Clause
6
Regulations:
supplemental
Damian
Green:
I beg to move amendment No. 21, in
clause 6, page 5, line 7, after
‘Parliament’, insert ‘with or without
amendment’.
The
Chairman:
With this it will be convenient to discuss the
following amendments: No. 22, in
clause 7, page 5, line 21, at
end add—
‘(3) No action
taken in accordance with regulations made under subsection (2) shall
permit a breach of—
(a)
a person’s convention
rights;
(b) the United
Kingdom’s obligations under the Refugee Convention;
or
(c) a person’s rights
under the Community
Treaties.’.
No.
95, in
clause 20, page 11, line 43, leave
out from ‘be’ to ‘of’ in line 44 and
insert
‘approved by a
resolution of both
Houses’.
No.
96, in
clause 22, page 13, line 11, leave
out from ‘be’ to ‘of’ in line 12 and
insert
‘approved by a
resolution of both
Houses’.
Damian
Green:
The amendments concern the procedure that we should
use to scrutinise these matters. Amendment No. 21 would allow the
regulations in clause 5 to be amended when they are presented before
Parliament. Amendment No. 22 is similar, in that it seeks to include in
the Bill the right to fair treatment within a person’s various
convention rights. Amendment No. 95 also seeks to give Parliament more
of a say in the process, by insisting that the designation of a senior
officer for the purposes of cash seizure should be taken through
Parliament by
affirmative resolution and with regard to any regulations relating to
the disposal of property.
We think that this issue is
important because the relevant powers are so important and the issues
are so complex that it may well be that, with the best will in the
world, there will be Members in all parts of the House who agree with
some of the regulations that are introduced, but not with
others.
Clearly, the
biometric registration document has the potential to be extremely
invasive in allowing extremely broad powers for the collation,
retention and dissemination of personal information, and the
regulations that the Minister will be introducing will force any
non-EEA person to provide unlimited information for unlimited purposes.
The regulations in clause 5(2)(d) could require any person to provide
detailed information about their medical history and that information
could then be used for purposes that have nothing to do with
immigration, by virtue of clause 8(2). I assume that the Minister will
argue that the point of the regulations is to clarify the
scopeof that potential invasiveness, but the ability of
Parliament to determine whether that scope is appropriate is
limited.
The reason
why we can discuss the amendments now is that clause 6 sets out the
process by which the regulations will be made. They will be made by the
positive resolution procedure, so they will be laid before and approved
by both Houses. However, as we all know, that does not allow for
variation; the regulations will either stand or fall. As I said, the
regulations are likely to be long and detailed; they will certainly be
important. I suspect that there will be many Members in all parts of
the House who will feel that some of them are reasonable and others are
not. The purpose of the amendments is simply to allow hon. Members in
all parts of the House who are sufficiently interested and concerned
about these important regulations to do something about them. We think
that the way to do that is to make such wide-ranging regulations
amendable. That would not be a particular innovation. The Identity
Cards Act 2006 allows for such changes to be made and so do other Acts,
including the Civil Contingencies Act
2004.
It is precisely
because these regulations are likely to be lengthy and are certain to
be important that I hope that the Minister will look sympathetically on
the idea that, when the House comes to discuss them, they should be
amendable. I commend the amendment to
him.
Mr.
Byrne:
I understand the ambitions that lie behind these
amendments. In a way, I was hoping that the ID cards debate was not
going to be prayed in aid, because some of the issues raised in that
debate are quite different from those being raised now. The key
difference is this: for British citizens, the processes of applying for
an ID card and the databases that would be put in place required
certain protections to be provided. Parliament was quite right to
insist on some of those protections. Also, there was originally the
notion that some kind of super-affirmative procedure would be included
in the process of allowing regulations to be taken forward. Of course,
that procedure was not adopted by the House; Parliament
decided that that was not the right course of action, and so the
Identity Cards Act 2006 has no such provision.
Foreign nationals are already
required to provide biometric information to the immigration
authorities, so that requirement is not an innovation. It is
increasingly part of being subject to immigration control. We have just
had a very useful debate that confirmed the instinct in all parts of
the Committee that immigration control for over-18s and under-18s
should be preserved and enhanced.
The necessity of a strengthened
process for scrutinising regulations is slightly different in the case
of foreign nationals, because they are subject to immigration control.
They are more than used to, and will be increasingly used to,
submitting biometric information for processing, checking and vetting
before being given permission to come here. If we are successful with
the Bill, they will also increasingly be used to submitting such
information to confirm their entitlements and rights if they seek to
stay in the country for longer than six
months.
My other
slight concern is more practical; Opposition Members will know that I
am not only cautious but practical. Many of the regulations that we
will need to make under the provisions of the Bill will relate, for
example, to how biometric immigration documents are rolled out to the
foreign national population. About 3.4 million foreign nationals are
already in the country, and it would be impracticalto roll out
biometric immigration documents to all3.4 million overnight.
We must therefore go through a process of deciding which groups should
be required to acquire such documents first.
As I said on Second Reading, my
view is that two principles should guide that roll-out. One is
efficiency: we see between 500,000 and 750,000 foreign nationals
in-country when they renew, extend or change the terms of their leave
to remain, and their presentation at an IND office is a good
opportunity to introduce them to a biometric immigration document. The
second principle is that roll-out should be on the basis of risk. There
are particular parts of the economy in which we know illegal working is
more prevalent than others, and we have work to do with the business
community to understand how we can work together to introduce biometric
immigration documents on a practical basis that allows us to drive out
illegal working.
Some
of the decisions in the early stages of the roll-out will be prosaic.
We might, for example, decide that those who seek transfer of
conditions from a passport that has expired to a new one should be
first in line. Alternatively we might decide, having done the risk
assessment, that those who are applying for a “no time
limit” stamp in their passport to be renewed should be first,
second, third or fourth in line. As that analysis is done and kept
under review, it would be impractical constantly to return to the House
to go through the intensive process of scrutiny and resolution to
change the roll-out plans in such a detailed way. We had some debate
this morning about how regulations might change the type of information
that we shall seek to capture. Coming back to the House time and time
again as the implementation plans change through the process proposed
would be
impractical, although I respect the reasons for the approach behind the
amendment.
Mr.
Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con): It is possible that I have
misunderstood, but I understand that the amendments would make
amendable the regulations that the Minister would bring before both
Houses. The weight of his argument seems to be that the difficulty to
be faced would be having to bring regulations before the House again
and again, but he will have to do that anyway. The issue is whether
both Houses should have the opportunity to amend them rather than take
them as they are presented to us by the Government. His argument does
not stack up: he will have to present the regulations, but he is
seeking to avoid giving Committees of both Houses the opportunity to
amend them, presumably because he will be incapable of explaining
them.
Mr.
Byrne:
The hon. Gentleman is very generous in his
analysis. I seek to avoid a situation in which we have to conduct
detailed negotiations on whether certain groups should be first or
second line, or whether certain variations in the information that we
collect in relation to different categories of leave should be one
thing or the other.
The Government are elected to
do a job, and one of their jobs is to secure our borders by
introducing, implementing and driving through robust immigration
control. Our efficiency in delivering that job should be tested
regularly and at elections. The idea that we will negotiate the detail
of roll-out through different kinds of Committee stages in both Houses
is not sensible or appropriate. The Government should decide on the
basis of risk analysis, as they do, what they think isthe
right batting order, and they should be held accountable for the sense
of those decisions.
4
pm
David
T.C. Davies:
The Minister used an estimate that there were
3.4 million foreign nationals in this country. On what basis did he
come up with that figure? Is it a Home Office figure, or was it given
to him by someone
else?
Mr.
Byrne:
I shall be happy to provide the hon. Gentleman with
the statistical authority that offered that figure to me. It is a Home
Office figure that we used for planning purposes as we designed the
programme that we are
introducing.
My
argument is that the Government should be held accountable for the
sense with which they introduce the biometric immigration documents for
the purposes we set out in the debates. I can understand the intention
of the procedure that the hon. Member for Ashford proposes, and its
ambitions, but its effect would be to slow down dramatically the speed
with which we could introduce the systems and therefore the speed with
which we could shut down illegal journeys and illegal
jobs.
Damian
Green:
What the Minister said was breathtaking. The
dismissive way in which he said he was not going to negotiate the rules
he wants to impose on the British people in Committees was the absolute
quintessence of Ministers who have been in power for
too long. He constantly argues that foreign nationals who will be living
in this country will be of benefit to this country, in many cases,
rightly so. However, what he does not want is any level of
parliamentary scrutiny; he completely dismissed the idea that there
might, outside the Executive, be any helpful advice to be given, not to
reject outright what he wants to do but even to amend it. His argument
is breathtaking; everything springs from his head so perfect that it is
not possible for a Member of Parliament to table any amendment that he
would even be prepared to consider.
I beg the Minister to read the
Hansard report of what he has just said, because it is an
extraordinarily and uncharacteristically arrogant claim that in no
circumstances can any amendment of the regulations that he proposes as
a result of the Bill be permitted even to be discussed. We do not seek
to include any new parliamentary scrutiny that has not happened before
on other Bills; we simply propose that the regulations that spring from
this clause should be amendable by Parliament. That is not a very large
claim for a Parliament to make, and he has dismissed it out of hand as
getting in the way of what he wants to do. In the circumstances, I will
seek to press the amendment to a Division, and I urge the Committee to
support
it.
Question
put, That the amendment be
made:—
The
Committee proceeded to a Division.
Several
hon. Members
rose
—
The
Chairman:
Order. Sadly, the rules are quite clear in such
circumstances. I consulted both Whips, and I thought that the doors had
been locked. The hon. Member who has entered, but whom I cannot see,
was elsewhere—he went out of the room—but I am afraid the
doors had been closed and he cannot rejoin the
Committee.
The
Committee having divided: Ayes 5, Noes
7.
Division
No.
6
]
Davies,
David T.C.
(Monmouth)
Question
accordingly negatived.
Clause 6 ordered to stand
part of the
Bill.
Further
consideration adjourned.—[Mr. Alan
Campbell.]
Adjourned
accordingly at six minutes past Four o’clock till Tuesday 13
March at half-past Ten
o’clock.
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