Immigration Bill (First sitting)

Kelly Tolhurst Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[James Brokenshire]

Q 67 Do you have any comments on intelligence sharing and joint working with other agencies to support the work of local authorities?

John Miley: It is to be commended. Generally speaking, licensing authorities do not work in silos. They work in the broader scheme of things, and work with the police and the Security Industry Authority and more generally with immigration. Good work is currently going on in quite a lot of cases. We do an awful lot of partnership working. In fact, it is one of the cornerstones of the licensing procedures that we consult and gather information among ourselves. In Nottinghamshire, all the responsible authorities meet every six weeks. That will include the immigration authority when the Bill is passed. It is a useful evidence and information gathering and sharing process.

[Kelly Tolhurst (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

Q 68 I want to explore a little more around employers who are repeat offenders. I have witnessed examples of activity from smaller businesses that have caused concern. Does clause 9 go far enough to prevent such businesses, once caught, from doing it again? Is it enough to stop people who have already caused concern for agencies?

John Miley: In terms of licensing, if enforcement action is taken and it goes to its full conclusion, there is the possibility of closing the premises down. That is quite a strong penalty, so it would potentially have the effect of stopping it.

Kevin Green: Certainly, in terms of the recruitment industry, the conduct regulations and the enforcement in BIS are pretty clear. If people are found guilty, they can be struck off or prosecuted. We actually see few examples of repeat offences.

[Kelly Tolhurst]

Q 69 I have been made aware that fines sometimes—

Kevin Green: In relation to what example? I am not quite sure what we are talking about.

[Kelly Tolhurst]

Q 70 Undocumented workers. It has not always reached a full conclusion, so there has perhaps been a view that the penalties are not stiff enough. That is why I am interested to know whether this measure is enough finally to stop people taking those decisions and using undocumented workers.

Kevin Green: My take is that we have to be very careful. There are lots of businesses, and we look at national minimum wage breaches. There are only two cases that have involved recruiters, and they were just miscalculations. Such businesses should be held to account to make sure that they put it right, and then we move on. There is a difference in holding businesses to account. Sometimes small businesses without the resource might make mistakes, and we still need to hold them to account. There is lots of regulation already in place to do that. I think some clarity about that and resource for enforcement are important, but that is very different from somebody who is actually bringing people, harbouring people—what I would call human trafficking. That is criminal activity, and we need strong clarity about the potential punishment, the right level of resource and the right level of intelligence gathering across the different agencies, where this is moving in the right direction.

One of the things that we have uncovered is that, when they find criminal activity, lots of my members will provide examples and identify areas to the GLA where they think they have been infiltrated or where they see information, bank details and telephone numbers being given from one employer—they will then whistleblow to the GLA. Those legitimate businesses need to be sure that, by whistleblowing, they are actually helping to resolve the issue. Resource for the GLA is critical in moving this forward. They need the resource to go after the people who are carrying out real exploitation so that we do not mix them up with small businesses that make the odd mistake along the way.

[Chloe Smith]

Q 71 I want to take Ms Robinson back to her point about defences under the Modern Slavery Act 2015, in which I take a great interest—I sat on the Public Bill Committee. I have that Act and the Criminal Damage Act 1971 in front of me because she made a specific reference to that defence. As I understand it, the defence supplied in the 2015 Act in relation to criminal damage specifically excludes criminal damage with the intent to endanger another person’s life, so it is a rather more specialist case than she might have suggested. Secondly, on Second Reading of this Bill, the Home Secretary was very clear that all those defences will continue to apply. Will Ms Robinson explain her view?

Caroline Robinson: All those defences will continue to apply. What do you mean?