Accession (Immigration and Worker Authorisation) (Amendment) Regulations 2011

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I am sure that the Grand Committee is grateful to the noble Lord for his extensive introduction to these regulations. I was particularly interested in the advice that he read out from the Migration Advisory Committee. He will be aware that when the extension was agreed beyond January 2009, the committee reported in a similar vein at that time and said the impact of lifting the restrictions would be small but that the risks to the labour market were mainly on the downside. That led it to recommend a cautious approach. I assume that the committee is continuing that advice on the basis of that same philosophy.

I take the point the noble Lord made that it is difficult to attach facts and figures to this measure but does he accept the committee’s assessment of its impact? I would be interested to know whether he can put any figure at all on the likely impact of extending the measure by a further two years. He will know that the Merits Committee rather took the Government to task as regards the laying of the regulations and made the point that they have had rather a long time to consider the extension but, by leaving it to the last moment, it will have to be put in place. In a sense we are legitimising that through the current process. The Merits Committee would have preferred the policy to have been agreed somewhat earlier, which would have allowed the regulations to be laid before Parliament in draft and be subject to approval by resolution of each House. Will the noble Lord comment on that? What is his response to the Merits Committee?

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, on the point about the timing of the measure, is the Minister satisfied that individuals and employers will not experience any practical problems as a result of that? I cannot quite get my head round what practical steps need to be taken. Is it the case that an application has to be made for a new accession work authorisation document and that there may be individuals—this goes to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about numbers—who might have expected that they could continue to work for the same employer in this country beyond the end of this year but will, in effect, be given a matter of a very few working days to apply for the authorisation? Perhaps it is not as few days as from now until the end of December as the regulations were made—oh no, the regulations come into force on 30 December. I am getting very confused about the dates. I suppose that the warning was there for the employers but the regulations will not be made until the day before they need to be in formal terms, but there may be practical implications for individuals caught up with this. I hope that I have made myself at least moderately clear. The Minister is nodding, so I am glad about that.

In applying the tests, which the Minister has told the Grand Committee are about both the labour market and skills, will there be any changes from those that have been applied? My other question was about other EU member states. The Minister told us what some states are doing, so are we to understand that, in effect, the other member states are all maintaining their own status quo apart from Spain, which is reimposing restrictions, so that there is no other change across the European Union? The point has already been made that this cannot be looked at in isolation.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for referring to the Migration Advisory Committee and its work, on which we are very dependent. He then asked me to speculate how many individuals might come in if we did not seek this further two-year derogation. I do not think that it would be helpful to try to do so. I offer as a little warning some advice to the noble Lord. He might remember that the Government, of which he was a member when Poland and other countries acceded to the European Union, did not seek any derogation on that occasion. It was suggested that the numbers coming here would be very small indeed. I forget the figure, but as we saw, the numbers coming in were exceeded by a matter of 10 or a hundredfold. That is why the noble Lord’s Government were very keen in 2006, with the further accession of Romania and Bulgaria, to make sure that we did have proper controls on the numbers coming in. We obtained that derogation, which other countries also obtained, for five years that could then be extended for a further two years. I shall not speculate on the numbers because, as the noble Lord will remember, it is very easy to get them wrong and to do so by a factor of—let us say, X, but a big factor.

The noble Lord then went on to complain about the timing and mentioned the Merits Committee. I appreciate that we received some criticism, and my noble friend Lady Hamwee also mentioned those problems. I can say that I think many people will have known that this was likely to happen as we had the ability to extend the five years by two years, as long as we did so by the end of this year. We issued this SI on 23 November, which, as my noble friend Lady Hamwee knows, does not come into effect until the end of the year. The Migration Advisory Committee published its report somewhat earlier in the month so we all knew that it was coming, and most employers knew that it was coming. My noble friend had some concerns about the difficulties that some employers may have but I can assure her that any individual who is working for an existing employer will not require fresh authorisation if he stays with that employer. Obviously, there will be a difference if he moves. There will be no changes to the criteria for granting authorisation at all.

The final point was about other member states. Obviously, it is very important to look at what other member states do because that will affect how many people come in. As the noble Lord will remember, when Poland and others were coming into the EU, other member states sought a derogation for a number of years. We did not and that is probably one of the reasons why a very large number came here. On this occasion things have happened differently, and as I mentioned in my opening remarks, Germany and the Netherlands are both seeking a derogation and Spain seeks to extend its derogation. Different things are happening in different countries of Europe, which is a matter for them to decide. We have made our decision based on the advice from the Migration Advisory Committee, which took into account what was happening in other countries in Europe. I shall write to my noble friend to give further details of what other countries are doing if she would like that. The important thing is that we took their actions into account in our decision.