Immigration Bill (Second sitting)

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Paul Blomfield]

Q 88 Do you think that there are sufficient resources, as the situation currently stands, to achieve the objectives you are talking about?

Neil Carberry: I mentioned HMRC’s rule earlier. I think to do it effectively, it may be necessary to look at resources for other parts of the system. Having said that, one of our biggest challenges at the moment is enforcement agencies talking to each other. A case in point is that if a business moved out of a GLA-regulated sector, the employment agency standards inspectorate would still have prohibition powers. There should be more discussion taking place about, “If this business has had a licence removed by the GLA, what is the case for prohibition more broadly via EASI?”

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

Q 89 Good afternoon. Do you think there is a risk of the Bill making it harder for migrant workers to access the labour market because employers are afraid that they will be breaking the law, and don’t understand how it works, so they err on the side of caution?

Neil Carberry: I think the section 8 checks that employers already do are largely embedded in companies’ operation now, so the mere existence of a non-UK passport at hiring is an issue. There is some nervousness, I think, about the fact that the quality of forgery is now very, very high, and I think businesses would welcome more support from UKBF and others on identifying forgeries when they do those checks. Broadly, we have not seen evidence of a chill effect on migrants being able to find work yet, and the performance of the UK labour market over several years now suggests that opportunities are still being created both for UK citizens and migrant workers.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q 90 Would the CBI be willing to keep an eye on that? In my constituency, I have already had people coming to me who have been offered jobs and then the employers—and it is large employers—have backed off, saying that they want actual evidence; phoning the hotline is not evidence for them. I wonder whether the reason why I am getting quite a few people coming to me now is that they know that the legislation is going to change; it would be interesting to see if there was an effect once this came in.

Neil Carberry: I think the necessity of assurance for companies in hiring migrants becomes greater as the cost of getting it wrong becomes greater. I have been working on employment relations issues for the CBI for over a decade now, and the process is that every year it becomes more costly to hire migrants and more risky for companies. Particularly for some smaller and medium-sized companies, there is a concern there, and support structures for businesses are quite important.

[Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)]

Q 91 I would like to ask about the role of the director, in terms of vulnerable workers, and more broadly whether that role could help the Government’s agenda of redressing the balance on equality issues and addressing the gender pay gap, so as to shine a broader light on these employment issues.

Neil Carberry: I refer to my earlier answer. It is really important that we keep the exploitation agenda—there is deeply unsavoury activity taking place in parts of the labour market—separate from the civil employment law agenda. If you look at the gender pay gap, Ruby McGregor-Smith’s Women’s Business Council report concluded that it is a multi-faceted issue that requires a series of actions, primarily from business but also from the education system, to address. We would be more comfortable continuing to do that work in partnership with the Government Equalities Office, Ministers and the new Select Committee on Women and Equalities, than getting too drawn into a debate, as we have already discussed, about beds and sheds and some pretty exploitative practice.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Lord Green, I have one more Member, Anne, wanting to ask a question. If you do not finish your response, would you please give some written response to that?

[Anne McLaughlin]

I will try to be quick. In answer to an earlier question regarding asylum seekers, Lord Green, you said that they know that they have a 70% chance of staying—I am paraphrasing—and that some of them even have mobile phones. I wonder if you are aware of a detailed report from 2010 that Swansea University carried out for the Refugee Council on this very matter of whether asylum seekers set out to come to the UK. They said that the belief that many politicians have is not supported by the existing research evidence, much of which suggests that destinations are determined not by personal choices about lifestyle but by the practicalities and demands of the situation—

[The Chair]

Order. I am sorry to stop the hon. Lady in full flow. Lord Green, Mr Hoare and Ms McLaughlin have asked questions that are on the record, and if you could provide answers we would very much appreciate it. On behalf of the Committee I thank you for the answers you have given. If you have additional information that you want to supply to the Committee, please feel free to do so.

Examination of Witnesses

Richard Lambert, Eric Leenders and David Smith gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Brokenshire]

Q 123 Thank you for that detailed and comprehensive answer on the provisions, which is quite helpful and instructive on the level of detail that is engaged here. Just briefly, perhaps you could reflect on the provisions of the Immigration Act 2014 and their implementation. What has been the practical experience? Clearly a lot of this quite detailed analysis was engaged there as well. What has been the situation to date?

Eric Leenders: On volumes, I think we have seen about 1.9 million searches go through the CIFAS database. From that we have identified some 14,000 matches against the database, and those have been referred back to the Home Office. That has in turn identified some of these issues such as people with no fixed address or those elderly consumers. So we can draw on that experience to inform our thinking around the Bill.

We consider that the CIFAS process is working quite well. The truncated timeline was difficult, frankly; there was an element of manual processing, and with manual processing there is, unfortunately, a higher propensity to or risk of error. So that is why we called for that slightly longer timeline—to ensure that as far as possible we can automate and therefore reduce the error rate within the process.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q 124 I want to talk about potential discrimination under the right to rent aspects of the Bill. Not everyone is as enlightened as Mr Lambert, and so not everyone believes that you cannot tell by a face, a name or an accent whether someone is British. I was very struck by a statement sent out by the Residential Landlords Association, which I am going to read from:

“Whilst the Residential Landlords Association condemns all acts of racism the threat of sanctions will inevitably lead many landlords to err on the side of caution and not rent to anyone whose nationality cannot be easily proved.”

How concerned are you that the Bill will allow some people to use it as an excuse for their racism and that others will inadvertently end up acting in a racist manner, not because they want to but out of fear that they may end up breaking the law if they do not?

Richard Lambert: How concerned am I that some will use it? Very. How concerned am I that some will use it inadvertently? Fairly, but our experience is that most of the concern about the provisions is from people who have not gone into the detail, are worried about what they might have to take on, are concerned that they do not have the expertise or knowledge and are very focused on the penalties, because what has been pushed hardest is not the responsibility or the practicality but the level of penalty for getting it wrong.

Having had a quick look, like my colleague, at the evaluation report that was published this morning—we had a chance to look at it before we came in here—something like 22 of the 26 landlords who responded said that it was actually relatively easy to undertake the checks and that there did not seem to be an obvious level of overt discrimination, although there is still an undertone, and in a few cases that does happen.

It is a real risk, but when I said what I did about awareness of the fact that we live in a multicultural, multiracial, multifaceted society, that was not me speaking—obviously, I believe that—but me recounting what has been said to me by landlords at local meetings around the country. They are very concerned about the practicalities of how you make this work, and they realise that you cannot make assumptions, from looking at somebody, about whether they have the right to rent or whether they are a British national. The only way is to check and to check everyone. I recall anecdotally from my colleagues on the Home Office working group on the evaluation report that the largest level of resentment coming back from tenants was from the indigenous white British population, who did not understand why they were being asked to prove the right to rent. You actually get a counter-intuitive response.

David Smith: People who will discriminate would discriminate anyway, so in a sense people who are going to actively discriminate as a result of the Bill would have been actively discriminating before. Our biggest concern is what we have chosen to call document discrimination. Of the UK indigenous populace—or however you want to describe those people—17% do not have passports. If a landlord has two people walk through his door who want to rent the same property, and one says, “I have a passport and can do the right to rent check right now,” and the other says, “I do not have a passport but will come back tomorrow with two forms of identification off the secondary list,” the landlord is technically not breaking the law by taking the first person, and in practice I am sure that he will take that first person.

Our concern is that there are groups of people who are not in possession of passports and driving licences. As a lawyer, I have many such people as clients, because I have a large client base of elderly people or people who are in care. There are substantial numbers of those people, and a lot of them are renting, increasingly in the private rental sector, as there is a change from social renting to private renting. There is a potential difficulty with providing those people with proper identification.

We have called for a much simpler document for people who are on benefits and would already have been checked to receive benefits. Local authorities could provide a single document—perhaps watermarked or stamped—that landlords could be clearly told was acceptable as a single document. At the moment those people are going to need to produce two separate documents. They may not have them to hand, or it may take time to acquire them. The benefits letter has to be signed by a named official, and named officials may be reluctant to put their names on these documents. Our concern is that groups of people who should have no reason to be concerned by this legislation at all may find themselves being put through checks that they cannot easily meet.

[Craig Whittaker]

Q 125 I declare an interest as per my declared interest in the Members’ register. For the record, I am probably what Mr Smith calls one of those in his sector who are amateurs and accidental landlords. One thing I know from experience, although I may be an amateur, is that the eviction process is incredibly burdensome for landlords. It is far too lengthy and hugely costly, and when you are going through the process, you do not get any rent from the tenant who is in your property. That is the current situation, whether they are an illegal immigrant or not. I cannot for the life of me understand, and neither can the members of Calderdale Landlords Association, whom I have spoken to, why on earth as an organisation you would be against something that is far better and makes it far quicker for a landlord to evict a tenant in these circumstances.

David Smith: In what sense?

--- Later in debate ---

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q 179 I presume that you will continue to campaign and lobby against parts of the Bill. From what you are saying, one of the biggest things for all of you is the inclusion of children in the groups that will not receive support if their or their parents’ asylum claim has been refused. I do not know whether you were watching earlier, but I wanted to alert you to the fact that you have a supporter in Lord Green of Migration Watch UK. I think he is quite a valuable supporter to have, given that he did not seem overly keen on having too many asylum seekers in the country. He seemed quite surprised that children might lose support. He said we have to make a distinction between those who have children and those who do not, and that they would have to be treated differently. If I were you, I would contact him and get him to support any campaigning that you are doing.

I wanted to ask whether you agree with me that rendering families destitute will shift the financial burden not simply on to local authorities and charities, but on to the health service. I am not sure what the situation is in England these days, but I know that in Scotland, those who have had their asylum claims refused can access free healthcare. I do not know whether it is the same here, and I do not know what Wales and Northern Ireland are like. Do you agree that the health of these families will be so significantly impacted that there will be an increased cost for those services that provide healthcare?

Adrian Matthews: And not only to the families. There is a public health issue if you deprive the children of the right or the means to go to hospital or to visit their GP, or if their parents are too scared to do so. That public health issue affects all of us, not just the families.

Ilona Pinter: I agree. This was the subject of the previous Immigration Bill, where issues around health were debated at length. Like immigration control, public health is a public interest, as are child protection and international protection. There needs to be a review of those and more debate, particularly around other public interests.

Costs shift to health services. We already see in families who are awaiting their asylum decisions, particularly where parents have poor mental health because they have suffered trauma already and because of the pressures that the immigration process brings to bear on them, parents being sectioned under mental health provisions and children being taken into temporary foster placements as a result. One of the ways in which costs could shift to local authorities is through children being taken into care. If families are made destitute and parents have to rely on working without permission, provisions in the Bill will mean that the parents will be criminalised, which will again mean that children need to go into care. There are other considerations to take into account.

Adrian Matthews: I understand you are going to be hearing from local authorities and they will evidence the fact that during the section 10 pilots in 2004-05, a number of children were, in fact, taken into care as a result of what the Government were attempting then, which was to withdraw support and accommodation, so it does not work.

[Craig Whittaker]

Q 180 I want to come back to the Minister’s earlier point. The point about assessment is that the children’s best interests forms a part and is an integral part of that process. I think it was Kamena—I apologise if it was not—who said children should not be blamed for the actions of the parents. However, they are in this situation because of the parents. For those families who have exhausted their appeals rights, those who could and should leave the UK, how long do you feel we should give support? Do you think it should be indefinite?

Adrian Matthews: It has to be case sensitive and based on the best interests of the child. Take, for example, a child born in this country. If you are going to send them back to another country, they will need to be returned with certain things that can prove their identity—establish or re-establish their identity—so they will need an original birth certificate and their medical records; they will need documentation from the embassy to show that they have legitimately travelled from the UK to the country of return. All these things are case sensitive. A lot of different factors would need to be taken into account. So I do not think there is an answer to your question in terms of a set time or limit. It has be done on a case-by-case basis.