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Session 2006 - 07 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates UK Borders Bill |
UK Borders Bill |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Emily
Commander, Committee
Clerk
†
attended the Committee
Public Bill CommitteeThursday 15 March 2007(Afternoon)[Mr. David Amess in the Chair]UK Borders BillClause 20Seizure
of
cash
Amendment
proposed [this day]: No. 150, in clause
20, page 11, line 15, after
‘officer’, insert
‘and a constable in the UK Border
Police Force established under section [Establishment of UK Border
Police Force]’.—[Damian
Green.]
2
pm
Question
again proposed, That the amendment be
made.
The
Chairman:
I remind the Committee that with this we are
discussing the following: amendmentNo. 151, in clause
40, page 21, line 41, after
‘constable’, insert
‘, including a constable in the UK
Border Police Force established under section [Establishment of UK
Border Police
Force],’.
New
clause 4—Establishment of UK Border Police
Force—
‘(1) There shall
be a body corporate to be known as the UK Border Police
Force.
(2) The UK Border Police
Force shall have the functions
of—
(a) detecting and
removing illegal
overstayers;
(b) protecting UK
borders;
(c) investigating
employers of illegal
immigrants;
(d) preventing and
detecting human trafficking;
and
(e) such other functions as
the Secretary of State may by order
determine.
(3) Membership of
the UK Border Police Force will be comprised of officers
from—
(a) the
Immigration Service;
(b) HM
Revenue and Customs;
(c) the
Serious Organised Crime
Agency;
(d) specialist port
police forces;
(e) the
Metropolitan Police Security
Command;
(f) the Security
Services; and
(g) such other
organisations as the Secretary of State shall by order
determine.
(4) Before making an
order under subsection (2)(e) the Secretary of State
shall—
(a) publish
proposals;
(b) consult members
of the public and stakeholders;
and
(c) lay a draft before each
House of Parliament.
(5) Bodies
to be consulted under subsection (4)(b) shall
include—
(a) the
Metropolitan Police
Commissioner;
(b)
representatives of the Association of Chief Police
Officers;
(c) the Director General of the Immigration and
Nationality Directorate;
(d)
representatives of the Serious Organised Crime
Agency;
(e) representatives of
the Association of Police Authorities;
and
(f) such other people as
the Secretary of State shall
determine.’.
and
amendment (a) thereto, leave out lines 2 to 7 and
insert—
‘(2)
The UK Border Police Force shall have the functions
of—
(a)
protecting UK
borders;
(b)
strengthening frontier protection against threats to the security,
social and
economic
integrity and environment of the United
Kingdom;
(c)
preventing and detecting human
trafficking;
(d)
maintaining and improving a safe, ordered and secure environment in
ports; and
(e) such
other functions as the Secretary of State may by order
determine.’.
David
T.C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con):
I was
getting into my stride just before we adjourned this morning, but lunch
and a few hours of work at the computer have taken the wind out of my
sails, unfortunately. Suffice it to say that I was speaking about the
work that I saw taking place at Cardiff airport, and the importance of
joint working in a border security force. There is little that I can
add that has not already been said by me or by my hon. Friend the
Member for Ashford, so I will leave it at that. I hope that Government
Members will consider supporting new clause
4.
John
Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD): There is a slight
difference between the two Opposition parties on the responsibilities
of a UK border police, and, more substantially, on whether there should
be a UK border
police.
Earlier,
evidence from Migrationwatch was referred to in respect of an
organisational matter. I would like to quote from a report by Sir John
Wheeler in 2002 about airport security. Obviously, there are several
issues at ports. Security is one, in the sense of terrorist attacks on
ports, but there are also responsibilities in respect of immigration.
My party’s argument is that there is merit in having an
organisational structure whereby a group of people under one management
structure are responsible for such
issues.
Paragraph 3.32
of the Wheeler report
states:
“Although
national co-ordination between the border agencies has improved, there
is clearly room for better co-ordination between the agencies on the
ground.”
Paragraph 4.18
states:
“It is
widely held within the airport security community that greater clarity
is needed around the role of the uniformed police, at both designated
and non-designated
airports”,
and paragraph
4.19
states:
“Statements
of Service Provision have not guaranteed the co-operative working which
ought to characterise policing at the UK’s major
airports”,
and so on. The
rest is not particularly
important.
The report
deals with security at airports. I am told that four police forces are
involved in policing at Heathrow airport—I have not worked out
exactly
which four they are—as well as the railway transport police,
because Heathrow has railway and tube stations. Her Majesty’s
Revenue and Customs and the immigration people are also
there.
I
refer hon. Members to a study that examined a similar issue in
Liverpool, where several different agencies were dealing with an area.
A decision was made to place everybody in the same building, although
their management structures were different. That is a sort of halfway
house—it is a move in the right direction—but, frankly,
if one is to get proper co-operation on all the security issues at a
border, the management structure must be much simpler. Obviously,
airports are not physically the edge of the country, but, from the
point of view of people coming in, they are, in essence, the border.
The Government are making a mistake in not trying to simplify the
management
structure.
That
situation at Heathrow, where there are five different police forces as
well as all the other agencies that have been referred to, is a
mistake. There is not necessarily any great merit in dwelling at length
on how one handles the process once someone gets into the country. My
party argues that they are the responsibility of the ordinary police,
but the Conservative position is that they should be the responsibility
of the border police. Regardless, from a management perspective,
managing a single border force would allow a far better job to be
done.
We
discussed previously what would happen if somebody were to get past the
immigration officer. Does everyone else say, “No, that is not my
job, it is the designated immigration officer’s job to chase
that person”? Do they allow that person, huffing and puffing, to
go past four different police forces, the railway police, HMRC and the
security services because it is the immigration person’s job and
under the law only they can do it? That is a mistake. On that basis, we
support new clause 4, but obviously with amendment
(a).
Mr.
Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con): We have received a
copy of “Enforcing the rules” by the Home Office with a
foreword by the Minister. I know irony is not dead in the Home Office
because one of the chapter titles is “Making it happen”,
which is something we have not seen from the Home Office for the past
10 years.
I would be
interested to hear the Minister’s reasoned, coherent objection
to a border agency. I have examined the literature and the comments of
a previous Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Blackburn
(Mr. Straw), in his response to the 2001 Select Committee on
Home Affairs report. There seems to be no real issue of principle.
Indeed, no practical reasons have been given for the Government to
resist the recommendations of a number of people who are experts in
their field to have a border agency. He said at the time that there
would be a lot of links with inland operations, a reduction in skills
and objectives to the lowest common denominator—the meaning of
which I confess to not fully understanding—and disruption caused
by reorganisation. Given that many other European countries have been
able to put into place and continue to have successful border agencies
or equivalent organisations—Austria, France, Greece, Poland and
Portugal, for example—I am astounded that we are not in a
position to learn anything from the European experience.
I would like the Minister to
answer a point concerning the capital and revenue costs of the likely
border agency. In that document, which was published on 7
March—it is an exquisite example of new Labour gobbledegook, but
I beg your indulgence, Mr. Amess—the Government
pledge
to
“redesign
our existing intelligence units so that they manage the flow of
information into, through and out of the organisation in a more
structured and systematic
way”.
There is,
obviously, the obligatory commitment to a step change. This is the
important part:
“create a
function in each region to collect, analyse and disseminate
information, and link this into HMRC, DWP, SOCA, police, SCDA and local
authorities, allowing them to focus on local compliance and enforcement
priorities”.
My challenge
to the Minister is: is he seriously suggesting that the commensurate
costs, both capital and revenue, associated with that level of
co-ordination across all those agencies, would always come out lower
than creating a border agency as proposed by my hon. Friends and
indeed, in a different way, by the Liberal
Democrats?
Mr.
Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab): I was particularly
interested during the morning sitting by the contributions of the hon.
Member for Monmouth, particularly his comparisons with regard to
Cardiff international airport and Newcastle international airport. It
seemed that the crux of his argument was that smaller airports such as
Newcastle would benefit from a single UK border force. As a north-east
MP who is very proud of what has been going on with regard to the
expansion of Newcastle and Durham Tees Valley airports, may I point out
that Cardiff had2 million users in 2006 and Newcastle
international airport had 5.45 million last year?
I think that that undermines
the Conservatives’ argument on the matter. It shows the weakness
of the intellectual argument, but also profound ignorance of the
north-east region.
David
T.C. Davies:
I am delighted that the
hon. Gentleman has given way but I must point out to him—perhaps
he was concentrating on other matters when I spoke—that I did
not mention the north-east at all. The point that I was making was that
the larger the airport becomes, the harder it is for personal
relationships to develop between the different people responsible for
policing and, therefore, the less effective that policing is likely to
be—hence the need for a border security force. It certainly was
not a comment on the abilities of anybody involved in policing in any
particular
airport.
Mr.
Wright:
I am extremely grateful for that
intervention, but I now find the argument even more
preposterous—Newcastle international airport is apparently not
even in the north-east. That is absolutely unbelievable. The hon.
Member for Monmouth cited the argument advanced on Second Reading by
the hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson) that Newcastle
international airport often does not have immigration officers. He
advanced that as an argument for new clause 4 and I am saying that that
argument is intellectually
weak.
The
Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality (Mr.
Liam Byrne):
Will my hon. Friend remind me how many
Conservative MPs there are in the north-east of
England?
Mr.
Byrne:
I will respond to the points raised as quickly as I
can. I suppose that I should acknowledge the movement in Opposition
policy. It would be churlish of me not to welcome the progress over the
past 15 months. Only 15 months ago, we were hearing about policies for
the renegotiation of the Geneva convention, the provision of offshore
processing centres for refugees, a ring of steel—an idea that
lasted about 15 seconds when the right hon. Member for West Dorset
(Mr. Letwin) tried to defend it to John Humphrys—and
the James review and slide 105, proposing to cut 50 per cent. of the
immigration and nationality directorate’s
budget.
That the
Opposition have moved from the ring of steel to concrete plans
regarding disorder at the border is some progress, but not perhaps as
much as the hon. Member for Ashford would like to present. There are,
however, some quite serious issues that we need to tease out. I have
always been clear in the debates on the subject that I retain an open
mind about the creation of a single border force in the future, but I
have said consistently that I am yet to be persuaded by the proposals
or that now is the right time.
The hon. Member for Ashford
this morning prayed in aid some of the evidence that was presented by
the Home Affairs Committee in 2000. No doubt, like me, he has read the
evidence from the Association of Chief Police Officers, which said
that, although a single border agency made broad strategic
sense—I think that that was the phrase that it used—it
was uncertain of the cost and benefits. There are potential benefits in
this realm, and the question is whether there is a different way of
achieving them.
The
hon. Gentleman talked about the need to attack organised crime harder.
We heard oral evidence suggesting that that was extremely important.
Tackling that kind of crime is precisely why we set up the Serious
Organised Crime Agency and pulled agencies together. As we heard in
oral evidence, 25 per cent. of its budget is devoted to tackling
illegal
immigration.
On
Second Reading, my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen
(Mr. Denham) asked whether there should be a greater
alignment of powers. There is no legal barrier to aligning those
powers. Section 8(2) of the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979
allows Treasury Ministers to designate Customs powers to immigration
officers and, indeed, to anybody they class as a proper officer.
Paragraph 1(1) of schedule 2 to the Immigration Act 1971 allows the
Home Secretary to confer immigration powers on other people. Schedule 7
to the Terrorism Act 2000 allows immigration officers, police and
Customs officers to act as an officer under the relevant schedules.
With that power, we are trying to align police powers with those of
officers on the border.
Therefore,
there is no legal barrier to the alignment of powers. That leaves us
with the question of whether there should be greater operational
alignment of activities. I think that the answer to that is yes, which
is precisely why there is a programme in place to help to deliver
that.
The hon. Member
for Peterborough raised an important question, which he put
intelligently: how do we co-ordinate the intelligence that needs to be
shared
between the different agencies? If he has not yet been, I invite him to
visit the joint border operations centre at Heathrow, which brings
together four or five different agencies to screen intelligence from
airlines. It has already provided us with 8,000 alerts and something
like 800 arrests and is an excellent example of, asSir Andrew
Green called it, the capability of British agencies to work together
very well. There are already parts of the country where one can see
what is, in effect, a single agency providing the primary line, with
referral to specialist, secondary-line capabilities where needed. At
Poole or Coquelles, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs lead the
search, bringing in immigration officers where appropriate. At
Blackpool, the police are in the lead, bringing in HMRC where
appropriate. At Gatwick, immigration officers operate as Customs
officers, referring back to HMRC as the secondary line where
appropriate.
2.15
pm
Many
of these changes are already seen in practice. The benefits, therefore,
could potentially be achieved by a different course. We have to weigh
some of the risks against the changes. I have consistently said that,
at a time when the terrorist threat to this country is severe, we risk
a distraction if we reorganise; when we want focus, we will be asking
people to reapply for their jobs. That is why I thought my hon. Friend
the Member for Burnley was right to quote Sir Andrew
Green:
“The
last thing that
it”—
the Home
Office—
“should do
at this juncture is have a reorganisation of that
kind”.——[Official Report, UK Borders Public
Bill Committee,
13 March 2007; c. 282,
Q349.]
As Sir
Andrew put it, organisations “are not
Meccano”.
Mr.
Byrne:
I will make one more point, with which, perhaps,
the hon. Member for Ashford will help me. I understand that nobody, on
any Bench in the House, is proposing the merger of the Army, Navy and
Air Force. We recognise that different forces have different cultures,
specialisms and traditions; those different capabilities and history
are an important part of what makes them effective. Do we insist on
integrated command and intelligence? Yes, we do. Does that require a
full-scale merger? No, often not—different things can achieve
the same effect.
The
final example that I would give here is the United States, which was
prayed in aid. The United States has had an interesting challenge with
illegal immigration. Some papers, such as The New York Times,
have estimated that the population of illegal immigrants in the United
States has gone from7 million to 12 million in the space of a
few years. Interestingly, during the same period the United States has
been trying to introduce a single border force. Going around Dulles
airport, one will indeed see a common primary line, but step into the
second line and one will see the component agencies still organised in
their traditional ways of working—that is five years
on.
I was also
interested in the reference by the hon. Member for Peterborough to
European border forces. They are so effective that while this country
has the
lowest number of asylum seekers not since 1997 but since 1993, asylum
claimants in Europe in the last quarter of last year went up—not
down—by 14 per
cent.
Damian
Green:
Not least, because European borders have moved in
the last few years, the hon. Gentleman may have
noticed.
I want the
Minister to return to his point about this being the wrong time to
reorganise the Home Office. Can he therefore confirm to the Committee
that the Home Secretary’s plan to split the Home Office in two
is a dead
duck?
Mr.
Byrne:
I am not entirely clear how that relates to border
security, but perhaps that will become
clear.
The
Chairman:
Order. I admire the inventiveness of the hon.
Member for Ashford, but I cannot see how that relates to the
amendment.
There are no
theoretical reasons why a single agency might be better at the
effective co-ordination of components. To consider the kind of change
proposed we would need to see a significant step up in performance.
There is a second problem with the amendments, which come from ideas
that have been drafted for prospectuses and manifestos, including by
the Liberal Democrats, who came up with the idea first—the hon.
Member for Birmingham, Yardley will correct me if I am wrong—or
certainly some time ago. A number of observers might be concerned that
the clauses as drafted are, frankly, slightly Blue
Peteresque.
Sweeping
Crown powers are placed in the hands of the Secretary of State without
any provision for oversight of governance, which was and is of deep
concern to ACPO. Only this morning we heard from the hon. Member for
Ashford about the importance of parliamentary accountability, but there
is no provision for that, despite placing Crown powers in the hands of
the Secretary of State. Sweeping powers are put into regulations, a
principle that the hon. Member for Ashford has spent two weeks arguing
against, while large parts of business have fallen off altogether.
There is, it appears, a separation of the regulatory functions of
controlling admission, including the arrival of tourist and business
travellers. It is true that the clause provides for the Secretary of
State to determine other functions by order, but again I am surprised,
given the arguments of the hon. Member for Ashford over the past couple
of weeks, that such sweeping powers are put in
regulations.
Then, of
course, there is the risk of a new fragmentation because of the
disconnection between, for example, visa-issuing posts abroad and
in-country policing. That betrays a very 20th century
concept of the frontier. The frontier is not an isolated place any
more; it is intimately connected both abroad and in-country. To
separate that and snap those links would be dangerous, but not as
dangerous as what concerns me most—the proposal that the system
would be underpinned by the cancellation of the identity cards
project.
Time and again in the Committee
we have heard from experts in the field who say that the fight against
illegal immigration is mission-critical to the fight against illegal
working. Sir Andrew Green said of illegal working
that
“it is a very
important pull factor and also an incentive for people to stay on
illegally, which is another form of the same thing. There is no
question about its
importance.”
On the
importance of biometric visas and ID cards for foreign nationals, Sir
Andrew said that
“we
believe that...ID cards will help
substantially.”—[Official Report, UK Borders Bill
Committee, 13 March 2007; c. 271-272, Q319,
Q320.]
We also heard from the
business community. Gordon McLardy
said:
“It is
very time-consuming for employers to check through the relevant
documentation.”
He also
said:
“The
checks are not robust
enough”
and that ID cards
would be
“a dream for any
employer.”—[Official Report, UK Borders Bill
Committee, 1 March 2007; c. 71-77, Q144, Q169,
Q145.]
He said that he fully
supports them. What we heard from Sir Andrew Green and from Gordon
McLardy echoed a crescendo of voices not from my side of the House but
from the Opposition side. The right hon. and learned Member for
Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard)
wrote:
“We must
protect our citizens in every way we can and, in my judgment, that
includes ID cards.”
Dame
Pauline Neville-Jones, the chair of the hon. Member for
Ashford’s own security commission, said
that
“measures we have of
establishing identity are inadequate. We should not be stupid about
that.”
Lord Stevens, the
very man who was put in charge of the hon. Gentleman’s border
advisory group, said that there are many savings to be had, especially
in the fight against organised crime, which, as we know, accounts for
75 per cent. of illegal immigration. At this stage one would be
forgiven for asking the question, “Is he thinking what
I’m
thinking?”
How can it be
right for the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David
Davis) to pull the plug on the database that provides the power for
biometric visas, biometric identity cards for foreign nationals and the
gold-standard biometric passports that we are now issuing? He is
frankly setting himself up as the luddite of law enforcement.
The hon. Member for Reigate
said that the objections were not on principle but on practicality. He
was contradicted by the hon. Member for Ashford, who said that it was
about principle and practicality, as recorded in column 225 of the
Official Report. We know where the shadow Home Secretary, the
right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden,
sits.
My concern is
that the new clause would be not a step forward but a step backward. We
remain open to ideas once we see good proposals, and maybe Lord Stevens
will be able to provide them. My great fear is
that this is a soundbite for the news, not a shield for the nation.
Frankly, it has been deep-fried in Steve Hilton’s focus groups.
In its presentation it is saloon bar politics on a subject that
warrants much better thought than it has been provided with this
afternoon.
Half the
Minister’s speech was quite serious. The other half was just
garbage and not worthy of the proverbial wet Tuesday night in midlands
towns that one of my hon. Friends got in trouble for talking about. I
shall deal with the serious parts of the Minister’s speech.
First, would the split in the Home Office that its Ministers,
particularly the Home Secretary himself, have been touting around the
media—and, I understand, Cabinet Committees—be relevant
to a unified border force and the safety of our borders? Of course it
would. The Minister’s whole argument, inasmuch as there was one
in the serious parts of his speech, was that this is not the right time
for such a force, yet the biggest change in the Home Office’s
history is being touted at the same time. I gently suggest to him that
that is not a solid piece of ground on which he can stand.
I know how much the Minister
enjoys praying in aid Sir Andrew Green—he did it about five
times in a 10-minute speech, struggling to find anyone else to support
his point of view. Good for him; he hasSir Andrew Green
on-side on this particular narrow issue. Nevertheless, Sir
Andrew’s point is undermined by what is happening in the Home
Office at the moment. Even if we do not get the Home Secretary’s
gleaming vision of an organisation split in two, so that the police
service and the Prison Service end up in different empires, which seems
to be a recipe for even bigger disasters with non-communication than
the onesthat we have seen in the past few months, we will
still have the Minister’s radical reorganisation of the
immigration and nationality directorate, with which he is happily
proceeding at the same time as he is prepared to stand in this
Committee and say, “We must not contemplate reorganisation
because it will get in the way of doing the job.” On any level,
his argument is incoherent.
Having said that, I was
delighted to hear the Minister say that he will keep an open mind on
our proposal. That is significant progress because I can sniff a U-turn
months or years before it happens. If the Government wish to take on
board more Conservative ideas, we are always happy to provide them and
to continue to make the political weather during this Parliament, as we
are doing. Genuine progress has been made because we think that the
issue before us is important and that our proposal would make a big
difference.
I was
grateful that during the course of the Minister’s speech, he
made it clear that there was no legal barrier to combining the various
powers, which lies at the heart of our proposal. He said also that
there
was no operational barrier. Indeed, he gave helpful examples of where
such a process can happen now. Any practical arguments, therefore,
against our proposal have been blown away by him this
afternoon.
The
Minister mentioned the importance of SOCA. I agree that it was a good
idea to set up that agency—we supported it—to fight
serious and organised crime. He will be aware that among the senior
police officers who supported a border force, there were murmurs of
surprise because SOCA did not include one. He said that, in effect, in
many parts of the country we already have a single agency on the front
line. That is good, but we should follow through that logic and make it
more coherent.
The
Minister made some semi-serious points about possible deficiencies in
the drafting of new clause 4. We would be happy to take amendments. So
far, the Government have tabled a lot of amendments to the Bill, so if
they want to table some to our new clause, they may—we are not
proud. We want legislation to be as good as it can be. If he wants to
do that, therefore, I am sure that we can come back to it at a later
stage.
Let us consider
the weight of evidence from those who know about such matters. Almost
all are in favour of the proposal. In what I thought was a slightly
half-hearted attempt to oppose it, the Minister was forced to rely on
some fairly cheap soundbites and, indeed, at the start, on a speech no
doubt prepared for Labour candidates during the 2005 election. I sensed
that even he was embarrassed about having to deliver it in 2007 in this
rather different political landscape.
I am now satisfied that there
is no substantive Government argument against our proposal and,
therefore, commend the amendment to the
Committee.
Question
put, That the amendment be
made:—
The
Committee divided: Ayes 5, Noes
10.
Division
No.
10
]
AYESNOES
Question
accordingly
negatived.
2.30
pm
Damian
Green:
I beg to move amendment No. 92,
in
clause 20, page 11, line 29, after
‘293’, insert ‘and section
295’.
No. 94, in
clause 20, page 11, line 35, leave
out paragraph (g).
Damian
Green:
I beg the Committee to pay attention, as amendment
No. 92 gives effect to amendment No. 93, which was considered with
clause 18. I am sure the Minister will know that, as he will have
remembered every detail of our debates on that clause. However, I will
briefly repeat the points that we made about the amendments to clause
18.
The intention of
the amendment is to save taxpayers’ money, as it would remove
the unnecessary duplication of immigration officers rightly having to
go through the various difficult and bureaucratic procedures involved
in handling cash that has been seized. All members of the Committee
will agree that it is a particularly sensitive area in which the
reputation of the police is high, and we should do nothing that might
affect it. The amendments would let the police do the work that they do
at present, without replicating the systems for the immigration
service.
Amendment No.
94 is similarly consequential on the previous amendments, and it would
remove the powers of forfeiture from immigration officers. If the other
amendments were accepted, the cash would be handed over within 48
hours, so the powers in subsection (2)(g) would not be
necessary.
In a previous
debate, the Minister made an interesting point about whether it would
be operationally difficult to hand over the cash within 48 hours. It
would be unfortunate if that were the case, given what we have heard
about the tremendous integration of all the different services. On
reflection, the Minister’s argument was not particularly
compelling. The amendment would be a practical way forward that could
remove a small risk that would be added to the system if the clause
remained as drafted.
Mr.
Byrne:
I think the amendments have been slightly distorted
by their grouping and the fact that the related amendment has been
withdrawn.
The
remaining amendments would remove the provisions relating to the
detention and forfeiture of cash, which would weaken the ability of
immigration officers conducting search operations to seize cash because
they would not be able to apply for the power of detention or
forfeiture of cash seized. That would be problematical because it would
remove one of the key powers with which we want to equip the
immigration service. We want to increase, not decrease, the number of
illegal-working operations and to be able to confiscate illegal wages
and assets belonging to employers who break the rules or turn a blind
eye or something worse. That is important.
A question was raised about
training. As the hon. Member for Ashford rightly said, reassurances are
needed because that is a sensitive area. I agree with the sentiment
that he expresses.
The legal
machinery that we seek to put in place effectively puts a gloss on the
Proceeds of Crime Act 2002; it adjusts the existing
legislation so that it works for immigration officers. Five important
protections remain in place: prior judicial approvals, or the approval
of senior officers before a search that is made explicitly for cash; a
code of practice applies to the use of search powers that we propose to
extend to encompass immigration officers; seizure can be for only 48
hours, then magistrates must approve it and the money must be paid into
a high interest account; any request to retain or detain the cash
means that magistrates have to be satisfied and anybody with an interest
can apply to the court at any time; and, of course, if forfeiture is
required, we have to convince magistrates that that is the right thing
to do. There are also appeal lines to a Crown court. So, a number of
protections are already set out in POCA and we are going to adjust them
so that they apply here.
Cash seizure training is very
important. We are asking HMRC and the Assets Recovery Agency to develop
it with us, and we hope to have it up and running by the end of the
month. I think that the hon. Gentleman will accept that the group of
amendments is now slightly distorted and that its effect would be to
weaken the power of immigration officers to police illegal-working
operations. I hope that he is persuaded that there are sufficient
protections in place, and that he will see fit to withdraw the
amendment.
Damian
Green:
I was agreeing with most of what the Minister said
until he slipped in something about the Assets Recovery Agency, which
is not his strongest argument, given what has happened. However, I take
his point about the mix of the amendments, and the fact that the
amendment that related to clause 18 has been withdrawn, so I beg to ask
leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave,
withdrawn.
Clause 20 ordered to stand
part of the Bill.
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