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Miss Ann Widdecombe (Maidstone and The Weald): I do not intend to speak for long on the new clause, because I do not believe that it is very sensible. However, I am intrigued, because, in opposition, Labour Members promised not to implement that portion of the 1996 Act. Indeed, they inveighed heavily against it, as I well remember, because I was charged with piloting the legislation through Committee. At that time, Opposition spokesmen claimed that the proposal was iniquitous and that it would place considerable burdens on business. They did not seem much concerned about other burdens that they wanted to impose on business, and indeed have imposed, such as the minimum wage and the working time directive. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who was then Opposition spokesman on small businesses, wrote to The Daily Telegraph--she has good reading--saying that the Act would be an imposition on small firms and that it gave them a raw deal. Are the Government now planning to give such firms a raw deal? In that letter, the hon. Lady calculated that the Act would cost small firms £12 million in the first year alone. Are the Government now saying that that is acceptable, which they denied in opposition, or do they have some plans that we do not know about to give financial relief to small firms? It was not only before the general election that the Government opposed the measure as an unnecessary burden on business and a deterrent to employing people from ethnic minorities. Since the election, the Government have several times promised that they would not implement section 8. Now they are not only implementing it but adding the further burden of a code of practice. Will they admit that they got it wrong in opposition? We would have been intrigued to hear about this in the Special Standing Committee, but the Minister was not present when we debated the code of practice in Committee, so this is his first opportunity to comment on it. I might not have been so ungenerous as to point that out had the Home Secretary not made much of the absence of Conservative Back Benchers in the previous debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) was present throughout, and it would have been nice if the Minister could have managed the same.
Mr. Mike O'Brien: To which Committee is the right hon. Lady referring? I was present throughout--and indeed spoke in--the debate on these matters in Committee.
Miss Widdecombe: I am informed by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere that the Minister was absent for the discussion on the other code of practice, for lorry drivers, so I shall tease him when we debate that.
Mr. O'Brien: The right hon. Lady has accused me of not being present when we debated this very important code of practice and of not being concerned about another code of practice. I spent a lot of time talking to lorry drivers and their organisations and I was present in Committee when we dealt with this code of practice, so perhaps she will be gracious enough to offer me an apology.
Miss Widdecombe: I am afraid that when it comes to the lorry drivers--
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I may not be in possession of a roll call of those who were present in Committee, but I am in possession of the rules of the House. We must debate the new clause.
Miss Widdecombe: Perhaps I should return to the new clause, and we can return to the other argument, if necessary, when we discuss lorry drivers. Since the general election, the Government and the Minister himself have repeated their intention not to implement section 8 of the 1996 Act. The Minister himself has repeated that intention.
9.45 pm
Before the Minister says that I have my facts wrong again, I refer him to the record of the Special Standing Committee. It was pointed out in column 374 that, in opposition, the Government promised to repeal section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996, exactly as the Liberals have now asked them to do. But in June 1997--in case anyone needs reminding, that is one month after the Government were elected for the short period that they will enjoy in power--at a conference on the European Year Against Racism, which took place in London, the Minister said that section 8 of that Act would be repealed because it was discriminatory against black and minority ethnic people.
That was the Minister's considered judgment. I assume that, as he was a Minister, it had to be a considered judgment. It could not be one of those off-the-cuff remarks that he might have turned out in opposition. I presume also that official advice backed up that considered judgment. The hon. Gentleman said that section 8 would be repealed because it was, in his judgment, discriminatory against black and minority ethnic people.
At another conference in January 1998, the Minister answered a similar question. He said that the Home Office was undertaking a comprehensive review of immigration policy, and that that was one of the issues that would be considered. This year, he answered another question, and it was then, after all that review and despite all the pontification--there is no other way to describe it--on the evils of section 8, that he said he had decided that it was best after all for section 8 to remain.
I am intrigued. I should like to know why, from a position which was clear when the Conservative Government introduced that measure; to a position that was apparently equally clear immediately after the election when the Minister was responsible for these matters; to now when we come before the House, the hon. Gentleman has decided that section 8 is a good thing.
I am delighted. I welcome any sinner who repenteth. The Minister challenged me just now to give him an apology for confusing an absence with an occasion when he was present. I shall do that. I expect him in return, having now decided to retain section 8, to apologise for all the things of which he accused us.
Ms Abbott:
I was one of the members of the Committee which considered the Asylum and Immigration Act. I well
I support my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Ms King) in saying that we see in inner London high unemployment, particularly among black and Asian young men, even where they have the same qualifications as their white counterparts. I live with and work among the consequences of those high levels of unemployment among black and Asian young men, and it is my strongly held view that if section 8 contributes even in small measure to a climate in which employers feel that they can discriminate, it should be removed.
There is to be a code of conduct, but, as we discussed in Committee, good employers will abide by such a code and are not causing problems under section 8 anyway, and bad employers will ignore it. It is unfortunate that the Government have reversed what was a well-founded position on the issue.
I see on the Treasury Bench the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department. When he was a Back Bencher, he pursued a long-running campaign about the number of black persons employed by the civil service and their seniority, pointing out, from the statistics that he had gathered, that black and Asian people find it hard to get promotion.
I say again that if section 8 contributes in any way to that situation, we should remove it. We made those arguments in opposition and I do not believe that things have changed. I could not let this debate go past without putting my views on the record.
Dr. Vincent Cable (Twickenham):
I wish to say a few words in support of my hon. Friends in connection with the new clause. My normal stamping ground is economic policy. Choices between social improvement and business costs often require a balance to be struck. However, section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 is unusual, in that it inflicts considerable social harm in the form of racial discrimination and, at the same time, imposes costs on business. That is why it has attracted such an unusual coalition of opposition.
The opposition comes from the refugee organisations and the Campaign for Racial Equality, and from both sides of industry. Employer organisations are normally fractious bodies, but they have found an unusual unanimity in their opposition to section 7. They include the Confederation of British Industry, the Institute of Directors, the British Chambers of Commerce, the Institute of Management, the Institute of Personnel and Development and others.
As we have already assimilated the impact of clause 15 as a possible ameliorative step, it will useful to refer to some of those organisations' comments. Last week, having considered the balance of evidence and argument, the CBI said:
There are different types of employers. Some are genuinely conscientious, but they may none the less discriminate as a result of the complexity of section 8. About 13 different forms have to be used to perform a due diligence check on a job applicant's nationality status, and as many as 40 separate documents have to be reviewed. For companies such as Shell or Unilever and their armies of lawyers that is manageable, but small and medium-sized companies either do not follow procedures, or try to do so and make mistakes.
I suspect that most employers are neither angels nor especially progressive, but they are not racist either. They are merely trying to avoid trouble, given that errors can land them in criminal difficulties. We know the little tricks of the trade in the labour market. A person who rings up about a job and whose accent is obviously Asian or African receives polite excuses to the effect that the job has already gone or that there are many applicants, while an application for a job from someone called Mohammed or Patel meets a predictable response.
The Government claim that those effects can be mitigated by clause 15, but that flies in the face of 20 years of race relations legislation. Such measures are not effective. I am sure that other hon. Members have had similar experiences, but a very able young Asian man came to my advice surgery on Friday who had achieved three A grades at A-level and 7 starred A grades in his GCSEs. He had applied to five medical schools, but had not secured an interview at any of them. He knew and I knew the reason--his name is Patel. Nor are we conspiracy theorists: two days later the Secretary of the Medical Schools Association happened to confirm in the press that that practice was widespread among medical schools. If that can happen in a public and highly reputable profession, in institutions funded by the Government, it is bound to happen on a much wider scale among the small and medium-sized businesses in which such practices are almost impossible to detect.
The Government have tried to discourage such action and have worked hard to produce a formula in the new clause. However, the Commission for Racial Equality has concluded that it will not work. I shall quote from the text
cited by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan), which says that the new regulations will not work
I do not want to exaggerate the importance of the impact of costs on small businesses. If a Bill could outlaw discrimination, it would be worth the price, and business should pay a price. It is reasonable to ask employers to be careful about whom they employ. They should take responsibility for checking that they are not employing illegal people. What is at issue is the magnitude of the administrative problem and the enormous number of checks that must be completed.
Hon. Members who have read previous debates will know of the problem with national insurance numbers. Many people entitled to work have no national insurance number, including people who have indefinite leave to stay or right of abode. Equally, many people who are not entitled to work have national insurance numbers. There are many spare national insurance numbers, and there is a massive disparity between the national insurance numbers of the Benefits Agency and the Contributions Agency. Using national insurance as a check does not work, and passports and other documents must be used as a back-up, which makes the system onerous.
"Since its introduction over two years ago, there is no evidence that section 8 is an effective deterrent to illegal working or racketeering. Many employers still remain confused as to what is expected of them and its main effect has been to place costly administrative burdens on good employers and increase the likelihood of discrimination against ethnic minorities."
16 Jun 1999 : Column 486
The Trades Union Congress is an interesting and important witness to the debate, as, perhaps more than any other organisation, it is concerned with employees' conditions and the exploitation of workers. In Committee, the Minister rightly paid a good deal of attention to the exploitation of the labour force. However, the TUC, on behalf of the trade union movement, makes it clear that it
"is astonished to read . . . that the Government intend to allow section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 to remain on the statute book."
It argues that
"the complexity of the checks required would lead to discrimination by employers against black and ethnic minority citizens."
The hon. Members for Bethnal Green and Bow (Ms King) and for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) know better than I how racial discrimination operates in the labour force. They have probably experienced it themselves and they will be widely familiar with it among their constituents. However, it might be useful to explore how discrimination appears as a result of section 8.
"unless non-compliance was to form part of the criminal offence (which would effectively shift anti-discrimination from a civil to a criminal offence)".
The clause is bound to be relatively ineffective and will not outlaw discrimination.
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