandal, but of course the effects of the hostile environment are not limited to Windrush citizens; it reverberates among undocumented people more generally. Those impacts are to do with children being afraid to go to school because of data sharing between the Home Office and the Department for Education, and people, some of whom are supposed to be receiving palliative care, being charged tens of thousands of pounds for medical treatment. We have seen victims and witnesses of serious crime deterred from reporting those crimes to the police. The impact is not just on the fundamental rights of undocumented people; the impact is to warp our public services and turn our teachers and doctors into border guards.

More generally, we see an environment of suspicion towards anybody who seems visibly foreign or who is black or minority ethnic. That discriminatory effect has been evidenced by the research of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants into landlord checks. We see that landlords are less likely to rent to BAME people without a passport as opposed to white people. We have seen incredibly broad and harmful effects of the hostile environment on the rights of undocumented people, people with a right to be here, British citizens and our public services.

Our concern is that the Bill essentially hands Ministers a blank cheque to bring millions more people into that system while doing nothing to remedy the injustices that have been exposed. We recommend that the hostile environment be repealed and that vital safeguards are restored to the immigration system, such as data protection rights and legal aid, and that there is also an end to indefinite immigration detention.

[Afzal Khan]

Q On the question of indefinite detention, why have you proposed a 28-day limit on immigration detention? Why is that particularly needed in the context of the Bill?

Gracie Bradley: It is important to say first that the 28-day time limit on immigration detention is not Liberty’s proposal. The Joint Committee on Human Rights proposed that back in 2006 or 2007. A joint inquiry by the all-party parliamentary groups on migration and on refugees, which I know some of you were involved with, also recommended a 28-day time limit on detention. Why do we think the Bill is the place to implement that time limit? Put very simply, the Bill will most likely make tens of thousands more people liable to deportation, because EEA nationals will come under the automatic deportation provisions in the UK Borders Act 2007.

We know that the Ministry of Justice, in response to a freedom of information request, said that it expects that up to 26,000 people per year could be liable to detention as EU nationals come under domestic immigration law. At the same time, a parliamentary question revealed that there has been no assessment of the impact of the Bill on the detention estate. Of course, we know what the impact of indefinite detention is on people. They tell us that it is traumatic. They tell us that the lack of a time limit in itself is traumatic, because they do not know when their detention will end.

Liberty is not alone in advocating for a time limit. The lack of a time limit has been criticised by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Bar Council and the British Medical Association, and on Second Reading parliamentarians from across the House stood up in support of a 28-day time limit. Given that the Bill is very likely to make more people vulnerable to detention, now is absolutely the time to implement a time limit on detention for everybody and, indeed, to begin looking at taking deprivation of liberty out of the immigration system more broadly.

[David Duguid]

Q Either or both of you can answer this question. Is there any justification for creating an immigration system post Brexit that treats EU nationals better than those from the rest of the world? If so, how do you imagine that would be best achieved? If you think there is no justification, that is a reasonable answer.

Jodie Blackstock: It is not something that we at Justice specifically have an opinion on, other than to say that the arrangements that are created must ensure that the acquired rights that people currently exercise as a consequence of their movement between the UK and the EU are protected, and that the process that is decided for those individuals post exit needs to be subject to the scrutiny of Parliament and not decided simply through a delegated power without sufficient scrutiny. That is why we say the procedure ought to be encapsulated in the Bill through a requirement that such a policy must be subject to the scrutiny of Parliament.

There are two schemes that the Government have already implemented and will come to fruition once we leave: the EU settlement scheme for those who are already in this country and are requesting settlement, if they do not already have that status; and the proposal for temporary leave to remain for people coming into the country who wish to remain and work here. Given that one of those schemes is already in the immigration rules and the other is well advanced, so there must be policy for it, it seems to us entirely appropriate that the procedure should be laid before Parliament in the Bill and be subject to scrutiny, rather than simply left to a delegated power that does not provide you with the opportunity to debate the important issues concerning what preferential treatment EU nationals should be given.

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[Kate Green]

Q Can you offer an explanation or a suggestion as to why, in addition to the powers that already exist in section 8 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act, we need these provisions?

Jodie Blackstock: The memorandum suggests that Government require the ability to change policy on social security co-ordination, and that is the purpose of creating a power here. Policy change would arguably not be possible under section 8 of the withdrawal Act, so Government are intending to do something broader here. In our view, it is wholly inappropriate to be changing policy relating to really fundamental provision for people who cross borders. We are talking about pension rights, access to healthcare, maternity and paternity leave—provision that may have built up over a significant number of years while a UK national resides in another EU country. It is simply not appropriate to leave that to a policy change by way of delegated power, but it seems to us, from their memorandum, that Government are expressly intending to do that to get around the limitations in section 8.

Gracie Bradley: I do not have anything to add to that.

[Afzal Khan]

Q You spoke briefly about data protection and legal aid. Could you elaborate on that, and are there other safeguards that you would like to see?

Gracie Bradley: When it comes to data protection, many of you will be aware that the Data Protection Act 2018 includes a very broad exemption that allows a data controller to set aside somebody’s data protection rights when their data is being processed for the purposes of immigration control, essentially. Liberty notes from the White Paper that automated data processing is likely to be used increasingly in the context of enforcing the hostile environment, and Liberty has, for the last couple of years, been scrutinising what have been relatively secret bulk data-sharing agreements between the Home Office and other Departments, such as the Department for Education, and NHS Digital, as well as ad hoc data-sharing practices between individual police forces and the Home Office.

Essentially, what Liberty is concerned about is the fact that the Home Office is really quite a poor data controller, and yet automated data processing is increasingly going to be the linchpin of implementing the hostile environment. We see, in the most recent independent chief inspector of borders and immigration report, that actually the Home Office is developing a status-checking project that would essentially enable multiple controllers, such as landlords, employers, health services and law enforcement, to check a person’s immigration status in real time.

Liberty is concerned, first, that no mention was made of that project during the Data Protection Bill debates, despite Government being asked repeatedly what they wanted that exemption from data protection law for. Secondly, we are concerned, in the light of the Home Office’s track record on data protection, that this system is going to be implemented in such a way as to leave people without redress and without remedy when the Home Office makes mistakes.

Some of you will remember that, in 2012, Capita was contracted to text almost 40,000 people suspected of being in the UK illegally, telling them to leave the country. Those 40,000 texts were sent, and many people received the texts in error. Veteran anti-racism campaigners who had lawful status in the UK were sent texts telling them to go home. It is one thing to send somebody a text in 2012—I appreciate that will have been distressing for people—but it is entirely another thing for an error on someone’s record to mean that they cannot access housing, lawful work, free healthcare or education. The Data Protection Act immigration exemption stops people from being able to find out what information is held about them by a data processor, and stops them from having the right to know when information on them is shared between processors.

Our concern is that, in the context of the Home Office’s relatively poor track record on data processing, this digitised hostile environment will be enacted and people will be left without redress. Indeed, we see from the National Audit Office report on the Windrush scandal that the Home Office had been asked by the NAO and the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration to clean up its migrant refusal pool, and had resisted all requests to do so. We are concerned about the impact of error on people, but we are also concerned about the impact of being able, at the click of a button, to exclude people from essential goods and services that are necessary for the exercise of their fundamental rights. The hostile environment should be repealed, rather than entrenched using exemptions in data protection law.

You also asked me about legal aid. I do not have a huge amount to say about legal aid, except that for the most part, there is no legal aid for immigration claims. Again, we see from the Windrush scandal what happens when people do not have access to early, good-quality legal advice. There are people in the UK who are undocumented, not because they have intentionally tried to evade the rules, but because they have been unable to retain their status as a result of not being able to access good-quality legal advice—or, indeed, because they have been unable to make the necessary applications because they cannot afford to pay prohibitive application fees. Many of you will know that it costs more than £1,000 to register a child as a British citizen.

When it comes to safeguards, we would say: get rid of that exemption in the Data Protection Act—it is paragraph 4 of schedule 2—reinstate immigration legal aid, because it is a false economy not to give people access to it, and look again at your fees. It should not be the case that the Home Office is profiting from fees when people need to make applications to regularise their status in the UK, or to claim British citizenship—to which children should be entitled in any event. Those are the basic safeguards that need to be reinstated before millions more people are brought into the immigration system.

[Afzal Khan]

Q I have a question for Justice. In relation to the discussion we were having about the powers in clause 5, is there anything that Ministers would need those powers to do that is not already within their power and would not warrant primary legislation?

Jodie Blackstock: In principle, there will be. At the moment, we have complicated reciprocal arrangements that require member states to give effect to policy schemes across borders. Without an agreement in place, we could unilaterally make a decision to honour those schemes in this jurisdiction, and that might be seen as a policy change that it is not possible to make pursuant to section 8 of the withdrawal Act. That might be a positive way of protecting the rights of individuals who have access to such schemes at the moment in the UK, or indeed the rights of UK nationals who are living abroad.

If that is the intention of the legislation, there must be—as the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has said in the context of the made affirmative procedure—work that has been undertaken already, and proposals that Parliament can consider and scrutinise to ensure that they protect accrued rights. There may well be a policy decision to limit those rights, and for the same reasons we think it is appropriate that Parliament gets to see those proposals. At the moment, the provisions in this Bill, as opposed to the regulations that have been submitted under section 8 of the Act, are just too broad. We propose that there should be scrutiny of those regulations rather than having an unknown power here.

[Afzal Khan]

Q This is another question for Liberty. You talked about 5,000 changes since 2010. That is huge, and it is why people say that our immigration system is really complex. We have also had the Law Commission talking about trying to simplify it. Would you not expect the Government to look at that first, before they add in another 3 million or 4 million EU citizens who will be subject to these immigration laws?

Gracie Bradley: Absolutely. There are many things that I would have expected the Government to do before bringing forward this Bill, not least setting out the detail of the future immigration system, so that it could be appropriately scrutinised.

The Law Commission’s proposals are another thing that we think the Government should have looked at, but they have not necessarily looked at. Although I appreciate that the Government have given themselves this very broad delegated power, through which they may be able to implement future changes to the immigration system that take those proposals into account, when it comes to policy making that affects people’s lives, livelihoods and fundamental rights, that is not the right way to make policy.

[The Chair]

Before I bring the Minister in, does any other colleague want to ask anything?

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[The Chair]

Welcome Mr Fell. Would you introduce yourself?

Matthew Fell: Good afternoon. I am Matthew Fell. I am the chief policy director at the Confederation of British Industry.

[Afzal Khan]

Q The CBI has said that the Government White Paper fails to meet the needs of our economy. Can you expand on that? In what ways does it fail?

Matthew Fell: There are a number of areas where we think there is a challenge. Most specifically, we would be very concerned about the imposition of a salary threshold—£30,000 is most commonly talked about at the moment. When we look at the shape of the economy today, we see a number of sectors—construction, logistics, hospitality—and many regions and nations around the UK where that threshold is significantly out of kilter with median salaries. There are a number of areas where that threshold would lead to a dramatic shortage of skills and of labour availability to meet the needs of the economy today. Although you could envisage a world in which, over time, businesses and other parts of society could adapt, we are concerned about going from the situation in which we are today in a very short period, without knowing precisely the nature of the rules or of the negotiation about what we are going to jump into. That lack of time to adapt is also a source of concern.

[Afzal Khan]

Q What are your concerns about the Government’s proposal for short 12-month visas?

Matthew Fell: There are a number of areas. First, we fear that that could significantly lead to an increase in the rate of churn of people, which clearly creates problems for business: it impacts on productivity, if you are constantly having to get new employees up to speed, for example, it adds to recruitment costs if you constantly need to bring new people into the organisation, and it has impacts beyond business too. Thinking about societal impacts, it could undermine the integration of people into local communities, and so on.

The second bucket or basket of concerns is around the inability to then switch on to a more skilled visa route. For example, if you invest in the training and upskilling of an individual there is currently no proposed mechanism for them to transfer from a lower-skilled 12-month route to a proper skilled visa route, so there are a number of different concerns about that.

[Afzal Khan]

Q Do you have concerns about the settled status system and the requirement on employers to check the immigration status of their employees if the UK leaves the EU with or without a deal?

Matthew Fell: I think I am right in saying, but I am happy to take a little more detail on this, that the Government have confirmed that even in the event of a no-deal scenario there would be no, or no significant, changes to the administrative burdens on employers before the proposed new immigration system came into play. Clearly, if that situation changed, the administrative burden would be a bigger headache for business.

[Jack Brereton]

Q I recognise the views you have expressed about having a cap of about £30,000, but do you recognise the impact that immigration potentially has had on suppressing wage levels in certain sectors and certain parts of the country?

Matthew Fell: The Migration Advisory Committee looked at that heavily in terms of any potential impact on the rest of the economy, society and so on. I think the conclusion it drew was that there was no major evidence of an impact on either jobs availability or wages. I think it highlighted some impacts on public services, and a bit on house prices and so on in certain areas, but I do not think it identified any real evidence of that.

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[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q What is the significance of what the White Paper says or does not say on self-employed people?

Matthew Fell: The CBI’s natural constituency, if you like, is typically employers as opposed to the self-employed. The self-employed population is a huge contributor and hugely important to the UK economy. It is not an area that we particularly speak about, though, or which I focus on.

[Afzal Khan]

Q You talked about a number of sectors such as hospitality, logistics and construction. Are there any other sectors that would be impacted by this £30,000 threshold? You talk about sectors, but can you also expand on the impact on different regions?

Matthew Fell: I would be happy to share with the Committee a significant piece of work that the CBI published in the summer of 2018, where we took an in-depth look at a number of business sectors around the economy. The key conclusion was that it is hard to identify any sectors that are not impacted in this way. The reason for that is the interconnected nature of business today.

To give you a small example, we have a huge challenge in this country around house building. In order to build the 300,000 homes a year that we need, we need everything from architects to electricians, bricklayers and on-site labourers. The conclusion we drew was that if you take one piece out of that, the whole project does not get done. Our findings were that you could almost extend that logic to any part of the economy. For example, take the retail sector and its dependence on the logistics sector for distribution, and so on. It is really quite hard to identify any part of the economy where, even if we think it is not directly impacted by these issues, indirectly they do have a consequence.

On the regional aspect, looking at the statistics, we have a piece of work out today that looks at analysis by region. Even if you take a really quick glance at the numbers, median wages today are somewhere between £21,000 to £24,000 in most regions of the UK outside London. That tells you that the impact is quite significant across the country.

[Afzal Khan]

Q On the question of impact, we know that there is inequality between different regions; do you feel that having the figure of £30,000 may further increase inequality?

Matthew Fell: I do not know whether it would further increase inequality. As part of my job I travel around the country quite extensively. I think it would create huge headaches in parts of the UK, not least in respect of the time to adapt. I spend quite a lot of time in Belfast in Northern Ireland and in some of the northern regions in England, for example, where it is really quite significant and they are deeply concerned by it.

[The Chair]

If there are no other questions from colleagues, I will bring the Minister in next.

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[Afzal Khan]

Q In your evidence, and just now, you said that you do not think that the short-term, 12-month visas may lead to exploitation, but you gave a long list of concerns regarding training, recruitment, integration and switching between skills. Those were your concerns, so what is your solution? What do you think is better?

Matthew Fell: In the piece of work that we published in summer 2018 we asked, “How do you really build confidence and align that to control?” At the time, we proposed dropping the net migration target, because we felt that continually missing it was undermining confidence in the system. We said that there could be a number of different controls, such as registration on arrival. If you are not in work, in training or self-sufficient after three months, that would be a test of whether you can stay in the country.

We looked at other examples of labour market tests. The other issues that we identified at the time were the better and more rapid use of things such as the controlling migration fund, so that in areas of high immigration where there are clear impacts on public services we could better address and mitigate those concerns. Those were the clutch of proposals that we were talking about at the time.

[The Chair]

If there are no further questions, I thank Mr Fell very much indeed for his evidence to the Committee.

The final session starts at 4.30pm, so I suspend the sitting.

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[The Chair]

Our next evidence session is with Focus on Labour Exploitation. Could our witnesses both introduce yourselves, please?

Caroline Robinson: Good afternoon. I am Caroline Robinson, the chief executive of Focus on Labour Exploitation.

Meri Åhlberg: Good afternoon. I am Meri Åhlberg, research officer for Focus on Labour Exploitation.

[Afzal Khan]

Q In your opinion, what risks does the Bill pose for exploitation and modern slavery?

Caroline Robinson: At Focus on Labour Exploitation, we have been looking for some time at the risks that immigration control measures, in particular, pose for modern slavery. Obviously, with this Bill—as with all measures regarding Brexit—we have a new risk that a much greater proportion of workers could be undocumented if they do not register under the EU settlement scheme, or because of the confusion that Brexit provides.

We think that there are particular risks arising from measures set out in the immigration White Paper, namely the temporary and migrant worker programmes and the short-term visas discussed in that paper. Our particular concerns are about barriers to the integration of the workers, which could mean that they have limited access to their labour rights. That puts workers at real risk of not understanding their rights in the UK labour market, and at risk of exploitation. There is also the potential for things like debt bondage: if recruitment measures are taken overseas over which we do not have jurisdiction, and workers have to pay high fees in order to come to the UK—whether recruitment fees or just for work permits and travel—that could leave them open to a real risk of debt bondage.

Meri Åhlberg: There is a real risk, for instance, that the 12-month programme will mean a constant churn of vulnerable workers who are not aware of their rights and do not have the chance to build up social networks that could support them. Workers will not have recourse to public funds. Those coming here to work in precarious jobs—for instance, in the hospitality sector, in which they might be on a zero-hours contract and have 40 hours of work one week and two hours the next—will, if they have no recourse to public funds, be very vulnerable.

A lot of other specific migration policy issues make workers vulnerable. For instance, under the seasonal workers pilot, which is also in the immigration White Paper and is being brought in through secondary legislation, workers have no guaranteed hours or guaranteed earnings. If they come here to work in the agricultural sector and are on a zero-hours contract, they will not necessarily be earning enough to cover their flights or visa costs if there is a bad harvest, for instance. Those are the kinds of things that we need to think about.

[Afzal Khan]

Q Do you both feel that the Government have done enough to minimise exploitation or mitigate the risks?

Caroline Robinson: We have had some positive signs from the Home Secretary, who mentioned at a hearing of the Select Committee on Home Affairs that measures would be taken to evaluate the risk of exploitation that the seasonal workers pilot presents to workers. However, we are still quite anxious about the detail and about what it will mean in practice.

We look a lot at the role of labour inspectorates in preventing modern slavery, and we have a particular concern about the limited resources of agencies such as the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, which will need to license labour providers under the seasonal workers pilot, whatever country they may come from. Understanding the legislation of the countries concerned and identifying and engaging with prospective labour providers will obviously be a heavy drain on the agency’s resources, but we have not heard that any extra resources will be provided to facilitate that role. We also welcome the Government’s intention to create a single labour inspectorate, but the detail available at this stage is very limited.

It is positive that the Home Secretary has recognised that there is a risk. We look forward to engaging on the detail of how it will be addressed.

Meri Åhlberg: It is important to recognise that within the discussion about ending free movement and moving towards temporary migration schemes, we need to include labour market enforcement, as Caroline said. The UK has one of the least resourced labour inspectorates in Europe: the International Labour Organisation recommends that there should be one labour inspector per 10,000 workers, but the UK has 0.4 per 10,000. Per worker, half as much resourcing is put into labour inspection as in Ireland. There is a real need for proactive labour market enforcement, especially as more and more migrants are brought under immigration control, given fewer rights and made more vulnerable.

[Afzal Khan]

Q We have just heard evidence from the CBI, which claims that the temporary scheme does not lead to exploitation. What is the evidence that it would lead to exploitation?

Meri Åhlberg: I have already mentioned a few of the features of temporary schemes that make people vulnerable to exploitation. One of the main ones is that allowing people to stay for only six or 12 months means a constant churn of workers who are not necessarily aware of their labour rights, who do not have time to build networks and so on. There are often other restrictions, such as “no recourse to public funds”, that come with temporary contracts and put people at risk of exploitation. Those are the key issues with temporary migration programmes—there is definitely a risk.

[Afzal Khan]

Q Clause 4(5) will grant the Government power to impose or change fees for visas. The Government have said that fees for 12-month visas will increase over time to prevent businesses from relying on them. FLEX has raised the question of the risk of debt bondage. Can you elaborate on that?

Caroline Robinson: To allow businesses?

[Afzal Khan]

To increase fees. You have said in the past that that might lead to debt bondage, so can you elaborate on how that would happen?

Caroline Robinson: Yes, certainly. We have looked quite extensively at other temporary migration programmes around the world and previous schemes in the UK, and we certainly see a risk in relation to recruitment fees. As I mentioned earlier, there is the possibility of elevated fees and also, as Members will be aware, the definition of debt bondage is an increased fee that is disproportionate to the initial fee paid, and using that fee to coerce an individual into an exploitative working condition.

We see that as a real risk in relation to overseas recruitment, but there are also the high fees that people will have to pay for their visa and for their travel to the UK. Obviously, because we know more of the detail on the seasonal workers pilot, we know that people will be coming for a short period of time—a six-month period—and, as Meri said, on zero-hours contracts, so there is no guarantee of a high rate of pay necessarily, and with potentially quite high up-front fees. So the risk is great there.

Also, we have looked at things like bilateral labour agreements. For example, Canada and Mexico have established an agreement on agricultural workers, where clear terms are established in terms of the minimum hours that workers will have, the minimum working week and the hours that people can be guaranteed, so that there are clear terms for workers, and so workers can budget accordingly and not face the risk of a huge debt that they cannot then repay, or, as I mentioned, a debt that increases disproportionately in relation to the initial debt, which is a risk.

Meri Åhlberg: For example, in Sweden they have migration from Thailand to pick berries, and what they were finding was that people would come, and they would pay high costs for flights, and then they would pay visa costs, and then they would come to Sweden and the blueberry season would be poor and they would not be able to pick enough even to cover their flights. So they would come, work for the summer and then leave in debt.

What Sweden has done, for instance, is that there is a minimum guaranteed wage that employers in Sweden have to prove they can pay. It is a minimum of approximately £1,100 per month for these workers, to each worker that they are recruiting, to make sure that people are not coming and not earning enough to cover their visa costs or their flight costs. There are also important protections that could be put in place.

[Kate Green]

Q That is exactly my question. What could we put in place, or what could the Government put in place, to strengthen protections for workers in this situation? I wonder whether you might want to say a little more specifically about what you would look for in terms of a Government or legislative solution, and to what extent there might be other features or actors that might offer protections.

Caroline Robinson: As I said, we work a lot on the role of the labour inspectorates, particularly, while it still exists—as I said, there is a discussion about a single labour inspectorate and the Government have committed to that—at the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority’s licensing being expanded to high-risk sectors, particularly those that are likely to take on a number of short-term workers in the future. Those sectors are already high-risk and then they might have a high proportion of short-term migrant workers. We feel that there is a really strong case then for licensing those sectors—sectors discussed, such as care and construction—where there is a real risk to workers of exploitation.

We have also looked at the Agricultural Wages Board and the seasonal workers pilots, obviously in the agricultural sector. We are lucky that we still have an Agricultural Wages Board in Scotland and in Northern Ireland, but the absence of one in England and Wales is a real risk in terms of setting the standards for workers in the agriculture sector. So I think it would be useful to look at what kind of worker voice could be integrated in setting standards in the agriculture sector, again given the high risk of isolation and exploitation of workers.

Meri Åhlberg: Another important thing would be to grant people access to public funds. If people are coming here on work contracts they are paying taxes, so they are paying for their services. It seems counterintuitive to not allow people access to services they are already paying for, making them vulnerable in that process.

Caroline Robinson: I would mention again these bilateral labour agreements, to have some kind of engagement with sending categories. At the moment the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority has to rapidly try to license labour providers in a range of countries outside the EEA. They have already found it quite hard within the EEA to license labour providers, understanding the different jurisdictions and engaging with workers’ possible vulnerabilities. Having a structure and engagement on the basis of labour rights with a country that sends workers to our country and ensuring labour standards are upheld offers a framework, at least, for enforcing labour rights.

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[Nic Dakin]

Q The involvement of the trade union sounds very important in that.

Meri Åhlberg: I would say so, yes.

[Afzal Khan]

Thank you Chair. Let me say, first of all, that throughout this day your chairmanship has been excellent. We have got through a lot of evidence. My final question—

[The Chair]

Flattery will get you everywhere.

[Afzal Khan]

Q That will be the last question then. Earlier, we heard evidence in relation to the 12-month visa. The suggestion was that the period could be increased to two to three years, then loaded with the fees, which are increased for the second and third years? What are your opinions on both the time period—having longer than 12 months—and on increasing fees?

Meri Åhlberg: I’m sorry, the fees for the workers or fees—

[Afzal Khan]

Yes, for the employer. The suggestion was employers have to pay higher fees for the second year and higher even for the third.

Meri Åhlberg: I would have to think about that and get back to you. In terms of having longer than a 12-month period, I have already said that I think that would be important. The danger of these temporary migration programmes and of having temporary workers who are not integrated into UK society is that you are creating a two-tier employment system where you have migrant workers in low-wage jobs with poor protections and with fewer rights. They also do not have the right to vote and they do not have any say over the conditions or the laws governing them. Also, they are being changed every year, so they do not have a community, they do not necessarily unionise and so on. It is a dangerous system and I do not see why we would have to limit it to 12 months.

[The Chair]

I thank our two witnesses, who stepped in early and accommodated the Committee. Thank you very much for the time you spent with us.