| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
5.15 pm
Mr. Henderson: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that example, which illustrates some of the damaging effects that are taking place even before the Bill becomes law. In employment, many millions of people who should not be affected by the Bill will be caught. That is further evidence of its damaging nature.
New clause 3 requires the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament--within two years of the Act's coming into effect--the Bill's effects on employment and the
social security budget and the demands it would place on social services and housing authorities. New clause 2 requires consultation and that the results of it should be made available to hon. Members before anything happens; new clause 3 requires further investigation of those matters. Amendment No. 54 requires an impact audit.I draw the importance of that amendment to the attention of hon. Members.
The main thrust of this group of new clauses and amendments is that the Government have yet again ignored Parliament--they think that they know better,that they can pursue their own course and that the Secretary of State should have the power to draw up orders that can only be negatived by Parliament, even before Parliament is given information about how the Secretary of State reached his decision. I commend them to the House.
Mr. Alton:
In political life, we are all prone--especially in the lead-up to a general election--to making quite a lot of the motives of our opponents. Much has been said on Second Reading, in Committee and today about the possible motives behind the timing and nature of the Bill. These new clauses move us from the debate about motives to evaluation--what the impact of the Bill is likely to be. That allows us to assess it rationally to see what effects it is having and whether our worst fears are being borne out and, if so, what might be done to remove the worst effects.
The new clauses should be commended. Far too often, legislation is rushed through pell-mell, without proper consideration, and we do not consider its effect. It is almost as though, once a Bill completes its stages here, we forget about it and no longer care about it. I have thought for some time that we should, perhaps, have family impact statements, rather like environment impact statements, to assess the effect legislation has on families. They would be a useful indicator of what measures or policies did to vulnerable people.
The new clauses give us a chance to consider what the Bill would do in practice to asylum seekers and refugees. New clause 3 is interested in the effect on employment, on the social security budget and on the demand placed on local authorities, housing associations and so on.It gives us a chance to reflect on the fears that people such as the right hon. Member for City of London and Westminster, South (Mr. Brooke) have raised in relation to the effect on councils' local budgets. It gives us a chance to see whether the Government have made adequate resources available to compensate for themoney that they are boasting they will save--up to£200 million--in the social security budget.
If savings are being made by central Government, we would expect some of them to be made available to local authorities. Unless there is some form of assessment, we shall never know whether that has been done.
This is an age in which we are constantly assessing everybody. The Government are always encouraging us to assess the performance of local authorities, schools and individual pupils, and we are constantly being given league tables. It is therefore not unreasonable for hon. Members to suggest that the same principle might also be applied to the Government's legislation: we should assess its effect.
The two new clauses deal with clauses 8 and 9 and are extremely helpful in pinpointing two of the Bill's most damaging features. The first is the effect on good race
relations; the second involves the onerous burden that the Bill will place on employers and local authorities.The new clauses aim to monitor those who will suffer disadvantageous effects and to build in a mechanism to assess the impact and damage of the worst effects.
The Opposition have been accused of exaggerating the worst effects of the Bill. Throughout the Committee stage, the Minister said that hon. Members were exaggerating. Perhaps she will listen to someone such as Adair Turner of the Confederation of British Industry, who said:
I was staggered to see in the briefing provided by the Trades Union Congress and the CBI that 42 different documents at one time or another may have to be validated by an employer.
Mr. Alton:
Yes--42 different documents may have to be validated by an employer at one time or another.The documents range across a spectrum of subjects. I see that the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson) has the list in his hand.
Miss Widdecombe:
Surely the hon. Gentleman understands that the employer does not have to validate 42 documents each time. We are trying to make it easy for the employer by giving him a range of documents to which he can refer--the greater the choice, the easier it is.
Mr. Alton:
I know that the hon. Lady argues for choice, but we are talking about 42 separate and different documents, any one of which could come before a perplexed employer at any time. Over the years, if people arrive from different parts of the world, an employer may have to deal with any one of those 42 documents--that is clearly what the effect will be.
The provision is in line with the Government's approach. They do not merely try to turn airline stewards into quasi-immigration officials, but try to turn employers into part-time immigration officials. The effect of the Bill would be to corral employers and personnel officers into the same service as that which airline companies were pushed into four years ago.
The Bill will not just involve additional burdens; it will dramatically and radically alter for the worst the relationship between employers and employees. Those damaging effects were underlined in a joint letter toThe Times signed by John Monks of the TUC,Ron Taylor, CBE, of the Association of British Chambers of Commerce, Jacqueline Jeynes of the Federation of Small Businesses, Tim Melville-Ross of the Institute of Directors, Roger Young of the Institute of Management and Geoff Armstrong of the Institute of Personnel and Development. Presumably not even the Minister would suggest that those people are all card-carrying members of the Labour party or Liberal Democrats. They said:
The new clauses are designed to address those concerns and to assess the impact that the new law would have.
The Bill also contrasts with the Government's much-vaunted concern about red tape and bureaucracy and the removal of unnecessary burdens on employers. It contrasts the manifesto promises and claims that are constantly made with the reality of what is likely to happen when Parliament passes the Bill, the latest piece of burdensome legislation.
Miss Widdecombe:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his generosity in giving way again. He is pouring scorn on our proposals. What proposal does he have for stopping illegal employment?
Mr. Alton:
The hon. Lady knows that I am opposed to the breaking of the law. There are already laws that provide safeguards: where abuses occur, it is possible to take the matter to court. It is also possible--the hon. Lady knows this as she does it all the time--to remove people from this country if they break our existing laws. Had the CBI, the chambers of commerce, and employers exerted pressure and said that the law was being broken all the time or if the TUC had exerted pressure and said that British workers were being denied many employment opportunities owing to the large number of abuses,I might well have been convinced of the need for reform, but the hon. Lady knows as well as I do that no such representations were forthcoming.
Miss Widdecombe:
The hon. Gentleman is right:we can remove people who are working illegally. What remedies exist in current law--without the proposal--to prosecute employers who employ illegally? Does the hon. Gentleman want employers to be able to go on doing that?
Mr. Alton:
I do not particularly want employers to be taken to court by the Minister's Department, or punitive sentences to be placed on them, or to see their businesses crippled and them broken as a result. I do not think that such a system would help the cause of the unemployed or businesses. I do not think that there is a problem of the magnitude that the hon. Lady tries to imply. Action can be, and sometimes is, taken against the illegal employee, and the hon. Lady knows that as well as I do. The Government are making a legislative mountain out of a molehill. The Bill will have disastrous consequences,not just for employers, but for good race relations.
The Association of British Chambers of Commerce was in no doubt about the Bill's deleterious effect, and the damage that it would cause, when it said:
Those are the consequences which, we are being told--with our eyes wide open--we shall face if we pass the Bill.
"The proposed legislation will do nothing to improve equal opportunities and may undermine employers' commitment to implement equal opportunities policies."
"As well as placing an unjustifiable burden on employers,the proposal threatens to damage race relations. There would be every incentive not to hire black staff or people with foreign sounding names; and to concentrate checks on ethnic minority employees."
21 Feb 1996 : Column 396
"We are concerned that this could manifest itself into racial discrimination. In a situation where there are two similarly qualified potential employees, employers may be biased towards selecting the person with a P45 and an NI number. Even firms with a racial equality policy may select someone with a P45 and an NI number to ensure they cannot possibly face a fine."
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |