Immigration Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 154 in this group. The Minister has referred to the large number of government amendments and I accept that many of them are in response to comments made in Committee, although I am not sure that that could apply to the 46 amendments in this group. At the last stage, there was a good deal of comment about the number of government amendments laid at a relatively late stage of the Bill. These further amendments are not so much a response to the Committee as continuing the substantial development of the issues. The Minister may know that there has been some pressure on us to argue for recommitment of these clauses so that we can look at them calmly as a whole. That would have been the right thing to do. I canvassed a little on that but I detected not a lot of enthusiasm and I accept that we have limited time, so I will not spend time this afternoon arguing for recommitment. But I wanted to put that point on the record.

The first amendment is not the biggest but let us start at number one. I do not begrudge a pension for the director of labour market enforcement, but the amendment has puzzled me. I had a look at the Modern Slavery Act to see what was provided for the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner and it does not refer to a pension. Given that it is not that unusual to appoint someone to a post which focuses on an issue, under the umbrella of a department but something new and quite discrete, is there not by now a standard formula for the appointments of such postholders? Does the wheel have to be reinvented a little differently each time?

By far a bigger issue is the reporting lines. The director deals with organisations that also have departmental reporting lines and which are now on the receiving end—that is a deliberate choice of phrase—of the provision of the strategy and the intelligence hub. On the charts with which we have been provided, there is no arrow in the reverse direction to show the contribution of those organisations. The Minister has heard me say this before, but this is particularly an issue for the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, the board of which is almost airbrushed out; it is hardly acknowledged. The director himself or herself has two masters in the form of two Secretaries of State with differing and possibly incompatible priorities. The Home Secretary is concerned with enforcement while BIS is concerned with deregulation, and I believe that it is to be BIS that will host and fund the director. An even bigger issue is that of resources for the functions and duties on which the amendments elaborate. The GLAA is to have new, extended functions and duties, and we need to be assured that adequate resources will be in place over the spending review period.

Amendment 2—I assure noble Lords that I shall not go through every amendment—seems to go into quite a degree of detail. Surely the detail of how one does something, which in this case is the obtaining and providing of information, should not have to be in legislation in this way. As long as the director has the power to require information, should that not be enough? The strategy will now propose annually the information that is to be provided and,

“the form, and manner … and frequency”.

The more you spell out in legislation, the more you have to spell out. Having gone a little way down this road, you realise that if you have done that, you need to spell out the other as well.

Amendment 21 refers to a court in a “part” of the UK. The Minister should be aware that I was going to ask this question: what is a part of the UK in the case of a court? Is it a country or is it a jurisdiction, which of course is not the same as a country in the case of the law and the courts because England and Wales are a jurisdiction. Is it a county or a town? It would be helpful to know which it is.

On the information gateways set out in Amendment 8 and subsequently, again I am not sure why it is necessary to provide for information to be disclosed to “a relevant staff member” and then to define who that is. If the director asks for information, surely any staff member is working on behalf of the director. This may be something technical related to the Data Protection Act and noble Lords may think that I am being spectacularly pedantic in raising it, but if someone gets it wrong, there are consequences. If an irrelevant staff member, as it were, seeks information, what is the status of that?

I have comments to make about what seems a very narrow gateway in terms of control and the time-consuming and cumbersome nature of it, but I would particularly like to ask what consultation has been undertaken on these provisions about information with the Information Commissioner, the commissioners appointed under RIPA, which is not yet RIP, and with the bodies concerned. I ask because there are issues about bureaucracy, protection and confidentiality—health bodies are involved here so I assume confidentiality has been considered—and I wonder whether the Home Office might produce a flow chart showing who must provide what, for what purpose and to whom, and whether it can then be used by the recipient for that purpose or another purpose?

Finally, my Amendment 154 would change the title of the Bill. A third of its clauses now deal with the labour market. There have been very significant additions since the Bill started life in the Commons. It seems to me—this is a substantive point and, I know, one of real concern among organisations—that it would be appropriate to call the Bill the immigration and labour market Bill. There were several amendments throughout the passage of the Bill to the effect that labour market matters are not confined to immigration. Indeed, they are very much wider than immigration. It is important not to badge the GLAA, the stand-alone body, as an immigration enforcer, and important not to adopt the mindset that immigration should be the driver of dealing with labour market abuses, or that labour market abuse is confined to illegal immigrants.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I intervene briefly—I know that there are more substantive issues that the House will want to move on to fairly soon—simply to place on record my consternation that in Committee we decided to invent a whole new authority, the GLAA, yet here were are on Report with more than 100 new amendments. Ministers are damned if they do and damned if they do not. I recognise that we have a Minister who listens carefully to debates in your Lordships’ House. Indeed, he has a rollercoaster of meetings outside your Lordships’ House. His energy and willingness to listen are much to be commended, but could he distinguish for us which amendments have arisen as a result of consultations with and suggestions from outside organisations and Members of your Lordships’ House, and which are government amendments that are necessary to put right things that were not considered in Committee?

Would he also not agree that it is not good to make legislation on the hoof? In Committee I contrasted it with the way he dealt so impeccably with the modern slavery and human trafficking Bill, which had enjoyed pre-legislative scrutiny from Members of both Houses prior to being introduced in another place, and which was dealt with with great diligence by Members of both Houses and in an exemplary manner by the Minister himself. Surely that is the way we should enact legislation. But the Immigration Bill has completed all its stages in another place. It has now come here and he has introduced whole new clauses without any pre-legislative scrutiny or consideration of them in another place.

If we are honest, there has not been much consideration here. We pride ourselves, do we not, on being a House that scrutinises legislation in great detail, line by line and clause by clause? I honestly do not think that we can say we have done that with these clauses. Personally, I do not understand all the implications of the amendments that have been introduced. Although I am grateful to the Minister for the compendium of letters and detail that he sent us this morning, the idea that one could have read it all in advance for today is, I think he would agree, pretty unlikely.

So all I am doing is appealing to the noble Lord to look at the way we have dealt with this and ask officials whether it would not have been better to come forward at an earlier stage, or wait for another opportunity. I also put in an appeal at least for post-legislative scrutiny. If there is to be no sunset clause in the Bill, can we at least have an undertaking from the Government that we will revisit these clauses especially in 12 months from now to see how they work?

I have one other question for the noble Lord on resources. He will recall that at meetings held on the periphery of your Lordships’ House I questioned the level of resources available to what was the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, soon to be the GLAA. I know that he is deeply committed to tracking down those who exploit labour, who are involved in human trafficking and all the dreadful things that have been rehearsed at earlier stages of this and previous legislation. Is he really confident that there are sufficient resources? Given the research done by universities such as the University of Durham into the funding of the GLA, does he think that those resource problems have been overcome?

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Moved by

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

57: After Clause 36, insert the following new Clause—
“Asylum seekers: permission to work after six months
(1) The Immigration Act 1971 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 3(9) (general provisions for regulation and control) insert—
“(10) In making rules under subsection (2), the Secretary of State must provide for persons seeking asylum, within the meaning of the rules, to apply to the Secretary of State for permission to take up employment, including self-employment and voluntary work.
(11) Permission to work for persons seeking asylum must be granted if—
(a) a decision has not been taken on the applicant’s asylum application within six months of the date on which it was recorded, or(b) an individual makes further submissions which raise asylum grounds and a decision on that new claim or to refuse to treat such further submissions as a new claim has not been taken within six months of the date on which the submissions were recorded.(12) Permission for a person seeking asylum to take up employment shall be on terms no less favourable than those upon which permission is granted to a person recognised as a refugee to take up employment.””

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, in his reply to the previous group of amendments the Minister gave a trailer for Amendment 57. In this argument we are returning to an issue that some of us raised and spoke to in Committee. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Rosser and Lord Paddick, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and others for supporting this amendment then, and again today. The amendment does precisely what it says on the package: it gives asylum seekers permission to work after six months. It was in Committee that the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, said—and I agree—that the other side of this coin is that an amendment of this kind would impose a duty to work, rather than simply leaving asylum seekers to eke out a pitiful existence on a monetary subvention by the state.

In his admirable book, The Home We Build Together, my noble friend Lord Sacks describes three groups of people who arrive as migrants in a foreign land. The first group are greeted by the local mayor and told that they will be given free accommodation, every possible benefit and that nothing will be required of them. They are told that they will be left to get on with it and that the community will have nothing to do with them and do not want to be troubled by them. The second group arrived and, this time, the mayor explained that there was no welcoming committee, no accommodation available and no financial support. However, if the strangers in their land had money, there was a brand new hotel in which they could stay for as long as they could pay. A third group arrived, and they were told that there was no accommodation, no benefits and nowhere to hire. But the mayor and the community provided bricks and mortar and a site where the strangers could make a home and earn a living. The mayor promised that the whole community would assist them and that they would build a home together. All of us know that the third response—a combination of generosity and self-help—is the approach that would work best. It is the approach that lies at the heart of this amendment. Amendment 57 would allow asylum seekers to be able to work if their claim is not determined by the Home Office in a timeframe of six months. Why would any Government oppose something that is based so clearly on common sense and on the principle of self-help and the removal of reliance on the state?

During our Committee debates, the Government said that they opposed the amendment because it would lead to an increase in unfounded applications. The noble Lord, Lord Ashton, who is in his place, responding for the Government, echoed what has become something of a mantra, saying:

“Earlier access to employment risks making asylum more attractive for those who are otherwise not eligible to work in the UK”.—[Official Report, 20/1/16; col. 851.]

But where is the empirical evidence for this assertion? The Government’s position is based on speculation. They previously conceded that,

“it may be broadly true”,

that,

“there is little hard evidence that the change you propose (to allow asylum seekers to work after six months) would result in more asylum applications”.

So I agree with the Government’s earlier assertion and I wonder why they have changed their mind.

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[Lord Bates]

That is absolutely right; I am not dissenting from that; that is the one that we decided not to opt in to under the coalition Government. My point was that when the Labour Government introduced the provision, it was fully compliant with the 2003 EU directive and met the terms and conditions. Of course, it can be relaxed. As the noble Lord, Lord Green, said, we could go to the extent of Sweden’s position as it operated it, where people could enter the labour market immediately on claiming asylum. Of course, we all know that Sweden has some of the highest numbers of asylum claimants, so we should not somehow be vilified for claiming that that might be a pull factor when the evidence seems to suggest that the terms and conditions might act in that way.

Having set out for the benefit of the House the fact that we do not propose to change a position that obtained under the coalition and was introduced by the previous Labour Government, I want to set out the argument for noble Lords to consider.

First, while awaiting a decision, asylum seekers receive free accommodation and a cash allowance; they have all their living needs met, in terms of utility bills, and have access to education and skills and our health services. Also, to answer the point made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, they can undertake volunteering activities while their claim is outstanding, and we are exploring ways in which to support that. This approach also assists genuine refugees. It is common knowledge that some people make unfounded claims. The figure of 61% is the figure that we have of initial claims that are refused. It is reasonable to assume that some do so because of the benefits, real or perceived, that they think they will gain here. Earlier access to employment risks undermining the asylum system by encouraging unfounded claims from those seeking to use the asylum system as a cover for economic migration.

The amendment would create further incentives for asylum seekers to choose to try to come here. In Europe we have seen the effect that those policies can have in driving migrant behaviour. The numbers choosing to live in squalid conditions in Calais, hoping to enter the UK illegally, rather than seeking protection in France, is testament to that fact. Allowing access to work after six months would be more generous than many other member states. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, referred to some—but it would certainly be more generous than some and more generous than is required under the current 2013 directive on reception conditions to which the noble Baroness referred. We should not do anything at this stage to encourage more people to risk their lives to undertake dangerous journeys to come across Europe instead of claiming asylum in the first safe country that they reach.

In the great majority of cases, asylum seekers receive a decision within six months, so we should think carefully about the particular asylum seekers whom the amendment would benefit. That would include those who were themselves responsible for delaying the consideration of their asylum claim. It could be argued that it could provide a perverse incentive for people to institute delays. It would also include those complex cases where there are good reasons, often related to serious crimes, established or alleged to have been committed by the claimant, why a decision on an asylum claim cannot be reached within six months. Those are the asylum seekers to whom the amendment would accord preferential treatment at the expense of UK residents, including refugees seeking employment here.

Again, I accept that the arguments in favour of the amendment are well made—not emotive, but clearly touching an emotion. The vast majority of asylum seekers come here to seek our protection and we expedite their assessment. When they come to this country, they come under our obligations under the refugee convention and the 1951 Act, which says that we must offer protection and humanitarian assistance. The argument was that when people entered into the labour market they would need to be provided with national insurance numbers and tax reference numbers as well, potentially, as pay roll numbers, all of which might mean that if their claim is not upheld and well founded, it is more difficult for them to be removed from the country. The other argument is that there are also 1.5 million people who currently do not have employment in this country, and it might be argued that somebody could go for a job in a particular location and find that they do not get that job because it is offered to somebody who is here on an asylum basis. They may feel some upset that people to whom we are offering humanitarian support are somehow put ahead of them in the jobs queue, which would be unreasonable.

Those are the broad arguments that can be presented on this issue. The essential one that I would ask noble Lords to reflect on is that in this Bill we seek to provide a protection of the existing laws governing immigration in this country, recognising that there is a great migration crisis on and many people are seeking to make their way through Europe on this journey. We are seeking control of migration flows into this country. Therefore, now is not the time to change rules that were introduced in 2005 by the Labour Government and which were then refined under the coalition Government. Now is not the time to make this change—and I urge the noble Lord to consider withdrawing the amendment.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, the Minister was good enough to say at the outset that he thought that I had put a persuasive case—but clearly not persuasive enough to change his mind. The argument that this is not the time is one that we are all familiar with. I have heard it in both Houses of Parliament over the last three or four decades, again and again. Now is never the time. I was surprised by the Minister’s argument that if we were to pass this amendment we would be more generous than we are required to be. Those were his words. We are talking about £5 a day to subsist, instead of giving people the opportunity to do a job. If they are here illegally, they will not be taking somebody else’s job, because they will be deported. If they are here illegally, they are not becoming part of what he described as a perverse incentive for criminality—they will be deported. Our rules are quite clear. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said, they are not here illegally; they are asylum seekers. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, said, the public understand the difference between people who are here illegally and trying to cheat our system and people who are genuine asylum seekers and who should be considered on the merits of their applications.

We have heard some extraordinary speeches, and I remind the House that we have heard only one speech against these amendments during the course of the debate, from my noble friend Lord Green. My noble and learned friend Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood put the point that there was a balance of arguments. He, with his extraordinary legal experience, came to the conclusion that on balance it would be right to support this amendment and, in doing so, was echoing a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, from the Opposition Front Bench—that we will be incentivising the Home Office. We will be ratcheting up the process to deal with these applications to put them through within the six-month period because, if we do not, they would have the opportunity to go after a job and to do that job until the asylum application has been dealt with.

My noble friend Lord Wigley said that public opinion knows the difference between illegal migrants and asylum seekers, and that people who have skills will be deskilled—he referred to a pharmacist—if they are not given the opportunity to work.

Many other noble Lords have contributed to the debate, and I know that the House is now keen to reach a conclusion. I end by reminding the House of the vivid description that my noble friend Lady Neuberger gave during her remarks, when she talked about how like a swarm of locusts people will swoop on second-hand shoes, because they are so bereft of basic income or resources or the basic things to keep life and limb together. The noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, said that this amendment is about hope for people of that kind. Hope was the one thing left in Pandora’s box—and here I do agree with the Minister. We are witnessing mass migration on a huge scale. This amendment, sadly, is unable to deal with that; it is far beyond its scope. What it will do is to offer some hope or support for people who find themselves in a position where their human dignity has been utterly degraded. Therefore, I seek the opinion of the House.