Immigration Bill (Eighth sitting)

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Keir Starmer]

My apologies. I was searching for it last night, and now I have found it. I gratefully adopt it, and put it back in its rightful place. Thank you, Mr Bone. I will master these procedures, if nothing else.

To a large extent, we have had the debate on why we say amendment 73 is necessary. It is an impact assessment premised, we say, on the lack of an evaluation that can give the right degree of assurance and satisfaction in relation to indirect discrimination. Amendment 86 is intended to safeguard children’s rights. It is an amendment to clause 13, which we will debate in greater detail, so I will not devote a great deal of time to it now.

The concern about clause 13 is that the process, once it starts, is that the Secretary of State serves notice on a landlord, and the landlord may terminate a tenancy when in receipt of a notice; that notice is then treated as notice to quit, and is enforceable as if it were an order of the High Court. We will debate that in some detail because it is an interesting innovation. The amendment is a limited strike at that measure, because if we are to have such a draconian scheme and children are involved, the process ought to include a safeguard and protection for children—it has almost no safeguards in it. I am sure that we can explore that.

Amendment 70 would defer the start date to 2018 to allow more time to give assurance to landlords and ensure that the scheme can be rolled out in a way that is fair and proportionate and does not lead to discrimination in any shape or form.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

I would like to discuss some of the wider issues with regard to clause 12 and the right to rent. I will speak specifically to amendment 86, which my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East and I have signed.

Right to rent as it stands is a dog’s breakfast, the implementation of which has been rushed, without any serious consideration or analysis of the west midlands pilot scheme. Therefore, the extensions of the right to rent provisions in the 2014 Act have no factual or evidential basis. Indeed, the only real evidence that we have suggests that the provisions have already caused discrimination and have not achieved their aims. That is not only my opinion, but that of a wide range of people from across many different groups and sectors. Giving evidence last week, Adrian Berry, chair of the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association, said of the right to rent that,

“there has only been a very modest pilot of that programme in the west midlands. It has not been expanded nationally and here we are, post-general election, with an augmentation of that regime to impose criminal sanctions on landlords and to provide for summary eviction of people who lack a right to rent without protection of the court. We struggle to see what evidence base there is for strengthening a regime that has barely been born.”––[Official Report, Immigration Public Bill Committee, 22 October 2015; c. 106, Q223.]

Landlords and agents are united in opposition to being conscripted into a new second tier of immigration agents. The Committee sat for four eye-opening oral evidence sessions, during which parts of the Bill took a verbal battering. Richard Lambert, who has been mentioned, said:

“We have concerns about placing this kind of responsibility on landlords, who are not trained for it”–-[Official Report, Immigration Public Bill Committee, 20 October 2015; c. 54, Q120.]

His colleague from the Residential Landlords Association, David Smith, said in written evidence that,

“given that, for example, landlords would need to be able to recognise the 404 different types of European identity documents that may be possessed by a tenant…which give holders the right to free movement”,

how can landlords possibly

“be expected to know every legitimate document from every country that proves someone’s immigration status, let alone recognise high-quality fraudulent documents, without proper training and support?”

The RLA has also said:

“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.”

All in all, that is hardly a ringing endorsement from those charged with implementing this part of the Minister’s new immigration policy.