Immigration Bill

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, when we debate Bills in Committee and on Report, we are liable to be accused of making Second Reading speeches. Now that this is Second Reading, perhaps I will be forgiven for making one. I will look at the wider issues of immigration that are of course referred to in this Bill, which addresses some of the problems.

I support my noble friend the Minister’s view that we have benefited enormously from immigration into this country in the past and that we welcome immigrants to this country. However, it is a question of numbers. We cannot get away from numbers. The noble Baroness, Lady Afshar, just said that we have already made a modest 1% contribution to the refugee crisis taking place. To put that in context, that small number of Syrian refugees we are taking in is in addition to the 330,000 immigrants who came legally into this country in the last year. That contrasts rather forcibly with the undertakings that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister made that immigration should be limited to 100,000 a year—or to tens of thousands. Despite the number of times that that commitment has been made, we seem never to have met the 100,000 target. That is a problem.

We now face an immigration crisis across Europe of proportions never seen before. These are very large numbers of people indeed. The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, referred to Germany as being the conscience of Europe. Angela Merkel may well have been moved with compassion when she said that Germany would take 900,000 Syrian refugees, but I suspect she has regretted that remark ever since. She created enormous problems within her own party. Indeed, I would have thought that that remark was extremely ill-advised if she did not want to see the renaissance of extreme right-wing parties in Germany in future.

My noble friend Lord Horam referred to my right honourable friend the Home Secretary’s remarks at the Tory Party conference. The problem is that, if immigration is in too large numbers, it creates very serious stresses in the home nation. This is something we cannot overlook. At the moment we suffer from a major crisis in housing—in particular, in affordable housing. We are not building enough. This is a problem we have with our existing population. If we take in very large numbers of immigrants, they are almost invariably in greater need of affordable housing than the resident population in this country. That creates enormous resentment. This may well be one reason why UKIP has had a certain amount of electoral success in areas traditionally regarded as bastions of the Labour Party. We cannot overlook this, as my noble friend Lord Horam said. Immigration is a very high priority in the views of the people of this country. We cannot take unlimited numbers of people. I come back to what I said originally: it is a question of numbers.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I apologise for interrupting the noble Lord in a Second Reading speech. I entirely agree with him that we have a housing shortage. Might he possibly address the question of how we will overcome that shortage when we have such a remarkable lack of skilled labour to build houses within this country? Is there not a real problem that a major housebuilding programme now would draw in a very large number of people from abroad to build those houses?

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, knows very well that it is a question not only of the shortage of skilled bricklayers and people who can build houses, but also of the enormous shortage of land on which you can build. This is all to do with our planning laws and is a much more complicated issue than just a question of the shortage of people.

If we control immigration and have a system of allowing in the people with the skills we need, I do not have any problem with that. The problem is if we allow very large numbers of people in who do not have those skills. That is a totally different issue. It is what puts enormous pressure on all our services at the moment. It is not only housing, which is the most obvious issue. The National Health Service seems to be creaking under the demands pressed on it at the moment. Our infrastructure and education are also under great pressure. With all these things, if you have enormous numbers of immigrants coming in, the pressure on public services inevitably grows and that creates resentment and difficulty.

With the EU referendum coming up, I refer to the question of European immigration. As we know, EU citizens are allowed into this country. We apparently do some survey to find out how many there are of them. The figures for last year were 330,000. That is net immigration, netted off against those going out. It is reckoned that about half that number are EU citizens—some 150,000. At the same time, some reports came out recently about 2 million EU citizens applying for national insurance numbers over a period of four years. That is an average of half a million per year. I know we are not comparing like with like here, but it seems that you must do something to reconcile these two numbers. You have half a million EU citizens applying for national insurance while, in theory because of the surveys we do, we had only 150,000 come into this country last year. I believe the number may be even bigger this year. When my noble friend comes to sum up, I would be grateful if he could confirm that 2 million EU citizens applied for national insurance numbers over the past four years. How does he reconcile that with the number of EU migrants that are supposed to have come to live here? We need statistics.

I also support the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, in saying that we need to know what the Government estimate to be the number of illegal immigrants in this country. If we do not have that number, it is extremely difficult to assess whether this Bill has been a success or failure in reducing that number.

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[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I should begin by declaring an interest as the son of an immigrant—admittedly one who came here during the Second World War and, as such, was quite welcome because he immediately joined the right side, as they say. The Bill is the result of a manifesto commitment; there is no doubt about that. There is no surprise. The Government won an election with the main provisions of the Bill clearly in the manifesto. It has been an interesting debate, but the contents of the Bill are not extraordinarily right-wing compared with the public opinion that is to be found in many areas of this country.

I have listened with great interest to the debate. Having heard the speeches from the Liberal Benches, I now understand why there are only eight Liberal Democrat Members in the House of Commons because they are totally out of touch with the feelings in the country. My good friend the noble Lord, Lord Ahmed, somewhat overegged the pudding. Lots of representations will come forward on the Bill. Our job is to make it workable, but we cannot gainsay the thrust of the Bill. Indeed, had there been a different result in the election in the summer, the Labour Party would also have been looking at bringing forward some legislation because some points covered in the Bill need covering. Indeed, the Labour Party has agreed with a number of the points in the Bill.

I saw on the lunchtime news that the number of illegal immigrants coming into the European Union has now exceeded 1 million this year. Of course, very few of them come to Britain. Many of them have gone to Germany and a good proportion to Sweden, but that could well not be the end of the story. As some noble Lords know, I hold a different view on Syria from many of them. If Assad is toppled and his defence of the minority communities ends, we will see a refugee tide that we will feel obliged to help. We will see a very large refugee tide sweeping into Europe. I have said this before, but we should be careful what we wish for there.

I also briefly mention the economic consequences of migration. I was recently in Frankfurt talking to an economist at the ECB. He made an interesting point that the cost of migration in Germany this year will be about 0.5% of GDP. Germany estimates that in five years’ time, the cost will be zero and in 10 years’ time the migrant community will contribute positively to German GDP. We must get away from the image that all migrants are necessarily bad. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Horam mentioned the conflict between the migrants who work in our hospitals, who are welcomed into our country, and others who somehow are not seen as being quite as good or quite as welcome.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

Does my noble friend’s German economist welcome the idea of the million refugees coming into Germany in one year?

[Lord Balfe]

The discussion was largely technical, but the interesting point that he did make was that the German Finance Minister, Minister Schäuble, has been remarkably quiet on this issue, even though he comes from the CSU, which is well-known to be to the right of the German political scene.

There is a huge difference in the way that Europe is now organised. Once the Berlin Wall came down and the European Union expanded, it was quite clear that the pull of the English language would make a huge difference to the structure of Europe. That is what has happened. Anyone who speaks a few words of a foreign language is likely to be speaking English.

We have three groups of migrants in this country: the completely legal ones who move around Europe, the welcome ones who come to man the hospitals and so on, and a fairly small group who come in illegally. Clearly, the illegal migrants cannot be given a free ride, but it is important to keep them in perspective. We must also recognise that most of them come here to work: they do not come here to live on benefits. That is not surprising when you look at the level of benefits that they get.

Having made a few general points, I have a couple of questions for the Minister about the excellent briefing that he sent on the Immigration Bill, particularly on the labour market enforcement section. I welcome the creation of a Director of Labour Market Enforcement, but I see in the background that the Minister says:

“There are three main public bodies responsible for enforcing these requirements: a team in HMRC which enforces the National Minimum Wage; the Gangmasters … and the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate (‘the enforcement bodies’)”.

He goes on to say that,

“this Bill will create a new Director of Labour Market Enforcement … Their primary functions will include: setting the strategic direction and budgets of the enforcement bodies”.

Am I to understand that the budget and the direction of HMRC with relation to the national minimum wage will come under this group? If so, what will be the reference and the connection to the Low Pay Commission and its work? I see that the director will also look at bodies that employ illegal migrants. I suspect that many such bodies also employ legal migrants. Where will the mix end? At what point will the Director of Labour Market Enforcement be told, “This is off-limits: there is only one there”, or will they have powers to enforce. In particular, will they have powers to enter premises in the same way, for instance, as a tax inspector can?

Moving on, I am not trying to be awkward, although I probably am. The 48-hour close-down seems remarkably short. A business closed down on Friday could open again on Monday morning. What is the thinking behind that?

Finally, the Bill in its enforcement relies on immigration officers and many other public servants. They feel a little persecuted by the Government so I hope the Minister will take the opportunity to say how much he values the work of public service officers and indicate that he will consult and work with the TUC, which has a very good record of trying to help migrants through programmes such as Unionlearn and the like. Many migrants who come to this country stay in this country and they need help in integrating. I believe that they, like many others, will make a great and positive contribution to the wealth and well-being of this country.

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[Lord Bates]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who participated in this debate. It has been a passionate debate, enhanced by the level of first-hand experience and knowledge that noble Lords have in dealing with these very difficult issues.

I will start with an issue that came up quite a few times. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and a number of other noble Lords mentioned the process by which we have got here, so I will deal with that before I go on to policy. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark also touched on this. The question was asked: on what basis of evidence are we acting here? What is the basis on which we are legislating? Of course, we have the evidence from the Immigration Act 2014, which the coalition Government took through the House. A lot of the proposals in this Immigration Bill are an extension of areas covered in that Act. We have had the opportunity to see how that has worked in practice over the past couple of years.

We have also, in the process of putting this together, outlined in the briefing pack the draft codes of practice. We have issued the Bill’s European Convention on Human Rights and Delegated Powers memoranda, along with policy equality statements. We talked technically about pre-legislative scrutiny, and there were two days of evidence-gathering in the other place before Committee formally started. Some 48 representations were made to the Public Bill Committee on the legislation in another place, which were taken into account during Committee, which lasted for five and a half days. There were some 35 Divisions. I am not saying that it is always a contentious issue or that we anticipate that it will be, but there was a level of rigour in the scrutiny in the other place that should give us some confidence as we approach this.

We have also seen, in the time since we started the process, the Court of Appeal’s ruling on out-of-country appeals, and the Government’s evaluation of the right to rent scheme, which was published in October—I thank the noble Lord, Lord Best, for contributing to this. The Ewins report on domestic workers, which I know the noble Lords, Lord Hylton and Lord Alton, will want to discuss further, was published just before Christmas. The report of the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration on illegal working and immigration removals has just been published. The Shaw report on immigration and detention, which I know is of significant concern, will be published in early January—certainly by the time we reach Committee.

There will also be a Migration Advisory Committee report on the operation of tier 2, in addition to the Home Affairs Select Committee report. Extensive consultations have taken place, including the government consultation on tackling exploitation in the labour market, which we have yet to respond to but which is there in the briefing pack. The Government’s response to the consultation on reforming support for failed asylum seekers and other illegal migrants is another basis for our legislation. There is also the government consultation on draft language requirements for the public sector workers’ code of practice. On the specific point about signing, there is no question that signing would not be covered under this but there is a consultation on that. I go to that length to show that process is very important. It was important, too, for the Modern Slavery Act. I want to put on record that there has been a significant amount of evidence gathering to build the case for the actions we propose here.

Turning to the policy, one thing we tend to be in general agreement about is that there is an issue with illegal immigration into the country. Lots of noble Lords prefaced their remarks by recognising that. Indeed, my noble friends Lord Horam, Lord Sherbourne, Lord Hamilton and Lord Balfe, and the noble Lord, Lord Green, all pointed to the fact that this was an issue of significant public concern. Certainly, my noble friends Lord Horam, Lord Balfe and Lord Hamilton also mentioned that this was something central to the Conservative Party manifesto—and the government manifesto, in that we announced our intention to legislate on it in the Queen’s Speech. In fact, a number of the areas we are dealing with in this Immigration Bill were also subjects in the Labour and Liberal Democrat manifestos. There is an agreement at a high level that there is a problem.

We have categories of people here. We have people who come here through the right of free movement in the European Union. We have issues with that which are being taken on and discussed with our European colleagues at present. We also have the plight of many people suffering around the world. I was very moved by the words of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and others who spoke of the plight of those refugees. None of us, at this time in particular when we remember another refugee in a foreign land fleeing persecution, should be immune to acknowledging the tremendous pain and anguish that many people face in these countries. The noble Earl said “there but for the grace of God go I”, and that should challenge us with a sense of humility but also the deep desire to ensure that we treat people with the dignity and humanity that my noble friend Lord Sherbourne invited us to put on the record. People who come to this country in search of help enter our asylum system. All Governments —coalition and Labour—have a proud track record of offering sanctuary to those people fleeing in fear of persecution.

Then there are those people who circumvent the immigration procedures and are found not to be genuine asylum seekers when their claim is tested through the appeals process and tribunal service. The question then is: what do we do? Therein comes a debate. I am very conscious of the hour and the fact that officials have been very busy in providing answers to 64 questions. It may be better if I put some of the substantive answers to those questions in writing to colleagues, ensuring that they have them before the beginning of our first week back on 11 January. All the answers are here. Of course, 11 January is also the date when the Government must table the amendments they intend to bring forward for consideration on 18 January.

I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for mentioning the timing. We listened very carefully, as we always do, when we attended the Cross-Bench Peers to talk about this issue; there was concern, and we have reacted to that. My noble friend Lord Taylor has responded to that from the Government Whips’ Office and has been able to secure for us additional time, which I think will be appreciated by all, so that people can reflect upon this Second Reading debate as well.

I shall deal with some of the particular points that were raised. The noble Lords, Lord Rosser and Lord Alton, asked about the impact of the Bill. We have published six separate financial impact assessments on various parts of the Bill, as well as a range of equality assessments. The recent report by the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration commented on the Government’s success in our aim of year-on-year increases in confirmed voluntary departures every year since 2012-13.

On border security, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, asked a specific question about private helipads. The Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 included stronger legislative provisions and protection for notification in advance of people arriving on private airstrips, and we would certainly expect an equality of scrutiny for all people coming into this country.

The issue of appeals was raised by the noble Lords, Lord Dubs and Lord Roberts, the noble Baronesses, Lady Ludford, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws and Lady Lister, among others. Appealing from outside the UK does not mean that appeals are less likely to succeed. Internal Home Office statistics for the past five years to July 2015 show that 38% of entry clearance appeals succeeded. Some 42% of appeals succeeded in 2015 in the comparable in-country category of managed migration appeals. Both these categories of appeal could involve human rights claims.

On the point about family reunion, which was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lords, Lord Hylton and Lord Dubs, we recognise that families may become fragmented because of the nature of conflict and persecution, and the speed and manner in which those seeking asylum often flee their country of origin. Our policy allows the immediate family members of a person granted refugee leave or humanitarian protection in the UK, their spouse or partner and children under the age of 18 who formed part of the family unit before the sponsor fled the country, to reunite with them. We have granted over 21,000 family reunion visas over the past five years, 2010-14. Numbers are likely to increase over the next five years in line with the number of applications that are received.

With regard to the points raised about landlords by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, the noble Baronesses, Lady Kennedy, Lady Lister, Lady Sheehan and Lady Janke, I have acknowledged the work done by the noble Lord, Lord Best. The Government gave careful consideration to concerns about potential race discrimination when establishing the right to rent scheme. These concerns are understandable, and the right to rent checks were carefully crafted in consultation with bodies representing landlords, agents, local authorities and housing charities before the scheme was rolled out. A wide range of documents can be provided to give evidence of the right to rent. The Government recognise the need to be flexible so as not to disadvantage, for example, the minority of British citizens who do not hold a passport.

On detention, I have given an undertaking that Stephen Shaw’s review, which I know is eagerly awaited, will be published before we reach the relevant stage in Committee, while our response will be published before the clause on immigration bail is debated. While there is no fixed time limit to immigration detention—in fact, that is a matter that was discussed in previous legislation—there are well-established principles set out in case law, known as the Hardial Singh principles, which state that for detention under immigration powers to be lawful there must be,

“a realistic prospect of removal within a reasonable timescale … Detention must be used sparingly, and for the shortest period necessary”.

An arbitrary time limit would potentially allow criminals and non-compliant individuals to play the system, as it were, which was a point raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood.

At that point, I shall draw my remarks to a conclusion.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

I know that everybody wants to get off for Christmas, but I would be very grateful if the Minister would write to me on EU citizens claiming national insurance and how that relates to net immigration figures.