House of Commons Hansard Debates for 11 Dec 1995 (pt 21)

Mr. Bernie Grant rose--

Mr. Wardle: I shall not give way although the temptation to do so is considerable. I sometimes miss the energetic exchanges that I had with the hon. Gentleman in Committee and on the Floor of the House, but, for the moment, discretion must be the better part of valour.

I was referring to racketeers, the shadowy gang bosses who manipulate and mistreat hapless would-be immigrants. Frequently, these racketeers fleece a whole village community in some far-flung country. The community subscribes to the plane ticket and protection fee for one would-be entrant. They put the new arrival to anonymous sweated labour here and collect his social security benefits. That is not acceptable, and we should do something about it. Indeed, the Bill deals with that problem.

The tightening of housing benefit and social security rules in clauses 9 and 10 is long overdue, but I suspect that town halls and Benefits Agency offices will need a great deal of encouragement to make the new provision work. It will be easier said than done but these changes are nevertheless urgently needed.

I am less confident about clause 8. The principle is fine, but, in practice, I suspect that we shall face problems. Clause 8 places a new responsibility on employers not to hire people who have no entitlement to work in this country. That is fair provided that the Government make available to employers a foolproof and unbureaucratic method of identifying those with a right to work.

Frankly, the Home Secretary has yet to convince me that the use of national insurance numbers for that purpose will do the trick for stronger immigration control. I suspect that it is likely to lead to endless legal wrangles and charges of prejudice in employment, some of which will be borne out unless a better system is put in place. I fear that employers will regard it--there is already some evidence to this effect--as a complete reversal of the Government's deregulation mode. Clause 8 will be in danger of having as little effect as the existing, long-standing but little used penalty for harbouring an illegal immigrant. While the idea behind clause 8 is a thoroughly good one, I believe that it will have real force only if it is accompanied by the use of identity cards. That is the way to tackle that important problem.

Employers and the electorate as a whole will also want to see that the Government are playing their part in immigration control by making sure that Britain's perimeter fence--our border controls--is secure. That is relevant to every piece of immigration legislation. The European Commission must not be allowed to have its way and dismantle our borders with the rest of the European Union.

While the Prime Minister's recent very public pledge that our frontier checks are not negotiable is most welcome, it does not sit easily with his repeated claim, or

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that of the Home Secretary, that the general declaration concocted by Margaret Thatcher at the 1985 Luxembourg intergovernmental conference will somehow protect the United Kingdom from the unequivocal objective of article 7A of the treaty with all that that implies for immigration in this country. It will do nothing of the kind, as Baroness Thatcher has now admitted. My right hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Mr. Baker), who was Home Secretary during the Maastricht negotiations, has also admitted as much. I believe that the House was effectively misled in that regard when it ratified the legislation leading to a single market.

Officials and legal advisers have been consistent in their warnings that Britain is on a collision course with Europe over frontiers and that the British public will not tolerate that. Still the Government appear to waver, presumably hoping that the problem will not surface until the next Parliament, instead of tackling it, as they should, on the next IGC agenda.

In the words of two recently retired grade 2 Home Office officials,

"The inevitable collision with Europe over frontiers"

will undermine the provisions of the Bill and all existing immigration law. It will mean a major redeployment of the immigration service and it will impose new burdens on the police which have not even been planned. To avoid that catastrophe and to make sense of the Bill, the Government must make clear their determination to amend EU law.

Several hon. Members rose--

Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): Before I call the next hon. Member to speak, I remind the House of Madam Speaker's ruling that there is to be a 10-minute limit on speeches between 7 pm and 9 pm.

6.58 pm

Mr. Max Madden (Bradford, West): While listening to the debate, I have had two overwhelming feelings. The first is that I have been here before and the second is that the general election cannot be very far away. In fact, we have been here seven times before because, since 1979, this Conservative Administration have introduced seven Bills relating to immigration, asylum and nationality. Coincidentally, the most recent two were introduced before the 1987 and 1992 general elections. Not only were those Acts viewed by many as wholly unnecessary-- indeed, they still are viewed as such--but the Government bolted on to them some measures that became extremely unpopular and unworkable. Bolted on to the previous Bill concerning asylum was the abolition of appeal rights for those refused a visitor's visa, which, as many hon. Members know, has resulted in widespread disappointment and misery for many people who have been denied opportunities to visit this country.

Recently, a Foreign Office Minister and officials at the Department admitted to me that processing the 7,000 representations made every year by Members on behalf of people who had been denied visit visas costs more than the right of appeal used to cost.

Bolted on to this Bill is a scheme to penalise employers who are found to be employing illegal entrants, and other measures that will cause extreme difficulty, especially the denial of child benefit to many who have been settled here

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for many years. That includes overseas students who are the parents of children and have previously been entitled to child benefit.

Mr. Stephen: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Madden: No, I shall be making a very short speech and I wish to make some further remarks.

The House must also realise the extraordinary difficulty that will be caused to thousands of asylum seekers, as well as thousands of children belonging to those asylum seekers, by the denial of benefit in the period between the refusal to grant asylum and the outcome of an appeal. That delay can now take up to two years. Is this House seriously asking the country to accept that thousands upon thousands of families will have no income at all for a period of up to two years?

We must question the necessity for the Bill. It is widely seen outside the House as extremely bad. The Immigration Law Practitioners Association says:

"Even on a cursory reading this bill is poorly drafted, ambiguous, uncertain in its ambit and draconian in scope. It is likely to result in extensive and costly litigation. A number of its provisions will be unworkable in practice and expensive to administer."

I was very pleased to hear the remarks of the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Mr. Wardle)--the previous Minister but three responsible for immigration. Most of us would regard his speech as not exactly that of a full-hearted supporter of the Bill. Indeed, I was interested to note that, as recently as March, the hon. Gentleman said:

"It is important to ensure that the Asylum Act of 1993, which has only been in place two years, works before we rush through a future piece of legislation."

He has said much the same today. He pointed to what needs to be done. We do not need more legislation, we need sufficient resources to ensure that those who are seeking asylum are dealt with efficiently, promptly, expeditiously and according to natural laws of justice. That can be done by administrative action. It does not need further legislation.