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

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Wednesday 30th September 2020 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

1: Clause 1, page 1, line 9, at end insert—
“(2) Within six months of this section coming into force, the Secretary of State must lay a report before Parliament on how the provisions under Schedule 1 are to be enforced.”

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, this amendment is in my name and those of the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, and my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, and I express my warm appreciation for their support. I leave it to others to speak to other amendments in this group.

It is a great pleasure to open the Report stage of this important Bill. I start by thanking my noble friend the Minister for her recurrent courtesy and helpfulness and for the full answers that she gave in Committee to most of the technical questions that I posed.

I always believe that enforcement of the law is as important as the laws themselves, so the key question is why the enforcement of UK national Immigration Rules has been so spectacularly unsuccessful for many decades under Governments of all parties. Perhaps surprisingly, it is if anything becoming even less successful. Part of the story is well set out in the Public Accounts Committee report published since the noble Lord, Lord Green, referred to its work in Committee. The PAC is a respected cross-party collection of the brightest and most experienced MPs. It is a devastating report, published as recently as 14 September. I quote from paragraph 4:

“We heard that the Department does not know how many people are living or working in the UK without permission, and the Department admitted its frustration at not knowing this figure.”


Put simply, many people come here for reasons that do not entitle them to enter the country and if they are formally found not to be entitled to be here, the authorities are unsuccessful in removing them in a large proportion of cases. I am referring to tens of thousands of people. Also very disturbing is the gradual increase in numbers coming across the channel in rickety boats and tiny inflatables, dodging the big ships, whenever the weather allows. In 2020 the recorded number is well over 5,000, which is more than double the 2019 figure. As I said in Committee at the beginning of this month, 416 migrants exploited fine weather to make the crossing in one day, arriving all along the south coast. Migrants are risking, and in some cases losing, their lives because the authorities are known to be useless at enforcing the law, and the biggest beneficiaries are the traffickers.

Late legal challenges are also undermining efforts to remove migrants who have no right to remain, with flights that are cancelled and then bad headlines that encourage yet more attempts to enter the UK illegally. The public are bemused. Why cannot we, like the vast majority of countries in the world, implement our own rules effectively? It is a major scandal, though a reader of the parliamentary reports of discussions in this House would need to be very alert to detect it.

My proposal is quite simple. Since the Government—indeed, as I explained, many Governments of different persuasions for a very long time—have not managed to fulfil their obligations satisfactorily in this respect, I suggest that they be put on report, literally. Given the unsatisfactory record, we should not allow matters to dip below the radar. We need to have the facts before us and have a light shone upon them, giving the Government every opportunity to explain regularly how they are making the progress that most of the country wants.

Of course, we all have individual cases where we want to see generous Immigration Rules and enforcement—staff for our businesses or domestic workers, attracting lower wages than we might pay to British equivalents; reliable-looking tenants; or daughters-in-law awaiting visas—but the aggregate is very damaging to the public trust, as we have seen in the north of England. The fact that it is easy to travel across the world very cheaply nowadays attracts many people who want to live and work in the UK. They come because we make people from everywhere welcome in our society; have strong, well-enforced laws on equality and modern slavery; and provide generous education, healthcare and housing for migrants as well as to natives. The pull factor is huge, putting pressure on enforcement and compliance with the law.

We heard in Committee about the work of the Migration Advisory Committee. It produces reports but its prime focus is on the appropriate level of migration from an employer point of view and to improve our labour market. It does not have, and does not see itself as having, a brief to advise on the scale of illegal immigration; nor are its members experts on the level of compliance with Immigration Rules, the effectiveness across the agencies involved, value for money or overall expenditure and resourcing in this important area. I believe that a report could fill that gap. Indeed, the Minister might want to consider the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, in Committee and ask the MAC, from its expert perspective, to recommend improvements to the policing of the immigration system.

Given the awkward history of enforcement, which I have to say goes back to my own time in home affairs at Downing Street in the 1990s, I can well believe that our proposal for a report six months after the passage of the Bill might seem unpalatable to Ministers and their civil servants, who are all trying to do their best. However, I urge them to consider our proposal afresh. The Government publish many reports every year; I agreed to a number of reports in Bills over the years as a Minister, and they are currently being suggested in this House in respect of both trade and agriculture. The requirement need not necessarily be provided in this Bill but a legislative requirement would provide a useful element of parliamentary scrutiny. It would make effective action more likely and help the Secretary of State to do a better job. The report could be repeated subsequently to see how successful measures had been. We would certainly revisit a report of that kind in the private sector, where I have spent many years. I very much look forward to hearing from my noble friend the Minister. I beg to move.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I am glad to support this useful and well-timed amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. As she has so clearly described, enforcement has long been one of the weakest points in our immigration system. Despite that, it has faced an 11% real-terms reduction in its budget since 2015-16. The Home Office says that it

“continually looks for ways to reduce costs, so as to improve efficiency and deliver better value … for taxpayers.”

However, as the noble Baroness mentioned, since our Committee stage the Public Accounts Committee has published its report on immigration enforcement. It pointed out that the returns of those who have no right to be in the UK are “plummeting”. The report also criticises the Home Office for having provided the public with no information at all about the scale of illegal immigration for 15 years and points out that the Home Office

“failed to complete 62% of the returns it planned from immigration detention in 2019, compared to 56% in 2018.”

This may of course reflect the ever more strident behaviour of the legal arm of the immigration lobby, some of whom use late and sometimes spurious asylum claims to frustrate removals. Nevertheless, the performance of the Home Office can hardly be described as “better value for money”. Recent official statistics reveal that the number of failed asylum seekers who are subject to removal has doubled from 20,000 in 2014 to over 40,000 now. Clearly, more resources must be diverted to the task of removal, and those resources must be more efficiently targeted and implemented with determination.

Let me also make this point: it is important that the officials themselves should feel supported by the public, as indeed they are. We should avoid constant negative criticism—I hope that I have not done too much of it—as these officials are carrying out an important and difficult task. They need and deserve to be affirmed. After all, they are following due process and enforcing the rule of law, thus making an important contribution to the order that we cherish as part of our civil society. A report to Parliament on enforcement following up on the PAC report, as proposed in this amendment, would be a valuable next step.

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[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, I have received no requests to speak after the Minister, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, it has been a full and fair debate, with compelling contributions from my noble friend Lord Hodgson and the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington. My noble friend Lady McIntosh added to the richness of the discussion with her experience in Kent and her concern about Covid from those coming to this country. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, rightly argued that information is often lacking and sought clear, well-communicated rules, which is all part of enforcement—we are on common ground there. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, gave us further reasons why looking at what has happened and reporting on enforcement can be extremely useful in many different areas.

I was pleased to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, because of his expertise and experience; I noted that he was also sceptical about the Government’s ability to enforce the law. He has a good point about automated gates and the need for ID for landlords—I have a minor interest there that I should probably declare. The world is changing, with digital rightly replacing paper-based solutions more and more, so work in this area must be progressed. I know that my noble friend the Minister agrees that work on digital ID and biometrics, which is being done by the Home Office and DCMS, can help in making a simple, clear, well-observed immigration system—as well as in liquor licensing, which is where we last discussed it.

I thank my noble friend the Minister for her careful replies on the specific issues we have all raised. I am sure we will all look at them very carefully. I agree with my noble friend Lord Naseby that the PAC’s disturbing report should be listened to and acted on. So I hope that a report on immigration enforcement of the kind we have proposed can be initiated. Putting those who need to improve on report can be very effective.

However, I feel that the issues have been well aired today and I do not propose to press my amendment. I support this Bill and feel that the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, would drive a coach and horses through it. As the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, said, it could be regarded as a wrecking amendment. I will therefore vote against Amendment 2 if the House divides. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 1 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 6, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, and to which I and my noble friend Lord Horam—a fount of experience and common sense, as we heard in his earlier comments on social care—have added our names. Of course, the noble Lord is an esteemed expert in the field; there is no greater expert on some of these matters.

As the noble Lord said, the amendment calls for a limit on the total number of EEA and Swiss migrants coming into the UK for employment each calendar year. In practice, this would involve a limit on all immigration for employment. There is clearly a serious risk of the numbers getting very large indeed, as we have heard, if we do not find a way to control immigration more directly. We have to get this right or we will feel the result in public anger in years to come. Effectively leaving the number of migrants to the interests of employers, as is now proposed, is one-sided and inappropriate. It would make it impossible to plan properly for the investment we will need, given the scale of the dynamic change we will see. We will need additional houses, schools, hospitals, GP surgeries and transport facilities; we debated that in Committee but I do not think that anybody disagreed about the need for public investment to deal with the demographic change.

I know that we have the Migration Advisory Committee to help us and that, unlike SAGE, it includes economists; indeed, it is dominated by them. However, as I have already said, I fear that it is too focused on attracting talent from abroad in the employer’s interest; indeed, the Minister’s statement today heightens that fear. It is odd for me to speak against what might be seen as my own interest as a director—I refer to my interests in the register—but we are dealing with difficult economic dynamics and sensitive points of politics in what is already one of the most crowded countries in Europe. As the noble Lord, Lord Green, said, this is not an economic matter alone. Fairness is very important.

I believe that we need as many jobs as possible for those already in the UK, particularly given the extension of the Covid restrictions and the resulting rise in unemployment, which, sadly, will grow further. We also need a greater incentive for employers to train in the skills that we require in a more digital, flexible world. I therefore very much welcome the fact that a revolution in skills was at the heart of the Prime Minister’s welcome announcement yesterday. However, as the noble Lord said, it is not too late for the Government to look carefully at the arrangements they have made and perhaps change them in the light of the Covid tsunami.

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, it has been obvious during these debates on the immigration Bill that there are two clear points of view. One is that we should carry on roughly with the status quo, which primarily reflects the interests of business. The other view, which perhaps supports workers’ interests, is that we need more control than we have now and a lower level of immigration. My point is a simple one: both points of view can be accommodated. I hate to use the phrase, “We can have our cake and eat it” because it has been somewhat devalued by our Prime Minister. None the less, the fact is that we can do that if we think this through carefully.

The supporters of the existing immigration policy, at a fairly high level, want to have freedom of movement for academics, creative people, entrepreneurs, engineers and all the valuable people we need in our society and contribute so much. For example, it was recently pointed out that nearly 50% of the Nobel prizes won by people in the UK have been won by people who originated abroad. However, to get that element in society, you do not need to have a net immigration level of over 350,000 a year. It can all be done on a net immigration level of 50,000, 70,000 or less than 100,000, which we had for decades before the Blair Labour Government opened the gates in the early part of this century.

Therefore, the problem with the large-scale immigration that we have had for the last 15 or 20 years, as has been pointed out by my noble friend Lord Hodgson, is that it affects the quality of life, puts a huge strain on resources, has a big environmental and social impact and affects jobs and wages. Even the MAC has pointed out that people on low wages have had them reduced by 5% in real terms over the last few years. It even led to the biggest tragedy of all for people who are remainers, like myself—Brexit. The casual treatment of people’s views on immigration was a clear factor in the referendum and certainly a decisive view of those who voted for Brexit. In other words, the liberals and middle-class people who wanted more immigration dug their own grave over the referendum.

The way out of this dilemma is absolutely clear, as has been pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington. It is to have a cap at a reasonable level. You could then accommodate the people who want to bring in the creative artists, entrepreneurs, businesspeople and so forth without having the numbers that are objected to by the workers and the bulk of people in this country.

In my previous speech, I praised the pamphlet produced by my noble friend Lord Hodgson, who looked at the issue in totality in relation to the demographic trends and population. I will now quote from another pamphlet that was brought out a lot less recently: Beyond the Net Migration Target, by the Onward think tank. The author is Will Tanner, who was a special adviser in the Cameron Government to Theresa May, when she was Home Secretary. He states:

“We recommend that the Government moves to a detailed and transparent Sustainable Immigration Plan, which would set out ministers’ objectives for the level and composition of migration and be updated on a rolling basis every year… This type of detailed approach is commonplace in other countries… For example, Australia has an annual planning program, where it sets the number of permanent visas in the budget each year.”


Tanner sets out what happens in Australia. For example, from 2019 to 2020, they planned to have 30,000 employer sponsored visas and skilled independent visas to the tune of 18,652. All this is set out in an annual budget decided between the various departments and stakeholders concerned, brought to their Parliament, debated and settled, and they have another look at it the following year. It is all perfectly transparent, above board and very democratic. The same thing happens in Canada and New Zealand. All these people are very experienced in dealing with this problem of immigration.

There it is: it can be dealt with by the simple methods already extant in other countries. I say to my noble friend on the Front Bench that this is the way forward to meet both these objectives: those of the people who understand the value of a limited amount of immigration and those who do not want the high level of immigration that we have had over the last 20 years. Both sides can have what they want, and I present this to my noble friend as one of the answers to the way forward. It is a very simple pamphlet and, unlike the 650 pages of the MAC report, at 21 pages it is very readable. I hope that she can take this on board and present it to the Home Office as a very sensible way forward.

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[Lord Green of Deddington (CB) [V]]

My Lords, in Committee, the Minister quoted extensively from the Migration Advisory Committee. She said that the MAC had reported that it was “sceptical about how effective” the labour market test would be in giving settled workers the first opportunity to fill jobs—I think she just mentioned that again. She went on to quote the MAC saying,

“We think it likely that the bureaucratic costs of”—


a labour market test—

“outweigh any economic benefit”.

Her third quote was that the MAC thought it

“important to have protection against employers using migrants to under-cut UK-born workers.”

It continued:

“The best protection is a robust approach to salary thresholds and the Immigration Skills Charge”. —[Official Report, 9/9/20; col. 844.]


Those are the technicalities.

I have checked those quotations. They came from the MAC final report on EEA migration in the UK, dated September 2018. This report specifically recommended that there should be no change in the £30,000 general salary threshold that was in effect at the time—yes, no change. So those quotations have clearly been stripped of their original context.

If the Government are now keen to invoke the MAC, they might wish to note the committee’s previous findings. In February 2012, it said that increasing exemptions from the labour market test would mean:

“Resident employees stand to lose out from increased labour market competition.”


Again, in 2015, it said that the labour market tests

“help protect the domestic workforce from being displaced or replaced by migrant workers”.

Whatever it said most recently and in whatever context, it has clearly consistently recognised the impact of a labour market test. In the light of those previous recommendations and the lack of any subsequent detailed work by either the MAC or the Home Office to consider the potential displacement impact, the complete abolition of the labour market test is of considerable concern.

The context in which these proposals are now being considered, of rising unemployment, which a number of noble Lords have mentioned, and increasing youth unemployment, surely requires the Home Office to commission some serious analysis before implementing what could be a drastic step.

Further, the MAC, and worse still the Government, completely ignore the fact that widespread concerns about the abolition of the test are not just about economics. Other noble Lords have mentioned the importance of fairness. These matters are about fairness and perceptions of fairness. That explains why, as I mentioned in Committee, 77% of the public believe that employers should prioritise the hiring of UK workers.

At this point, I should like to recall that this amendment was powerfully supported in Committee by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, both basing themselves on their experience of these matters at very senior levels of industry.

It is now obvious that the Government are struggling to justify a complete failure to give British workers an opportunity even to apply for jobs that are to be offered overseas. What this comes down to is whether the Government are going to cave in to the convenience of business or give British workers a fair chance. Which is it to be? Or have they already decided against British workers?

Finally, I notice that both the Labour and Liberal Democrat spokespersons avoided taking a view on this matter in Committee. They seemed to be unsighted. Perhaps they will take the opportunity of Report to clarify their positions. I beg to move.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I strongly support this amendment, to which I have added my name. Indeed, of the three proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Green, this is the one I have most hope of the Government accepting, in the context of the narrow EU-EEA focus of the Bill. I find it extraordinary that we should be thinking of dropping the long-standing requirement that jobs be advertised in the UK before overseas recruitment takes place. This will encourage employers, especially big employers, to recruit overseas without even trying the home market. We already have the benefit of the pool of 3.8 million or so EU citizens who have applied for the EU settlement scheme. Thanks to coronavirus, UK jobs are being lost everywhere, from the high street to our wonderful arts and entertainment industries.

In earlier discussions, defending the decision to dispense with the labour market test and the 28 days of domestic advertising it lays down, the Minister put a lot of emphasis on the salary thresholds and the immigration skills charge. I am not against the points-based system, as the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, seemed to suggest; however, with my experience of a number of industries, I think the thresholds look much too low, especially post-Covid. The skills charge has to be set against the recruitment fees that might have to be paid in the more demanding UK market. I appreciate, of course, that there will be scope to flex these numbers going forward—that seems to be what the Minister has been saying—however, I think this particular change is especially unwise.

While I do not rule out special arrangements for agriculture, mentioned earlier by my noble friend Lord Naseby, and for health workers—although the latter steals training and talent from countries that sometimes badly need it—we need our jobs to go to the home team wherever possible. We need a mechanism to encourage training, especially in the social care sector, which is crying out for suitable people, as my noble friend Lord Horam explained so eloquently in relation to Amendment 3. We are embarking on a skills revolution in the UK, and a jobs-first pledge, by advertising at home, should be part of our prospectus.

As I have said before, I am puzzled that trade unions such as USDAW, who I have worked so well with and who have done such a fine job in retail, are not strongly supporting the retention of some form of labour market test.

[Lord Horam (Con)]

This is about the resident labour market test and I find it quite astonishing, like my noble friends who have spoken to the amendment, that this should be removed at the point when we are entering a period of huge unemployment, as predicted by the Chancellor in his Statement only a few days ago. It is completely astonishing that that should be the case at the moment.

It is also amazing that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, has so far not supported such an amendment: it beggars belief, frankly, that the Labour Party spokesman is willing to give this up in such circumstances. I hate to attack—rather, argue—with the noble Lord but he did take me on in our last debate. I will not take long over this but he did ask, “Who is this think tank, Onward?” It is a perfectly reputable, charitable think tank. The point it was making, as am I, is that Australia has had a cap on immigration for years. We have imported half the Australian points-based system but are refusing to import the rest, which is the cap. They say in Australia, “no cap, no control”, and that is why they have a cap.

It is the same in Canada, where they have the same system and it is debated in Parliament. It is all perfectly transparent and its Parliament has a role. It is the same in New Zealand. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, also said that he was worried about the economy, but Australia and Canada have successful economies and caps on immigration; New Zealand has a successful economy. They are all rather more successful than we are, in many respects. I advise the noble Lord, as a true friend—we served together on the Electoral Commission and I really appreciate him as a stalwart Labour man—to think again about this and reposition his party. Believe you me, if the Labour Party does not reposition itself on immigration, I can tell him, it is in real trouble.

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[Lord Green of Deddington (CB) [V]]

Noble Lords will be glad to hear that this is the last of my amendments. I realise that I have not declared my non-financial interest as president of Migration Watch UK, but I think that that is very well known in the House.

I retabled this amendment because the prospects for young British workers are getting substantially worse as the Covid crisis intensifies, yet the Government seem to be set on a policy that can only make matters even worse for this very important section of our workforce and, indeed, our society. I just cannot understand how they feel that they can brush this matter aside.

The Minister sent a letter to all Peers on 15 September after the second day of Committee. In it she said that, although some of the questions raised in the debate were outside the scope of the Bill—which they were—she has sought to answer them as fully as possible, and I am grateful for that. The annexe to that letter set out the current arrangements for the new labour market entrants from overseas so as to allow noble Lords to “compare and contrast” them with the new proposals. Unfortunately—I say this with care—the effect of this is unintentionally, I am sure, misleading.

The document provides extracts from the current rules that appear to show that new entrants can already be admitted at a similar low-salary level to that proposed with the rather clear implication that little will change. However, no mention is made of at least two fundamental changes that would indeed make a clear difference.

First, the new proposals will allow not just graduates to come and earn £20,000 or so a year, as at present; they will also allow young migrants to come to do A-level jobs for the same money, thus enormously increasing the numbers of those—from all over the world—for whom £20,000 for an A-level job will indeed be an attractive salary. One could perhaps add that many will have families already here who will encourage them and that this can lead to settlement. However, the Government’s own impact assessment states:

“Setting the new entrant salary threshold at 30 per cent below the experienced threshold is estimated to reduce salary thresholds for 55 high-skilled occupations but increase it for 16 high-skilled occupations.”


Secondly, I stress again that there will be no cap under the points-based system; that is quite clear at the moment—they are not putting in a cap. Therefore, the numbers of young people recruited will be constrained only by employer demand. Furthermore, the removal of the labour market tests means that employers can go abroad directly, whether or not willing candidates might be available in the UK. Noble Lords might remember that, some years ago, a factory in Northampton that makes sandwiches brought in a plane of 250 people to work there; they were not necessarily young workers, but they were brought in en masse. I checked later with the Minister responsible and found that that firm had not even been in touch with the local jobcentre.

That is just one example of the way employers have brought in—and could well do so in the future under the new conditions—significant numbers of young workers who would directly take the jobs of our own young workers. Therefore, taken as a whole, the annexe to the noble Baroness’s letter, although described as a response, does not actually answer any of the points I raised. Rather, it confirms that the position is in fact very much as I described it.

In a nutshell, this is a wholesale revision of the so-called new entrant route, to the considerable disadvantage of our own young people. I had hoped that it would be called out in the responses from the Opposition Front Benches, but I have no great hope of that in the light of what they have just been saying. Therefore, I await the Minister’s response again, and I beg to move.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to this amendment, with which I have much sympathy. It seems surprising that we are offering a new entrant route, allowing employers to pay a third less than the headline rate, particularly as those with A-levels will now be able to come in as well as graduates, as the noble Lord, Lord Green, has just explained.

As a businesswoman with experience in quite a number of sectors, the going rates for the points-based system already look low and are likely to make overseas migrants attractive. That is especially true for the various professionals in the paper that my noble friend the Minister has helpfully circulated. That would be good news, for example, for US banks and legal firms in London, which should be employing local talent and not necessarily bringing it in from abroad.

Moreover, I think that the coronavirus will have had a dampening effect on some wage rates, so I think these numbers may already be out of date and, of course, it is important, as the Minister said, that the MAC keeps them under review very regularly. I hope I am wrong, but everybody has been saying that the tsunami of the coronavirus is likely to change the labour market.