Immigration Bill (Thirteenth sitting)

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Keir Starmer

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Keir Starmer]

The Minister was intervening on me. I take that intervention; I have no quarrel with it in any way, shape or form. This is an important point, because there is a real fairness and justice in allowing people to work if they want to work, rather than surviving on £5 a day. Most people would agree on that. The concern expressed by the Minister is that if the period is too short, it can have adverse consequences, which is a serious point that needs to be debated.

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. and learned Friend will note the enthusiasm with which the Minister is intervening on him. Does he share my hope that the Minister might intervene to provide some more evidence regarding the pull factor? In his earlier comments, the Minister said he would outline exactly why the Government thought that was not the case, but he has conspicuously failed to do so. Now would be a good opportunity for him to do that.

[Keir Starmer]

In fairness, knowing the Minister, I think that if there was a sound evidence base, he would have referred to it already and the fact that he has not speaks volumes. There has obviously been a discussion about the migration crisis this summer and the impact—

Immigration Bill (Ninth sitting)

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Keir Starmer

Tuesday 3rd November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Keir Starmer]

I will happily do that. Sensibly, the law has been set up in such a way that the landlord gets a High Court enforcement officer with powers of a constable to carry out the eviction if necessary. That is to prevent landlords from resorting to violence in the premises—that is why that change was made. The presupposition is that the eviction is lawful, but in order to regularise the process, the landlord gets a court order and then a High Court enforcement officer exercises the powers of a constable to enforce it. The whole point was to stop families being put on the street without due process and to avoid the violence that was happening when a landlord resorts to self-help and changes the locks and boots someone on to the street. That is why “with the power of a constable” is included. That is what happens now, but what is proposed here is radically different and I have seen nothing to justify it.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I guess that, like me, my hon. and learned Friend was pleased to hear the Minister a moment ago cite the expert evidence of Crisis in support of Government amendment 69. Crisis is a highly respected organisation doing extraordinary work to help sections of homeless young people. Does he therefore hope, like me, that the Minister will take note of Crisis’s view on the eviction routes that are being created by this Bill, which is that they should be completely opposed because they will make tenants much more vulnerable to rogue landlords?

[Keir Starmer]

I am grateful for that intervention, and I ask Government Members to take notice of that evidence. I also ask them not to just nod this change through. This is not just a provision in an immigration Bill in 2015; this will turn the clock back 40 years in landlord and tenant law against a practice that everybody recognized served great injustice. That law does not mean that there cannot be an eviction; it means that there must be due process and it avoids self-help, and self-help by landlords is a very bad idea.

There is no appeal, and I would again like to hear from the Minister, on the record, whether his answer to that point is that there should be a judicial review of the issue of the notice by the Secretary of State in order to challenge the eviction. I want that to be clear, because it would introduce a costly—much more costly—prolonged process than going to the county court in the ordinary eviction process under landlord and tenant law. If not, and there is either no remedy or appeal, what if the notice by the Secretary of State is wrong? Is that to be appealed by way of judicial review? Is that the only prospect? If that is the prospect, why is it better than going to the county court in the usual way, where it could be challenged in the eviction process?

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[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. and learned friend is making the point extremely powerfully and, like him, I hope that Government Members will give consideration to it. Is he also concerned about proposed new section 33E of the 2014 Act, which allows the landlord to terminate the tenancy if one of the tenants no longer has the right to rent but others do? It provides a summary eviction route of the sort that he describes for people who actually do have the right to rent.

[Keir Starmer]

I am concerned about that provision but, in fairness to the Minister, I think there is a relationship between that and the amendment that he moved earlier this morning. I think that was the effect of the amendment he moved, so would he please clarify that—in other words, that the notice applies to all the occupants? If I am right about that, I hope it does not detract from the other points I am making. I am trying to make them powerfully because this is an important point of principle. The Committee needs to know what it is doing if it votes for such a provision, which is an historic first.

Immigration Bill (Seventh sitting)

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Keir Starmer

Thursday 29th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Keir Starmer]

I accept that proposition, but it does not take us much further. There are different forms of discrimination. Some measures are directly discriminatory, but can be justified in certain circumstances; others are not intended to be discriminatory and do not cut across other protections against discrimination, but have a discriminatory effect. Concern about that was one reason for setting up the pilot and for making an assessment of discrimination in the evaluation.

We are dancing around the issue. Everyone accepts that if the scheme has a discriminatory effect it should not be rolled out. That was part of the reason why there was an evaluation—there were others, of course. However, that is why all the evaluations of the scheme have focused on whether it has had any discriminatory effect.

[Paul Blomfield]

The Prime Minister’s observations at the Conservative party conference this year on unintentional discrimination were illuminating on the point that my hon. and learned Friend is making. The Prime Minister rightly highlighted that, although there is a range of law that seeks to prevent discrimination in employment, unintended consequences nevertheless lead to real discrimination. Is it not that lesson, which the Prime Minister was seeking to draw in the context of employment, that concerns us now in the context of letting?

[Keir Starmer]

I agree with my hon. Friend.

There have been two evaluations of the scheme, one by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and one by the Home Office.

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[Keir Starmer]

The sample was small, and the findings in that evaluation—I will move on to the Home Office evaluation in a minute—are clear: 42% of landlords said that the right to rent requirements made them less likely to consider someone who does not have a British passport. More than 25% said that they would be less likely to rent to someone with a foreign name or foreign accent, and checks were not being carried out uniformly across all tenants. Opposition was uniform, in the sense that 69% of landlords surveyed said that they did not feel that they should be required to undertake the checks, and 77% said that they were not in favour. They were the landlords surveyed in that evaluation.

Before we move on to the Home Office evaluation, as I said, Richard Lambert told us that he anticipated 1 million to 1.5 million new tenancies a year. The Home Office sample was based on 114 responses from landlords in the pilot area, which is a very small sample, given that more than 1 million new tenancies are created each year. It is a tiny sample. In addition, 67 responses came from tenants, but 60 of those 67 were students, so it is difficult to argue that it is a representative sample. That percentage does not in any way reflect a cross-section of the sorts of tenancy that will be caught by the provisions. It is predominantly student tenants.

[Paul Blomfield]

To underline that point, does my hon. Friend agree that the Home Office itself has acknowledged the inadequacy of the sample? It says in the evaluation that the survey

“should be read as primarily reflecting the views of the student community, rather than being generalisable to the wider tenant group.”

[Keir Starmer]

Yes, I do. Those are the Home Office’s words. It is all very well to pick holes in the JCWI evaluation on the basis that it is a small and unrepresentative sample, but when the Home Office itself says, “The sample that we used was not representative of the wider tenant community,” it raises the same questions in relation to the Home Office’s evaluation. [Interruption.]

Immigration Bill (Sixth sitting)

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Keir Starmer

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Keir Starmer]

I am grateful to the Minister. Of course, any measures to give people the confidence to come forward should be pursued. There would be general agreement about that—in particular, in relation to some of the offences we have been discussing. However, adding an offence when there is no evidence that it is needed simply makes a bad situation worse. If the Minister has evidence that anybody at all has ever said, “The problem here is that we haven’t got an offence for the employees”, I have not seen it and it has not been set out in any great detail.

[Paul Blomfield]

Does my hon. and learned Friend accept that the nub of the Government’s argument in relation to this offence, as we understand it, is to reduce pull factors—to create a disincentive for those coming to this country to enter into illegal work? Is he concerned, as I am, that the Government seem to have no evidence that it will work? We have heard substantial evidence that this may be counterproductive, but there is no evidence from the Government that it will work as a deterrent and undermine pull factors.

[Keir Starmer]

I agree with my hon. Friend and am grateful for his intervention. What is important is that the objective behind the Bill is properly pursued. There is a real risk that introducing an offence against the employee will be counterproductive if it drives underground the very group of people who are the most vulnerable when there is little or no evidence that the offence is needed.

I want to go a little further than that, because this is an offence without any mental element in the Bill. It is strict in the sense that absent the right status, the offence is made out, and then it is an offence without a defence, which is an unusual combination in criminal law. For example, some people will be here working in the belief that they have the right status because they are sponsored by the employer or somebody else. However, unbeknown to them, they may not have status because their employer has not correctly completed all the necessary arrangements for sponsorship. They fall into a category of individuals who are here without the required status, but without any knowledge of that or any intention to be in that position. Given the inflexibility of the offence, they would be immediately criminalised without even the opportunity of raising a defence of reasonable excuse. Their defence would be, “I am working. I had understood that my employer or somebody else had completed all the necessary forms and legalities. It now transpires they haven’t, but I had absolutely no reason to think that to be the case.” At the very least, if the clause is to stand, such an offence—there could be many other examples—ought to have a reasonable excuse defence, and that argument lies behind the amendment.

Immigration Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Keir Starmer

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Paul Blomfield]

Is my hon. and learned Friend, like me, keen for the Minister to give us a bit more clarity about what seems to be a shift in narrative towards more serious issues of exploitation, which has not been defined? Our hope is that we are seeking to enforce all standards for all workers.

[Keir Starmer]

Yes, I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution. I will come later to where the director will put his or her emphasis—on what might be called the higher end breaches, or on more routine breaches. I welcome that contribution and I ask the Minister to deal with it if he can in his comments.

Amendment 59 is intended to clarify the relationship between the director of labour market enforcement and the UK’s existing labour inspection agencies, ensuring that the current role, remit and resources of labour inspectorates are safeguarded. By way of background, I give an example, because practical realities follow from what we hope is a very good initiative. This year we saw the pay and work rights helpline merge with the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service. The pay and work rights helpline used to provide vital advice; it was a service with an annual cost of £500,000, yet, when it was merged, the money did not go with it, which has led to a strain on the service. As a result, ACAS struggles to meet extra demand with no extra resources. There is some evidence that representatives have been asked not to use it. By making explicit the resource implications in the strategy, we hope to avoid this sort of implication. Where there is a merger of various functions and enforcement without the resources, it becomes ineffective.