UK Borders Act 2007 (Commencement No. 7 and Transitional Provisions) Order 2011

Lord Avebury Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Avebury]

That this House regrets that the UK Borders Act 2007 (Commencement No. 7 and Transitional Provisions) Order 2011 (SI 2011/1293) changes the law that applies to appeals that have already been lodged.

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, I am very grateful for the opportunity to discuss this Motion, which relates to an order that brings into effect Section 85A of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, inserted by Section 19 of the UK Borders Act 2007. The title of Section 19 is “Points-based applications: no new evidence on appeal”, and that is a succinct description of its effect. The general rule that applies to immigration cases is that the immigration tribunals have power to consider any evidence relevant to the substance if the UKBA decision is under appeal, except in entry clearance cases—that is, cases relating to applications from abroad. In such cases, if there is a new development, the individuals have to make a new application to UKBA.

Section 19 makes provision for a new exception: all points-based system cases dealing with people either coming to or remaining in the UK for the purposes of work or study. A good deal was said about the substance of this section in the debate in Committee on the Bill which became the UK Border Act 2007, although there is no point in recapitulating the arguments against it that were deployed in both Houses, including in your Lordships' Grand Committee, on an amendment which I moved on 1 July 2007. If anyone is interested, it starts at col. GC 70, but I am afraid that the arguments are now only of historical interest.

In this short debate, I invite your Lordships’ attention to the specific reason for this Motion: namely, what I consider to be the unlawful retrospective effect of the commencement order. On Thursday 19 May, the immigration Minister, Damian Green, made a Written Ministerial Statement, announcing that this change would come into force the following Monday, 23 May, and advancing as an argument that around two-thirds of successful points-based system appeals were those at which further evidence had been submitted after the dismissal of the initial application. At some point on Friday 20 May, the commencement order was placed on the website www.statutelaw.gov.uk and printed copies were available in Parliament some time on that day.

There was hardly any time for your Lordships or Members of another place to consider the merits of the order or its lawfulness, let alone to consult with persons who might be affected by it or their legal representatives. On the Localism Bill, we have just had a discussion on the unwisdom of allowing discussions on the further edges of that Bill to be channelled into the Recess, the only opportunity between the last sitting day and the first day that we come back—it is a similar case. Your Lordships are not being given adequate opportunities for discussions on what may be very important details or of consulting with outside experts or lawyers on the way in which these matters are being dealt with.

This is not the way to treat Parliament and I would be grateful if the Minister could explain the reason for such unseemly haste when Section 19 has been lying unused on the statute book for the past four years, during which time six commencement orders relating to other sections of the 2007 Act have been approved by Parliament. It could not have been for the reason sometimes given for orders changing immigration law being brought in with little notice, which is to prevent a spike in applications before the change comes into effect. In this case the only persons affected were those who had already received a refusal from the UK Borders Agency and had either lodged an appeal or were within the 10-day working window for deciding whether to lodge an appeal.

The Immigration Law Practitioners Association, ILPA, wrote to UKBA protesting about the lack of notice and, in its reply, UKBA said:

“The order is not required to be laid before Parliament and it is not subject to the 21-day rule, as such no parliamentary conventions have been ignored in the introduction of this measure”.

No doubt that is true, but your Lordships still have the right to consider these orders, by tabling a Motion before they come into effect, as I have done. I respectfully suggest that, to table these Motions on a Friday when generally neither House sits in the hope that no one will notice them on Monday when they arrive for a busy week, is a sneaky way of preventing any parliamentary scrutiny. This case is not only an insult to Parliament, but it creates major problems for the affected applicants, their legal representatives and tribunals.

Looking at the order, the new provisions on evidence do not apply to appeals that were part heard on 23 May, but they apply to appeals that were pending before the tribunal on that date; in other words, when a person has lodged an appeal and is waiting for it to be heard. The gravamen of my Motion is that it is a violation of the principle of legal certainty when a person has gone to the trouble and expense of lodging an appeal on one legal basis only to find the rug pulled from under their feet by a change in the legal basis, which has come into effect without warning or notice. Indeed, they would have had every reason to believe that, as Section 19 had been dormant for the past four years, they would be very unlucky if it suddenly came to life during the interval between the refusal of their application and the hearing of their appeal. Such a person may have concluded or may have been advised that their prospects of an appeal succeeding were good because there was substantial new evidence available, but they would have those expectations dashed because that evidence was instantaneously disqualified.

We are advised by ILPA that the terms of the order are not lawful. It argues that unless the language clearly indicates a contrary parliamentary intention, a statutory provision has to be construed as not interfering with existing accrued rights. There is a presumption against retrospectivity which can be displaced only by clear statutory language and there is nothing in Section 19 or in Section 59 of the parent Act 2007 dealing with commencement that displaces the presumption in the case of Section 19. It is particularly telling that Section 59 displaces the presumption in the case of other sections of the Act, such as Section 26.

Without going through all the consequences of what Section 19 will mean in practice, there is one on which I seek an assurance from the Minister. This is the refusal of appeals on the grounds that mandatory evidence is missing or faulty. UKBA has issued a notice to its consultative forum, the employers’ task force, stating that a validation stage is being trialled in which applicants are contacted when mandatory evidence is missing and given the opportunity to provide it before the decision is made. Those with pending appeals on the date on which this order came into effect had not had the benefit of that validation stage and I ask my noble friend to check that none of them had their applications rejected solely on the ground that a mandatory document had not been produced. As we all know, when dealing with complicated applications, it is easy enough to omit accidentally some piece of information that is required and we would expect to be reminded of the omission rather than to be told that the service requested would not be granted to us because of the omission.

Entry clearance appeals have always been held under the law which applied when a negative decision was made by UKBA and before that by the Home Office on the application, going right back to the original immigration Act 1971. Not surprisingly, challenges to the lawfulness of this order are coming before the courts, a situation which could have been avoided if the Government had made transitional provisions for the small number of points-based system cases where the application had been refused but the appeal had not yet been started when the order came into effect. The wording of the order could simply have been amended so that it applied to appeals against decisions made on or after 23 May.

For the sake of this handful of cases, the Government are breaching a fundamental principle of law and it is the duty of Parliament to warn them of the enormity of what they are doing. We ask them to lay orders in proper time to allow Members to judge whether they are lawful and never again to scurry them in furtively over a weekend. We ask them never again to fail to make it clear in primary legislation where it is the intention to make the commencement of a section or sections retrospective. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I will not repeat the arguments that my noble friend made so powerfully. I have one point and one question for the Minister. My noble friend mentioned the validation pilot. Before hearing about that, it struck me that the problem may lie in a lack of clarity about the evidence required, and in poor initial investigation. Can the Minister say anything about that?

I will not talk about making rods for our own back, but as a country we owe it to those who are applying for visas to be as clear as possible about what is required. We have talked in many debates about immigration and the importance of warm feelings on the part of other countries towards this country—the reputational area. I will mention that in this context.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, I think the noble Lord has been in the House long enough to know that the Government do not comment on the legal advice that they receive. Certainly, in bringing this measure into being, as I have outlined, it is our understanding that, unlike other statutory instruments, commencement orders are subject to no parliamentary procedure. It would not be appropriate for me to comment on any legal advice that the Government have taken in this matter.

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, I did not expect my noble friend the Minister to be able to respond to that question from the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, knowing that there are already actions before the courts that have not yet been heard. She obviously cannot predict the result of those actions. Nevertheless, it is worth underlining that legal advisers of some applicants believe that they have a chance of success; otherwise they would not have been able to launch their actions in the courts. The precedent and the lawfulness of the order are still under review. We will not know the answer to the noble Lord’s question until those cases have been determined.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, and all others who have spoken in this debate—my noble friend Lady Hamwee, the noble Lords, Lord Judd and Lord Hylton, and particularly the right reverend Prelate, who made the extremely valid and useful point that to do justice to applicants, all the evidence must be heard. By this order, we deny that to many people who would otherwise be successful, as illustrated by the Government’s own figures, which were just cited by the noble Baroness. Sixty-three per cent of those who produce fresh evidence after being refused were successful on appeal. I understand perfectly well her point that 92 per cent of the applicants found the process easy to understand.

However, looking at this the other way round, 8 per cent had some difficulty with it. As I said, even those who are very used to filling in forms occasionally omit a document or make a mistake on the statement that would invalidate the whole application. These minor errors cannot then be taken into consideration at the appeal stage because the documents must stand on their own merits without exception. As the right reverend Prelate pointed out, this means that any applicant who is in that position will have to formulate a new application simply because he omitted a document or made a literal error on one of the forms. This seems an unnecessary burden on both the applicant and the tribunals.

I am extremely grateful to my noble friend for her comprehensive answer to all the points that were raised in the debate. She gave full value for money in her reply, and answered many of the points that we dealt with. We look forward to receiving answers in due course to those that she did not manage to squeeze into her time, particularly to the question about the number of people who were affected at the time.

Needless to say, I did not accept my noble friend’s point when she said that my suggestion would have led to further difficulties if it had made it into the transitional provisions. With respect, nor do I think that she answered adequately the question about why it was necessary to bundle this order before your Lordships with such haste over a weekend, with no adequate opportunity for either consideration by your Lordships or consultation with outside interests that might well be affected by it. I wish my noble friend had been able to give me the assurance that I asked for: that this would not happen again on future occasions, and the Government would not make retrospective orders unless doing so was given express authority in the parent Act. However, I look forward to these points being dealt with by my noble friend in the reply that she has kindly promised to give. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion withdrawn.