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

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 12th February 2019 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

If no other colleagues wish to ask questions, I will bring in the Minister.

[The Minister for Immigration (Caroline Nokes)]

Q I have a number of questions. Professor Manning, thank you for your hard work on the various reports, and indeed your ongoing work on students and on the shortage occupation list. In your report you veered away from sectoral schemes. Would you expand on which sectors of the economy you think might be most impacted by the end of free movement? Why do you suggest that sectoral schemes are perhaps not the solution?

Professor Manning: The proposals are mostly going to affect those sectors that have relied heavily on lower-skilled EEA workers: food processing, hospitality, warehousing and transport. It is not care assistants, for example, who account for a lower fraction of EEA migrants than the national average. It is not the NHS, which has a lower fraction of EEA migrants than then national average. There is also agriculture. Our view is that if you have a special scheme for a sector, you are giving that sector privileged access to labour; you are preferring that sector over some other sector. Generally, we think there should be a level playing field of competition, particularly in lower-skilled sectors. It is reasonable to think that people working in hospitality might also work in retail and so on, and those sectors should be competing for workers.

The one exception is that we did recommend a seasonal agricultural scheme, because seasonal agricultural workers are 100% migrant at the moment. No other sector gets close to that. We do not think it is realistic to fulfil seasonal work with a resident settled population. That is the one exception, but generally we do not see a strong argument for giving preference to one sector over another, particularly when that sector may use that privileged access simply to keep terms and conditions worse than they would otherwise have to be in the wider labour market.

[Caroline Nokes]

Q I am conscious that the Migration Advisory Committee has, over many years, given close thought to the whole issue of migration, particularly when it comes to free movement and the analysis of the impact that has, and will have. What role do you see for the Migration Advisory Committee going forward?

Professor Manning: There was a page or two in the White Paper about expanding the role of the Migration Advisory Committee. We particularly welcome two aspects of that. First, we have more independence, in a way, to set our own agenda at times, and not just take commissions from Government. Secondly, a big issue is the availability of data. We strongly feel that at the moment—this is very long standing—there is insufficient evaluation of policy. When a policy is announced there is really not that much follow-through, looking at what exactly the impact of the policy was. Did it actually achieve what it set out to?

[Caroline Nokes]

Q I have a final question for you, Professor Manning, on shortage occupation lists. We have heard about shortages in the care industry and other parts of the economy. Do you see the SOLs, and potentially regional shortage occupation lists, as one mechanism by which you can resolve those challenges after the end of free movement?

Professor Manning: Potentially. At the moment we are doing some work on the shortage occupation lists, although that is within the current system, so it is eligible only to graduate-level occupations. It is really important that it is used in a discerning way. It is not a solution to generalised shortages of labour; it is for targeted solutions to particular bottlenecks in the economy. When a sector reports a shortage, it is always really important to ask why it has a shortage, and why migration is the only solution to the problem. For some of the sectors that we have been talking about, the answer is really due to a failure to offer jobs that are sufficiently attractive in the domestic labour market. In such cases, we are not clear that migration would not actually worsen rather than alleviate the problem.

[Caroline Nokes]

Q Thank you. Professor Ryan, thank you for your really extensive written evidence, and for the thought that went into it—it is very impressive and helpful. I want to talk to you a bit about the settled status scheme, and whether from a legal perspective you think that the rights of EU citizens would be best enshrined in this Bill or in a specific vehicle, namely the withdrawal Bill, which will encompass all the elements of the withdrawal agreement should we get that agreed by Parliament.

Professor Ryan: I think I have made the point that, if there is not a deal, there is a difficulty with relying on subsequent legislation that may never come. There may be a case for making provision just for that scenario in this Bill. If there is a withdrawal agreement that is then implemented through legislation, one has to recognise that the settlement scheme is, in many ways, more generous than the withdrawal agreement. It has taken out the requirement for qualifying conditions to be met by EU citizens, and the approach to evidencing residence is pretty open.

The question arises: would the second Bill actually protect everyone who is in the settlement scheme? I would hope that, in the end, anyone who gets recognised through that scheme can rely on those rights, and that, even if they are not covered by the withdrawal agreement, anyone who gets recognised through that scheme, without fraud and misrepresentation, has statutory protection for their position going forward.

There is a separate issue about people who do not apply. I have already said that I do not really understand why we have to have a hard deadline. One could imagine—in either Bill, I suppose—legislation ensuring the right to come back at a later date to apply, for those who are entitled to do so.

[Caroline Nokes]

Q The settlement scheme is already up and running in public testing mode now. The legislation is in both secondary legislation and immigration rules. I concur with you that it is important to have it in primary legislation. Do you see any legal difficulty with the status quo prevailing, where the scheme is open, and we have it enshrined in secondary legislation, albeit not primary? Does it matter if there is a timing gap?

Professor Ryan: I am sorry, but I did not quite follow the question.

[Caroline Nokes]

The settled scheme is up and running. We are awarding EU citizens their status, and we have achieved that by secondary legislation; we laid various statutory instruments that enabled us to open the settlement scheme. Whether as part of the withdrawal Bill or potentially as part of this Bill, do you see any challenge whatsoever with a gap between the end of free movement and the rights of individuals through the settlement scheme being enshrined in primary legislation?

Professor Ryan: Do you mean a gap with regard to timing?

[Caroline Nokes]

Yes.

[The Chair]

Order. I am afraid that we will never know the answer to that question, because we have come to the end of our allotted time. On behalf of the Committee, I thank both witnesses for their time. Thank you very much indeed, gentlemen.

Examination of Witnesses

Lord Green of Deddington and Dr Benedict Greening gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

If no other colleague wishes to ask a question, perhaps we will give the final opportunity to the Minister.

[Caroline Nokes]

Q We have three minutes to go, and I will try to give you time to answer, Lord Green. We have heard from employers’ groups, among others, that what they want from a future immigration system is simplicity, and of course free movement has the advantage of being very simple. Do you think that simplicity is important, or would you prefer to see a much more complicated scheme, perhaps such as what you have just begun to outline, with differential costs of visas depending on which year of stay people are in?

Lord Green: I think simplicity is important, but effectiveness is more important. If you have a system that is wide open to these middle skills, you will lose control of the numbers. What you have to do, given that you cannot follow everyone around the country to remove them after x years, is to put a financial burden or incentive on employers to train the replacements that we need.

[Caroline Nokes]

Q A number of members of the Committee asked about flexibility and meeting the future needs of the economy. How important do you consider it to be that we should have a future immigration system that allows a level of flexibility?

Lord Green: The main flexibility is the free market system, where wages go up and attract people into the places where they are needed. Where you do not have that financial incentive, it does not happen. We should allow the market system to work. Indeed, as Professor Manning said, if your first reaction to a shortage is to produce immigrants, you will never deal with the shortage and you will never improve the working conditions of those who are already in that industry.

[Caroline Nokes]

Q Taking the £30,000 threshold as suggested by MAC, do you see a case in which, potentially, that could go up year on year?

Lord Green: Did you say £30,000?

[Caroline Nokes]

Yes.

Lord Green: Possibly. I don’t know. It depends on what happens. But I think that the £30,000 is a sensible level, and it does mean that you are then dealing with highly skilled people. I would not want to lower it, and there may be a case for raising it as time goes on.

[Caroline Nokes]

Q Do you think that salary level is always necessarily a proxy for skill?

Lord Green: Not always, but it is not a bad proxy. It is probably the best you have.

[The Chair]

Lord Green, thank you very much for your evidence to the Committee.



Examination of Witness

Chai Patel gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Afzal Khan]

Q You said the Bill is premature. Can you quickly give us your major concerns about the Bill?

Chai Patel: The Bill is premature because there is no plan for what follows. Our primary concern is the Henry VIII powers given to the Home Secretary to remove people’s rights, without the new system having been clearly set out. I know that there is the White Paper, but I also know that it is contested in Cabinet, and is still subject to intense debate.

The White Paper itself raises concerns about, for example, the one-year visas, which would cause exploitation and problems with integration. It also misses the opportunity to fix many of the problems that we saw with Windrush. There is nothing to address Home Office capacity, with so many new people coming through the system, or the problems with the hostile environment, which remain. We know that it causes discrimination, and we have not seen anything from the Government to roll back those provisions, or to thoroughly review them.

[Caroline Nokes]

Q I am sure that Hansard will correct me if I misheard you, but I think you said very early on in your evidence that short-term visas inevitably lead to exploitation. Do you think that the same holds true for seasonal agricultural worker schemes, or perhaps the tier 5 youth mobility schemes?

Chai Patel: I think so, yes. Any kind of scheme relating to someone’s rights in respect of continuing work, changing employment or changing the sector in which they are employed will result in exploitation, because they have fewer rights to move between employers than British nationals.

[Caroline Nokes]

Q Is it your contention that we should not have an agricultural worker scheme, and should perhaps seek to do away with tier 5?

Chai Patel: I would have to think about that. Perhaps we can respond in written evidence later. I am afraid I have not thought that through.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q One final question. Under the EU settlement scheme, the plan is that people are not to be presented with a physical document but essentially with a bit of code that the employer can go away and check. Does that give rise to any concerns about how that will work?

Chai Patel: Yes. The key reason why discrimination happens under, for example, right to rent is not that landlords, or whoever needs to do the check, are prejudiced; it is the administrative hassle of having to deal with it. It is simple just to check a British passport. By not giving people a physical document, you are creating a massive problem for them in terms of having equal access to work, housing or other things that they might need.