Examination of Witnesses (Questions 742
- 759)
TUESDAY 21 OCTOBER 2003
BEVERLEY HUGHES
MP, MR BILL
JEFFREY AND
MR KEN
SUTTON
Q742 Chairman: Good morning, Minister.
Thank you very much for coming this morning. I think you want
to say a few words and introduce your officials.
Beverley Hughes: Thank you very
much, Chairman. On my right Ken Sutton, who is Deputy Director
General and particularly equipped to deal with any of the issues
on processing and current trends; and on my left Bill Jeffrey,
of course, is the Director General; and you know me.
Q743 Chairman: Thank you for coming
back to the Committee. As you know, we are now moving towards
the end of this particular inquiry on asylum applications. We
want to pick up a number of issues that have arisen over the last
few months. I am grateful to you for writing to us this week in
response to some queries we raised at the evidence session with
the Home Secretary about absconding and the situation in King's
Lynn. Could I start by picking up some of the issues about King's
Lynn, because I think, although that is only partly to do with
asylum, it highlights a number of the issues of concern to the
Committee and the people outside. Please correct me if I have
misunderstood the situation, but it would appear to be this: as
a result of the operations carried out at King's Lynn 63 Chinese
nationals were interviewed. If we go through those, none of them
were entitled to be working?
Beverley Hughes: That is right.
Q744 Chairman: Four were failed asylum
seekers who should not have been in the country?
Beverley Hughes: Yes.
Q745 Chairman: 16 were people in
the asylum process who should not have been working?
Beverley Hughes: Yes.
Q746 Chairman: Ten committed other
immigration offences, and presumably should not have been working;
and 33 were working illegally but are now asylum seekers and were
not part of the operation?
Beverley Hughes: That is correct.
Q747 Chairman: At the moment only
one has been removed from the country?
Beverley Hughes: Yes.
Q748 Chairman: Are any detained,
to your knowledge?
Beverley Hughes: I have not got
that information with me, but I can certainly get that, possibly
during the course of the Committee.[1]
Q749 Chairman: Possibly none have
been detained. The employer or employers, far from being prosecuted,
have not been prosecuted because they cooperated with the authorities?
Beverley Hughes: That is the situation
at the moment.
Q750 Chairman: Is it not reasonable
for a reasonable person to say, "What on earth is going on
here?", that so many people can be working illegally, no-one
is prosecuted, hardly anybody is removed and people who were not
asylum seekers now are asylum seekers?
Beverley Hughes: A number of points,
Chairman. I understand entirely the cast you are putting on those
statistics, but let me make a number of points. Firstly, I think
those figures challenge the view that has been expressed that
we are pulling back on enforcement against illegal workers for
fear of inflating asylum claims. I think that the statistics you
have just put forward—in which a very big operation involving
a lot of cooperation between the Immigration Service, the local
authorities and other enforcement agencies resulted in a number
of people being detected working illegally who then, yes, claimed
asylum—at least challenge that claim, which has been made
by the Opposition, that somehow we are not being strong on enforcement
for fear of affecting our target of reducing asylum claims. That
is the first point. Secondly, that in relation to employers there
are issues with the current Section 8 provisions through which
employers can be prosecuted—and I will say in a minute what
we are trying to do to deal with those. The number of prosecutions
under Section 8 as a whole actually does not give the full picture
of prosecutions of employers who might be employing people illegally.
That is because—certainly as regards the high level upper
tier operations which are joint operations intelligence-led which
will involve the Immigration Service working with Customs &
Excise, the police and agencies operating on a joint basis—very
often there are prosecutions in those cases but because there
are higher penalties, for example, for fraud, for charges of facilitation
or for customs offences, then employers will be charged under
those laws, not necessarily under Section 8. That is the second
point, that the number of total prosecutions does not give the
total picture of people prosecuted who may be employing people
illegally. However, having said that, on the employer front there
are issues with the current Section 8 provisions which we are
dealing with. At the moment it is quite hard to enforce and easy
to subvert the provisions in Section 8. That is because if an
employer cooperates with an investigation and can show in court
that they have cooperated then a court is very unlikely to convict.
I have given the Committee figures about the number of prosecutions
for the last year for which we have got details which translated
into convictions, and that is one of the main reasons. However,
having said that, employer cooperation is actually a big factor
in us being able to mount particularly some of the very big operations
that we do mount. About 30% of our operations, particularly
the bigger ones, actually arise because employers approach us.
There is then a very careful intelligence-led preparation for
that operation, which actually saves the agencies a lot of time
and energy. It means, for example, that we can use the employers'
records behind the scenes to plan what is actually done on the
day. If we do not get employers' cooperation then clearly as you
can understand, I think, the logistics of going in unannounced
and having to mount an operation in that scenario are very different—very
much more resource-intensive, and very much more unpredictable
than the situation in which we have an employer's cooperation.
There are two sides to this in the way we examine it. However,
there are issues with Section 8. We are dealing with those as
far as we can. I have been working for the last nine months with
a group of employers, the TUC and CRE to see how we can strengthen
the Section 8 provision to make it less easy for employers to
get round them. We have consulted now with the whole of the business
sector for two months; and I have a meeting next week with that
group in which we will come to some conclusions about how we can
change secondary legislation to strengthen the Section 8 provisions.
On removals, if I might just address that, only one person has
been removed so far. We will, of course, be seeking to remove
all of these people. There are particular issues with China and
a number of other countries in terms of accepting back their nationals
hitherto. We have had, for the last six or nine months, a jointly
ministerial-led group—Bill Rammell and myself—which
has been drawing up country action plans for all countries to
whom returns are difficult. We have made a lot of progress with
China. We have an expert team coming from China early next month
to go through a large number of failed asylum seekers, to make
progress on the redocumentation issue (which is one of the issues
we are working on with the Chinese) to try to make sure we
can return people. The redocumentation of Chinese nationals has
been a big problem for us. I am hoping that the work we have been
doing will make significant progress in that regard very shortly.
Q751 Chairman: That is very helpful
and people will understand the problems with China. The reality
is, is there any reason to believe today that the 62 people who
were picked up, who are still in the country, are not again working?
Secondly, that the employer who employed them is not employing
them or other illegal workers?
Beverley Hughes: I would expect
that all of those people we have detected will be on reporting
regimes now. That will be a very stringent reporting regime. Now
we know where they are we will be keeping in contact with them,
as we are doing with asylum seekers now throughout the asylum
system. That has been one of the major changes we have instituted.
Q752 Chairman: Are you telling the
Committee you do not think any of them will be working?
Beverley Hughes: What I am saying
is that the degree of contact now between those people and the
Immigration Services would, I expect, preclude that.
Q753 Chairman: You cannot be sure
about that?
Beverley Hughes: If you are saying,
Chairman, we cannot be sure what we are doing in the days between
their reporting, no, any more than I can be sure of what you are
doing on the days when I do not see you. The point is, we have
instituted a mechanism whereby we can keep in close contact with
people; we can make enquiries about them; we can check where they
are and that is being done.
Q754 Chairman: But we do not know
they are not working. We have had a big operation to identify
people, most of them are still in the country, and the employer
has not been prosecuted—I would not mind betting (although
I do not know) the employer may well not even have been paying
the minimum wage but has not been prosecuted for breaking the
minimum wage legislation. The real question, Minister, is: how
can people really believe that this exercise and these operations
are worthwhile, or that we are dealing with illegal immigration
if we are unable to prevent people working, if we are unable to
remove people from the country, and the employers who make very
substantial profits actually employing illegal labour and creating
the demand for illegal labour go away scot free at the end of
the day? Can you tell us, as a Committee, that in six months'
or a years' time any employer who knows they are employing illegal
labour will expect to be caught, will expect to be prosecuted,
and will expect not to be patted on the head for cooperating with
the authority once problems come to light?
Beverley Hughes: Chairman, I think
your parody of our attitude to employers of patting them on the
head is totally unwarranted and inaccurate. It is not a question
of patting people on the head. The fact is the situation as regards
employers is complicated. It is sometimes difficult to identify
who the employer is, particularly in large agricultural concerns,
for example, with agency staff and subcontracting. There is difficulty
in the situation with the best will in the world. Having said
that, there is also a view that the courts have not taken this
as seriously as they might. I was appraised of a case recently
in which we did take an employer to court earlier this year, charged
on 12 counts, 12 illegal workers, actually convicted (which was
a major achievement for the agencies), could have been fined £5,000
for each of those workers and was fined £12.50. When you
actually put it into that context you can see there is a legitimate
question that, unless we can translate prosecutions more successfully
into convictions, unless when we do get convictions we can get
the kind of sentences that are going to deter people, there is
a legitimate question about the extent to which we are getting
a real return on resources. At the moment there are extensive
resources being put into the process of enforcement.
Q755 Chairman: Is it not true that—until
there is a robust and reliable system of entitlement cards that
people have to show and employers, subcontractors and all the
other people can rely on and be expected to have seen—we
are going to continue to have abuse? Are you able to tell the
Committee that proposals along those lines are likely to be brought
forward very, very quickly; because I cannot see how else we are
going to tackle some of these problems?
Beverley Hughes: That is one of
the main reasons why the Home Secretary is convinced that we will
not be able to have a robust mechanism for establishing the entitlement
to work unless we have a secure identity system which includes
that information on a person's identity card. I cannot tell you
today, Chairman, what decision the Cabinet itself will make. I
can tell you that the work is going on to answer the questions
that have been raised, to establish as robust as possible a cost
benefit analysis of the implications of producing an identity
card on the lines that have been proposed. You are right to say—whilst
there are measures we are taking to try to strengthen the current
provisions under Section 8 which require an employer to seek documentation,
because at the moment there is not a single robust form of identification
that also gives proof of right to work—that there are holes
in that system that either knowingly or unknowingly employers
fall foul of. An ID card is really the only way we can see where
we can provide such a secure system that would enable employers
not to exploit the statutory defence that at the moment they have.
Q756 Miss Widdecombe: Why on earth
are they not all detained? I am talking about the specific Chinese
example. Why are they not all detained?
Beverley Hughes: There are a number
of reasons. At the moment all of those people would not be removable
in the near future, either because they have got asylum claims
outstanding and/or because of the issues I have identified in
our negotiations with China; and the courts in this country have
decided that in order to be detained a person must have a prospect
of being removed, and have ruled that detention in other circumstances,
in which we have got no reasonable prospect of removing people,
is actually unlawful, as you know.
Q757 Miss Widdecombe: It is unlawful
under present law. It is also the case that this Committee has
been advised that the law could be changed. Do you agree with
that?
Beverley Hughes: We are certainly
willing to look at any provisions, as we are doing now, that enable
us to act more stringently and to have an effective system.
Q758 Miss Widdecombe: You have told
the Committee we know where they are, we are in touch with them
and know where they are. That is true so long as they obligingly
stay there. Is it not the case that they have already proved they
can work in the black economy; that all they have to do, while
they are reporting but otherwise at liberty quite lawfully, is
to watch for the opportunities whereby, when the time approaches
when they think decisions may not be so congenial, they can then
disappear because they are not detained; and nothing short of
detention is going to stop that type of abuse? You only know where
they are so long as they stay there.
Beverley Hughes: As long as they
report, and if they did not report then, clearly, action would
be taken to follow those people and to apprehend them. In those
circumstances it may be possible to detain them. Let us get real
about this.
Q759 Miss Widdecombe: I am very real,
Minister.
Beverley Hughes: If you are seriously
suggesting that every person we apprehend could be detained—
1 See Ev 178. Back
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