Immigration Bill

Earl Howe Excerpts

Tuesday 12th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

I, too, have received a briefing on the issue that has been raised, and I certainly do not wish to reiterate the points that have been so ably put. There seems to be a strong argument for at least clarifying the situation—I think that that is what is being asked for—and ensuring that we do not end up with people being made homeless as a result. I very much hope that in his response the Minister will be able to provide that clarification—and an acceptable clarification as well.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe) (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 1, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, would, as she explained, provide that a person disqualified by virtue of their immigration status may apply to the Secretary of State for written confirmation that permission to rent has been or will be granted to them. The amendment would amend the Immigration Act 2014, which introduced the right-to-rent scheme. It would work in conjunction with the existing provision, which states that a person who is otherwise disqualified from renting premises as a result of their immigration status is to be treated as having a right to rent where the Secretary of State has granted them permission to occupy premises under a residential tenancy agreement.

I hope that I can persuade the noble Baroness that the amendment is unnecessary and potentially even a step backwards. The Secretary of State is already able to grant permission to rent to people who are otherwise disqualified from renting. This may include migrants without leave who have sought asylum, families with minor children who are in the family returns process or those who face a genuine obstacle to leaving the UK. A migrant may obtain confirmation that they will be afforded such permission by contacting the Home Office, and all a landlord need do then is to contact the Home Office landlords’ checking service with the migrant’s Home Office reference number to confirm that they may rent to that migrant. Following that process will give the landlord a statutory excuse from any civil penalty under the right-to-rent scheme.

Very importantly, this system allows for a swift process, without the need to require a migrant to make a formal application or for them to await written confirmation through the post that they may rent. Our experience since the right-to-rent scheme was introduced on 1 December 2014 is that this process works well. For those reasons, I invite the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

Incidentally, there is no inconsistency between the FoI response and the letter from my noble friend Lord Bates. As I explained, a migrant may already contact the Home Office in order to establish whether they will be granted permission to rent. Existing arrangements are straightforward and work well. I should also mention that the Home Office is in the process of revising its published guidance in response to concerns raised during previous debates. I have no doubt that it will factor in the points made in this debate as well. Once that is done, the guidance will set out even more clearly how a migrant may contact the Home Office. But I suggest that requiring that they make a formal application and then have to await written confirmation may lead to unnecessary delays and in fact would serve no useful purpose.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I wish that I were persuaded. The letter from the noble Lord, Lord Bates, said that migrants,

“may contact the Home Office to establish whether this is the case”.

The clear implication there is that the migrant himself may establish the position, not ask the Home Office to make sure that, if and when a landlord inquires, the landlord is given that information.

Of course, I am aware of the landlord’s statutory excuse. I do not want to be too harsh, but I wonder whether the person in the Home Office who has been drafting this has had any recent experience of trying to rent a property. Not that long ago, on the question of the rollout of the 2014 Act, two or three Members of this House explained very clearly that as landlords they, and indeed most landlords, would want to get on with letting and not have gaps in that letting. The information that I and other noble Lords have received is not that the situation is working well—that is not the position. I am glad to hear that there has been some revision of procedures, but it seems to me that by denying that there is a problem, there is denial around looking at how to solve that problem.

It seems to me that this is not considered a big deal. Perhaps I can simply urge the Minister to urge the Home Office to take this as a very serious concern. If there is a different way of assisting tenants—and my goodness, this House is spending a lot of time talking about the housing crisis at the moment—and making the whole process that much easier, avoiding the concerns about discrimination that we have debated in this context at some length, then I urge him to do that. I am clearly not going to make any progress on this now, but I will not let it go: I will keep asking questions about it.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I am happy to give the necessary undertaking to the noble Baroness. Indeed, I am sure she will have gathered from what I said that the whole purpose of the scheme we now have is to have a straightforward and rapid process for people to follow, rather than a more labyrinthine paper-based process. Clearly, the information she has received contradicts, at least in part, the information that I have had about how well the scheme works. I will of course ensure that Home Office officials look at any evidence she has which may cast into doubt the efficient working of the scheme.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I think the first piece of evidence will be the case to which the noble Baroness and I have referred. I am grateful for that undertaking and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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Moved by

[Earl Howe]

2: Clause 45, page 37, line 39, leave out “of the Environment” and insert “for Infrastructure”

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 2 and will speak to Amendments 3 to 5 inclusive. These amendments are technical in nature and are necessary to reflect a planned reorganisation of departmental functions in Northern Ireland. Clause 45 as drafted makes reference to the Department of the Environment, as this is the department responsible for issuing driving licences in Northern Ireland. However, this department is to be dissolved and its functions related to driving licences will be transferred to a new department: the Department for Infrastructure. These government amendments simply take account of this planned change.

Amendment 2 agreed.

Moved by

[Earl Howe]

3: Clause 45, page 38, line 21, leave out “of the Environment” and insert “for Infrastructure”

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I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to at least some of the questions and issues that I and other noble Lords have raised, since I share the concerns that have been expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, about the way this matter has been handled and the late stage at which it has been brought forward into the proceedings on the Bill, and what appears, frankly, to be a lack of information about the charge, with the Government saying that we will have to wait until later on to find out what their intentions actually are.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I have listened carefully to the position put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, and other noble Lords. The Government were pleased to be able to provide further details about the immigration skills charge in the statement made at the Report stage by my noble friend Lord Bates. In addition, a Written Ministerial Statement covering reforms to the tier 2 visa route was laid in the other place on 24 March, but unfortunately it could not be laid in your Lordships’ House because we were not sitting on that day.

As promised at the Report stage, the Government have considered when Clause 87 will come into effect. The first point to make, which was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, is that while the clause commences two months after Royal Assent, it is clear in the Bill that secondary legislation will be needed before the charge can be introduced, and that will be subject to the affirmative procedure. Secondly, as my noble friend Lord Bates said on Report, we will publish a draft of the regulations before they are laid, enabling noble Lords and other interested parties to comment; I would just emphasise that opportunity.

As regards the date of introduction, the Government have announced details about the rate and the scope of the charge, including the exemptions that will apply, a year before it is to be introduced. The Written Ministerial Statement confirmed that the charge will be introduced from April 2017 and not before. We consider that that gives employers, including those in the public sector, sufficient time to plan how best to manage the introduction of the charge without delaying until after April 2018, as suggested in this amendment—and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Green, for his comments on that point. I would argue strongly that there is no need for transitional provision to be made for institutions in the public sector, which is the other purpose of the amendment. I would just say that, on Report, my noble friend Lord Bates did not commit to consider a phased approach to implementation for the public sector. We made a commitment to consider when the clause comes into effect and, as I have indicated, we stated that we will not introduce the charge before April 2017.

As the independent Migration Advisory Committee stated, public sector organisations are employers, like any other, and should be incentivised to consider the UK labour market first before recruiting from outside Europe. On that particular point, it is worth noting that the MAC took evidence from a full range of stakeholders, including the public sector, before making its recommendations. From my time as a health Minister I recognise the important role that tier 2 plays in recruiting doctors to fill vacancies in hard-to-recruit medical specialties and areas, as the British Medical Association has flagged. I also understand its concern that the charge might take funds away from training in the health service.

Let me be clear about this. Staffing in the NHS is a government priority. That is why there are already more than 29,600 extra clinical staff, including more than 10,600 additional doctors and more than 11,500 additional nurses on our wards since May 2010. That is why Health Education England has increased nurse training places by 14% over the last two years and is forecasting that more than 40,000 additional nurses will be available by 2020. There are already 50,000 nurses currently in training.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, asked me what plans there were to incentivise individuals into nursing and to encourage retention. It would perhaps be helpful if I mentioned that the Come Back to Nursing campaign, launched by Health Education England in September 2014, reports that 2,188 nurses have registered on a return-to-practice programme, 927 have completed the programme and, of those, 700 have successfully completed their retraining and are now back on the front line providing care and support for patients. We have invested £40 million in leadership training to create a new generation of senior nurses and we are running a campaign to get experienced nurses who have left the profession back to work.

The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, referred to the pressure on schools, and I understand the points that he made. I hope that he will take some reassurance from the fact that many schools will benefit from the reduced rate of £364 by virtue of being either small businesses or charities. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked about ring-fencing the fund and whether the charge will just go, as it were, into general revenue. Let me be clear about that. The Prime Minister was emphatic that this measure will help train up the resident workforce to address skills shortages. I cannot, of course, tell him how much the skills charge will raise. The amount of funding generated will very much depend on employer demand. The Migration Advisory Committee estimated that the charge could raise as much as £250 million a year. The MAC’s estimates did not take account of the reductions and exemptions the Government have announced or the expected impact on behaviour. The Government are still finalising the policy detail, as will be obvious. We have not, therefore, produced a firm estimate. However, we estimate that once the exemptions and reductions are taken into account, the sums raised will be significantly lower than the MAC’s estimate.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

With respect to the remarks of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and those of the Minister, the Science and Technology Committee had a special session here at the House of Lords in March, and we heard that the funding available for training teachers who are not advanced in mathematics or science to become better trained is actually decreasing. I wonder whether the Minister’s remarks are implying that there will be more money for this training, which is absolutely essential if we are to raise the skills and educational levels in science and technology.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, a great deal is being done to encourage students into science and technology, as I am sure the noble Lord is aware. What I cannot tell him is whether and to what extent the money raised by the skills charge will be directed into particular vocational areas. That is still being worked through. As regards teaching, it has been recognised that public sector pay restraint and specific recruitment challenges in certain occupations present problems for the National Health Service and the education sector in particular. On the new salary threshold, we announced that we will exempt nurses, paramedics and medical radiographers; and in the education sector we will exempt secondary-school teachers in mathematics, physics, chemistry, computer science—

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

Primary schools as well are a particular area.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I heard what the noble Lord said. Perhaps he will allow me to continue. We will exempt secondary-school teachers in mathematics, physics, chemistry, computer science and Mandarin from that new salary threshold. The point has been recognised by the MAC and we took its advice on that.

The exemption we have announced for students switching from tier 4 to tier 2 to take up a graduate-level position in the UK will benefit doctors following completion of their foundation training. I am pleased that the BMA has welcomed this exemption. However, if we are to meet our objective of reducing reliance on overseas workers, we simply must reverse the trend of increasing numbers of workers coming through tier 2, including in the public sector. In 2015, sponsored visa applications for skilled workers in the human health and social work activities sector alone, which includes a number of public sector occupations, increased by 13% to more than 3,500 places. For those reasons, we consider that delaying or phasing in the introduction of the charge, or indeed an exemption, for the NHS or wider public sector would overlook the key aim of the charge: to influence employer behaviour. The Migration Advisory Committee was clear that it did not believe the health sector should be exempt from the charge.

I note that the BMA said it is highly unlikely that the NHS would benefit from the proceeds of the charge because apprenticeships are not relevant to or will not benefit the NHS. With great respect to the BMA, there is currently no basis for saying that. Decisions on where the charge income will be spent are not yet finalised, as I said. The priority will be to spend the charge on training the resident workforce to address skills gaps in the UK. Apprenticeships are only one government-supported programme designed to address the long-running trend of underinvestment in skills by UK employers that might be supported. I can assure noble Lords that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is already engaging with stakeholders, including the Department of Health and the Department for Education, to ensure that their skills and workforce planning needs are fully considered. It cannot possibly do otherwise given the key importance of those sectors. I can also assure the House that the Home Office will continue to consult with stakeholders on how best to address skills gaps in advance of the introduction of the charge to inform decisions on how the income is spent.

I hope that noble Lords—in particular the noble Lord, Lord Wallace—will be reassured from what I have said today and from the totality of the announcements we have made about the skills charge, that the Government are committed to implement it in a balanced way, ensuring that the UK remains open for business and can continue to attract the best and brightest to our workforce. I hope, too, that noble Lords are reassured by our confirmation that we will not seek to impose the charge before April 2017, and only after we lay regulations.

In the light of those points, I very much hope that the noble Lord will agree to withdraw Amendment 9.

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord has not yet got out his walking maps, but we shall see. I conclude by pointing out that the phasing argument is about the time it takes to train the people from within the United Kingdom who we need to supply skills in our schools and hospitals. We have not yet been informed about the new schemes which the Department of Health and the Department for Education will undertake to provide. However, we know that from April 2017 schools and hospitals will pay an additional £1,000 per person per year for everyone recruited from outside the European Economic Area, although I think I may have heard the noble Earl say that independent schools will have to pay only £330 because they are charities, which raises some interesting questions to which we may also wish to return.

[Earl Howe]

It does not apply just to independent schools, some of which are charities and some of which are not. However, the lower figure is £364 for charities.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

We are reassured by that, but I may wish to take it up further with the Minister. Meanwhile, we are not satisfied. This imposes additional charges on the public sector which is already hard pressed. We have not yet heard sufficient about the additional training which the Government, as employers, need to provide from departments other than the Home Office. We are depressed by the news that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is cutting the staff it has to promote skills and employment within the United Kingdom. We therefore wish to test the opinion of the House.

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Moved by

[Earl Howe]

10: Schedule 10, page 171, line 25, at end insert—
“( ) A reference in any provision of, or made under, an enactment other than this paragraph to immigration bail granted, or a condition imposed, under Schedule 10 to the Immigration Act 2016 includes bail granted by the court under sub-paragraph (1) or (1A) or (as the case may be) a condition imposed by the court on the grant of such bail.””

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Moved by

[Earl Howe]

That the Bill do now pass.

[Lord Hylton (CB)]

My Lords, we are led to believe that Third Reading is for the removal of doubt and uncertainties. I believe that there is still a lot of uncertainty over the Dublin III regulation and over discretionary entry outside the Immigration Rules. These uncertainties affect both those who could use the provisions to reunite their families and those who have to administer the provisions or to present compassionate cases to the Secretary of State. The result is that few people get admitted. Under Dublin III, even the Government do not know how many people reach this country—or if they know, they will not say. Under discretionary entry, on the other hand, an average of 35 persons were admitted in each of the last five years. Only last week, the Children’s Commissioner for England wrote to the French Government about unaccompanied children now at Calais who may be—

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[Lord Hylton]

My Lords, I have two very brief questions to put to the Minister. First, will the Government immediately consult the British Red Cross, Save the Children Fund and faith groups, which are in daily contact with split families and unaccompanied children? Secondly, will the Government ensure that all the relevant officials are fully briefed about family reunion and how it can be achieved?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, with the leave of the House I will briefly answer the noble Lord’s questions. First, as he is aware, we regularly consult external partners and experts including the Red Cross and Save the Children. We will continue to do that. Secondly, we are revising our guidance on family reunion, which provides specific guidance for those already in the UK on how to apply for family reunion and instructions for caseworkers on how to consider such applications. We intend to publish this in April and we will communicate it to all relevant officials. Details of how to apply are already available on GOV.UK and refugees granted international protection are advised about their entitlement to family reunion when they receive their asylum decision.

[Lord Rosser]

I take this opportunity—I believe I am doing it at the right place—to express our thanks to all those who have participated in the debates on the Bill, which I believe is now a better Bill than the one that was sent to us from the House of Commons. We are grateful for the amount of information provided by Ministers and the Bill team, for the numerous meetings that have taken place and for the willingness of Ministers to listen to concerns about the Bill and, in some instances, the willingness of the Government themselves to bring forward amendments or place statements on the record to address those concerns. I particularly express appreciation of the work undertaken during the passage of the Bill by the noble Lord, Lord Bates, whose approach, as with that of his Front-Bench colleagues, has I think been appreciated on all sides of the House.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, from the Cross Benches, perhaps I can briefly add a remark to those of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, particularly in paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Bates, whose leave of absence was agreed by the House only yesterday. I was privileged to get to know the noble Lord, Lord Bates, when we served in another place and we remained friends after he left the House of Commons. I was delighted when he was appointed as a Member of your Lordships’ House; I was even more delighted when the Government had the good sense to appoint him as a Minister of the Crown. He has discharged his responsibilities in the House over the passage of time, particularly on the Modern Slavery Act and now on the Immigration Bill, with great distinction. We have huge admiration for the work that he is undertaking, which is to raise the peace pledge and the work of the Red Cross and Save the Children. It touches on many of the issues which we have debated in your Lordships’ House during the passage of the Bill so, before the Bill passes, I am sure that we all add our voices to those which have already been raised in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Bates, for all that he did.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I am sure that my noble friend Lord Bates, were he present today, would be touched and gratified by the comments that have been made about him. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken but, more particularly, I am grateful to the Members on both Opposition Benches and the Cross Benches for their constructive role throughout the passage of this Bill which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has said, has not quite left our Chamber yet. We will be returning to it. Nevertheless, the whole tone of the debate has been extremely positive even when it has been questioning and, from the point of view of the Government’s Benches, I express my gratitude for that.

Bill passed and returned to the Commons with amendments.