Immigration Bill (Second sitting)

Mims Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q 90 Would the CBI be willing to keep an eye on that? In my constituency, I have already had people coming to me who have been offered jobs and then the employers—and it is large employers—have backed off, saying that they want actual evidence; phoning the hotline is not evidence for them. I wonder whether the reason why I am getting quite a few people coming to me now is that they know that the legislation is going to change; it would be interesting to see if there was an effect once this came in.

Neil Carberry: I think the necessity of assurance for companies in hiring migrants becomes greater as the cost of getting it wrong becomes greater. I have been working on employment relations issues for the CBI for over a decade now, and the process is that every year it becomes more costly to hire migrants and more risky for companies. Particularly for some smaller and medium-sized companies, there is a concern there, and support structures for businesses are quite important.

[Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)]

Q 91 I would like to ask about the role of the director, in terms of vulnerable workers, and more broadly whether that role could help the Government’s agenda of redressing the balance on equality issues and addressing the gender pay gap, so as to shine a broader light on these employment issues.

Neil Carberry: I refer to my earlier answer. It is really important that we keep the exploitation agenda—there is deeply unsavoury activity taking place in parts of the labour market—separate from the civil employment law agenda. If you look at the gender pay gap, Ruby McGregor-Smith’s Women’s Business Council report concluded that it is a multi-faceted issue that requires a series of actions, primarily from business but also from the education system, to address. We would be more comfortable continuing to do that work in partnership with the Government Equalities Office, Ministers and the new Select Committee on Women and Equalities, than getting too drawn into a debate, as we have already discussed, about beds and sheds and some pretty exploitative practice.

[Mims Davies]

Q 92 So you see them as clearly separate issues.

Neil Carberry: Where I would say there is some equalities benefit is that it is certainly true that minority ethnic workers and many women are more at risk of the kind of treatment that we are discussing.

[Mims Davies]

Q 93 That is my feeling, and I am on the Women and Equalities Committee, hence why I asked that question. I hear what you say, but it worries me if we completely disconnect the two.

Neil Carberry: No, this action clearly has equalities benefits.

[Mims Davies]

Q 94 Fantastic. Are you also able to expand on the CBI’s concerns about the apprenticeships levy? It is obviously the Government’s ambition to see apprenticeships grow. Will the levy affect your members, or the immigration skills charge? What is the impact that you see on businesses?

Neil Carberry: Apprenticeship levies are quite complex at the moment because there are two of them. They have become known in the CBI’s employment team as the big levy and the little levy. There is the large apprenticeship funding model levy, which is a deep concern for the CBI.

On the question of the skills charge, although we do not welcome additional costs, we fundamentally disagree with the idea that immigration is used to resolve skills issues and to avoid training, because companies in the UK do extensive amounts of training—more than many other large western European competitors in terms of spending.

Having said that, if there is to be a skills charge, we need to make sure that it is effectively targeted, so that the money raised does go into apprenticeships that are training people towards the levels of skills that people who came in on a visa were helping to resolve the shortage of. More broadly, it is probably preferable to us that these charges exist than that we make changes to the pay bands for tier 2 migration. Additional cost for a visa is one thing, but being unable to get a person you need at any given point because of changes to the pay bands is more of a business problem. For us, in the grand scheme of things, although we do not like it, we would rather have an immigration skills charge than a much higher entry level of pay to bring people in.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

Q 95 In trying to target action against criminals who exploit workers, which is something we can all agree on, do you think the Bill blurs the lines between employment law and criminal activity?

Neil Carberry: I think that is a significant risk, less so around the role of the director than the recent discussion about expanding the role of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. The role of the GLA so far has largely been an employment process. Since its creation the GLA has spent rather more time telling my members where the commas should be in employment contracts, which is an employment issue, than kicking down doors in parts of the country where doors need to be kicked down.

My sense is that we need to maintain that gap, for exactly the reasons that your colleague raised earlier, which are that employment law is a civil issue; most of its infraction is inadvertent or due to lack of knowledge, so it is really important that people are able to address that—there are routes for people to address that—and it is about the bit of the labour market where workers are not able to secure their rights, which should be at issue in the Bill. The CBI’s test for this Bill, in practice, when it finishes its passage, is to make sure that the actions contained within it are about addressing those issues of exploitation.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We are just over halfway.

[Mims Davies]

Q 111 I want to pick up on something that was raised this morning by the Refugee Council and Still Human Still Here. They were inferring that the reform of the support will affect asylum seekers, leaving children destitute and obviously affecting social services and local authorities. I wondered whether you had an understanding of the level of numbers that may be affected by that, and therefore the impact that could be anticipated, or whether that is in essence scaremongering?

Lord Green of Deddington: In terms of numbers, offhand I do not know. I would make a distinction between families where there are children present, which would surely affect the way in which they were handled, and those where there are no children. Where there are no children, when people come to the end of their process, they should go—end of story. We certainly should not have the taxpayer paying for them.

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

Q 112 Back to that point, there are two questions relating to what we were told early this morning by witnesses. On that point—namely, we were told that with a lack of resources, when people have finally lost their appeal, that would drive them further underground and they would cease to engage; it would not work and we would find that less people were leaving—can you comment on whether that is a fair assessment? Will that measure and the other measures in this Bill make it more likely that people go underground and less likely that they are going to come forward and engage, as we are told the term is, and come to the conclusion that they need to go of their own accord?

Lord Green of Deddington: Of course, it would depend very much on the individual cases. The overall statistics are very clear. First, of those who have applied for asylum—this is the average over the last 10 years, just to give you the broad scope—50% only did so when they were discovered. Secondly, when those cases were heard, 50% were granted. So the other 50% were refused, and of those only half were removed. So if you set foot in this country, as people are doing every day from Calais, and you say the word “asylum” you have a 75% chance of staying here. Of course, they know that—they have relatives, they have friends, they have mobile phones, most of them. If you are going to weight the system, which is the only thing you could do by legislation, then you have to weight it against bogus asylum seekers. That is my bottom line.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Champion]

Q 151 Unfortunately, I have areas like that with private landlords, and those properties tends to be occupied by migrant workers but also trafficked people coming over. What could be in this Bill that is not there already to target those bad landlords?

Stephen Gabriel: From my perspective, it is about what we do on the ground operationally and how we work with our enforcement colleagues. We have now opened up the channels of communication with the Home Office and the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. We have undertaken one joint enforcement activity in Sandwell, and other enforcement activities are coming through now. I am also aware that across the other authorities affected by the pilot, the increase in that relationship in sharing information, sharing data and going out on joint enforcement visits has really raised the profile of the work that we are doing among landlords.

Another thing is how we raise the profile among tenants. One of the things that we have done in the region is recently to launch a mobile app, which is called “Check Before You Rent”. One of the questions in the app is: is your landlord accredited, and have they asked you for any information about the immigration checks?

[Mims Davies]

Q 152 I must declare an interest in the road safety aspect, because that is an area I have worked in previously. Chief Superintendent Snelling, in terms of people killed or seriously injured, have you identified communities where there is a difference in the culture regarding drink or drug-driving? Have the police identified that as a concern?

Chief Superintendent David Snelling: In wider issues such as drink and domestic abuse and domestic violence, we have identified some communities that are more prone to that. That would be the remit of a local police chief superintendent. I am Sutton borough commander, so I have a good idea of the make-up of my communities within the area that I police. Were there to be specific community concerns or tensions, we would seek to look into it either through education or through enforcement.

On the road safety side, in Sutton we are working closely with Transport for London to raise awareness of safety among schoolchildren. For the wider population, we would hope that the provisions of the Bill would be widely publicised. As I have highlighted with the scenario for stopping, we have run certain operations nationally with the immigration service and we have worked with them to target areas of concern. They, like us, would be feeding into their community representatives to ensure that they would have an understanding of why we have exercised those powers.

[Mims Davies]

Q 153 Have you identified a spike in certain areas where people have been killed or seriously injured by people who do not have the right documentation or perhaps the right driving licence or insurance?

Chief Superintendent David Snelling: The short answer is no. We would tend to look locally at some of the problems. For example, in London I am aware that there has been a recent slight rise in the number of failed to stop collisions. We tend to think the reason for that is because people did not have the appropriate driving licence or insurance, which is why they would not stop. Again, some of our work would be reactive and some would be proactive.

[Mims Davies]

Q 154 Finally, in terms of people identified and the information that you highlight, is this a timely piece of legislation?

Chief Superintendent David Snelling: I think there is an area, yes, that we could address—some areas that would tighten up some of the current provisions. Although the police have not asked for the authority, working with the Home Office I can see where that could assist us.

[The Chair]

We are just over halfway through this session. A brief supplementary from Keir, and then I will come to Byron.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Q 190 We have three minutes. I will take the three questions and we will see how we get on with the replies.

[Mims Davies]

The issue that you see is the decision-making process and resources in terms of impact on potentially destitute families. I am really keen to know what level of families we are talking about. Are they clustered in certain areas? How much will that be a resource issue on other children in communities, where people are then putting pressure on those local resources because of these impacts?

[The Chair]

We will just take Sarah and Kelly, and then we will try to get some responses in two minutes, I am afraid.