Immigration (Restrictions on Employment and Residential Accommodation) (Prescribed Requirements and Codes of Practice) and Licensing Act 2003 (Personal and Premises Licences) (Forms), etc., Regulations 2022

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, comprehensively set out the concerns with this statutory instrument, powerfully reinforced by my noble friends Lord Oates and Lady Ludford in particular. On a positive note, the instrument adds categories of people who can rent housing, but I am afraid that is about it.

There are two revised codes of practice: one on civil penalties and how to avoid them if you allow someone to work who is not entitled to work, for example, and another on how to avoid unlawful discrimination—for example, between British citizens and someone who is not a British citizen but is allowed to work in the UK.

The codes of practice on non-discrimination say that employers should do a right-to-work check on every applicant, British citizen or not, so as to treat everyone the same, but the checks are not the same. British and Irish citizens can produce a passport, current or expired. Would the Minister comment on whether an expired passport issued when the holder was six months old would be acceptable as a physical document for an employer? EU citizens who have applied for settled status can produce a document issued by the Home Office showing that they have applied, in which case they are entitled to work, but the employer must also have a positive verification notice from the Home Office employer checking service.

As other noble Lords have said, for foreign nationals who hold a biometric residence card, biometric residence permit or a frontier worker permit, even these documents can no longer be used as evidence on their own of their right to work without using the Home Office online system in addition. As other noble Lords have said, that will now include Ukrainian refugees. EU citizens who have settled status are even further discriminated against as they have no physical proof that they have a right to work, and the employer has to rely entirely on what is a not entirely reliable Home Office online system.

Despite the codes of practice to help employers avoid discrimination, the codes of practice on how to avoid civil or criminal penalties for employing someone not entitled to work are themselves discriminatory, in that British and Irish workers can be employed on the basis of a physical document, current or expired, but everyone else, even if they have physical proof, has to get it checked by the Home Office online system. How many employers, particularly those employing casual labour or temporary staff, will take the quick and easy route and employ a British or Irish citizen, based potentially on an expired passport, rather than a foreign worker?

As my noble friend Lord Oates said, the Windrush Lessons Learned Review emphasised the need for the Home Office to listen to the users of the system. Those who have to rely on digital-only proof of their rights have consistently said that they want physical proof. The Government have not learned the lessons of Windrush. We support this regret Motion and will support the noble Earl if he decides to divide the House.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, this is clearly an ongoing issue which the House of Commons and multiple Select Committees have raised and looked at over a number of years, as we have heard from a number of contributions. For me, it is a familiar problem. I think of the discussions and debates we had about the digitisation of the courts system, which raised many similar issues. I understand that the Government’s long-term interest is to look at a digital system and they want a digital-only system. The problems and concerns this raises are being debated today. We are also debating how the Government are responding, or not, to the concerns raised.

I echo the concern that this change is being made in a negative statutory instrument without an impact assessment—I see the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, nodding her head. Hers was the only speech that supported the Government’s position—or she said that she wanted to support the Government—so I wrote down her questions, as I think they are worth repeating. The first was the point about the impact assessment. Another was about the lack of detail on cost saving, which was a good question. What is the actual foreseen monetary cost saving through this policy? She also raised a question about the lack of consultation with the business sector on the scheme. I would be interested to hear those answers.

I anticipate that the Government will say that the scheme is no longer new or unfamiliar, as landlords and employers have had access to the online system since 2019-20. The questions are now: how is the system working? What about those people it excludes? Is it performing well enough to be rolled out to cover more people? Why can physical proof not work in tandem with the growing online system? Indeed, that seems to be the crux of the questions put to the Minister: why can we not have a physical system working in tandem with the online system?