The
Committee consisted of the following
Members:
Banks,
Gordon
(Ochil and South Perthshire)
(Lab)
Blunt,
Mr. Crispin
(Reigate)
(Con)
Browne,
Mr. Jeremy
(Taunton)
(LD)
Campbell,
Mr. Alan
(Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's
Treasury)
George,
Mr. Bruce
(Walsall, South)
(Lab)
Green,
Damian
(Ashford)
(Con)
Hillier,
Meg
(Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home
Department)
Johnson,
Mr. Boris
(Henley)
(Con)
Lilley,
Mr. Peter
(Hitchin and Harpenden)
(Con)
Lucas,
Ian
(Wrexham)
(Lab)
Mackay,
Mr. Andrew
(Bracknell)
(Con)
Prosser,
Gwyn
(Dover)
(Lab)
Rowen,
Paul
(Rochdale) (LD)
Ruane,
Chris
(Vale of Clwyd)
(Lab)
Smith,
Geraldine
(Morecambe and Lunesdale)
(Lab)
Wilson,
Phil
(Sedgefield)
(Lab)
Wright,
Mr. Anthony
(Great Yarmouth)
(Lab)
Annette Toft, Committee
Clerk
attended the
Committee
Fifth
Delegated Legislation
Committee
Thursday
1
3 December
2007
[David
Taylor
in the
Chair]
Draft Immigration (Employment of Adults Subject to Immigration Control) (Maximum Penalty) Order 2007
8.55
am
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Meg
Hillier):
I beg to
move,
That the
Committee has considered the draft Immigration (Employment of Adults
Subject to Immigration Control) (Maximum Penalty) Order
2007.
The purpose of
the order is to set the maximum civil penalty for employers of illegal
migrants at £10,000 per illegal worker. We have the ability to
prosecute employers under the criminal law at present, but we hope that
the civil penalty will lead to an improved and swifter system of
penalties for people employing illegal migrants. It will also give us
some flexibility with a sliding scale, which I will outline later in
broad terms when I pick up questions from members of the Committee in
my summing
up.
As
part of our approach on immigration enforcement, it is our overall
strategy to bear down on illegal jobs, especially those that encourage
illegal journeys into the United Kingdom. Irregular migration, as we
know, can cause difficulties if it is not controlled, and our aim is to
remove the economic incentive, particularly to act unlawfully, for
employers and employees. We want to provide a cost-effective method of
sanctioning those who break the
rules.
We need a
system that reflects a fair and balanced relationship between the
Government and employers in regulating the participation of migrants in
the labour market under which the rights and responsibilities of
employers are clear. We also need to provide support to employers when
checking documents and so on. Such steps are important because they
will protect vulnerable workers from dangerous and exploitative working
conditions, which is something that I am sure all members of the
Committee support.
We
also need to take action in other ways. We will see our systems change
beyond recognition in the next 18 months, with better controls at our
borders and, within our country, with foreign national identity cards
and other measures to improve the integrity of immigration systems as a
whole.
The order
refers in particular to measures that have updated section 8 of the
Asylum and Immigration Act 1996. Provisions under the Immigration,
Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 will be brought into force to replace
section 8 of the 1996 Act with the new system of civil penalties for
employers who are less than diligent in their personnel
practicessome perhaps knowingly commit criminal offences. As
well as dealing with civil penalties, the legislation introduces a
tough new criminal offence for employers who set out
knowingly to give work to illegal migrants. There is a sliding scale of
measures ranging from civil penalties and action taken by the Border
and Immigration Agency on employers who slip into bad practices right
through to criminal
penalties.
Mr.
Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con): Will the
Minister tell the Committee what happens if the body employing illegal
workers is the Government? Who then pays the
fine?
Meg
Hillier:
I will deal with that matter later. I was
planning to do so in my summing up, but I shall make a judgment about
whether to answer the right hon. Gentlemans question
now.
The repeal of
section 8 of the 1996 Act will not provide an amnesty to such
employers. Employers who have employed illegal migrants up to 28
February 2008, which is when the new provisions will kick in, will be
liable to prosecution under the 1996 Act. There will be no escape for
anyone who has employed illegal migrants. The new arrangements under
the 2006 Act will, in some ways, be not dissimilar to the existing
legislation, but, 10 years on, they rightly update procedures in line
with practice and experience. We shall continue to encourage employers
to carry out relatively straightforward document checks on all their
workers before employment commences to avoid unlawful
discrimination.
I
recently visited the East London Bus Group in Waterden road in my
constituency and met Nigel Barrett, the chief executive. We discussed
the work undertaken by his personnel department to tackle the
situation. He reckoned that his staff were experienced at checking
documents. We discussed burdens on business, but he thought that that
was not necessarily a burden, and he was pleased to participate in a
system that ensured that the company employed people legally. When it
employed new contract cleaners recently, it called in the Border and
Immigration Agency to tackle some of its concerns. Three contract
cleaners were then dealt with by the agency because they were illegal
workers. Such responsible employers will benefit from the dialogue and
co-operation that we want, but we will clamp down on employers who
knowingly break the
law.
Under the
legislation, employers will face a new duty to carry out a light-touch,
annual follow-up check on workers with temporary immigration status, so
it will not be good enough to say that those workers were initially
employed legally. If workers have temporary immigration status, it is
important that that is logged by their employers and that checks are
carried out. If employers carry out checks properly for permanent
employees and those with a temporary right to work, they will establish
a legal excuse against a penalty, unless they knew that a worker did
not have permission to work. If they abide by the provisions, they will
have some
protection.
I have a
diagram that demonstrates the sliding scale of fees. I shall pass a
couple of copies around during the debate and will provide more
afterwards. It demonstrates the scale of penalties that can be
introduced, which range from those that will apply to employers who are
a little disorganised to those that will apply when employers are known
to be criminal.
In the majority of cases,
employers who break the law will face an administrative penalty, as
opposed to the current situation in which they face costly criminal
proceedings and the possibility of a criminal record. That process is
also costly and time-consuming for the Border and Immigration Agency,
and we hope that we can tackle the matter more effectively, efficiently
and frequently.
The
penalty system will also be subject to stringent safeguards. If an
aggrieved employer is unhappy with the process, they will be able to
object to the agency and/or appeal to the courts against the level of a
penalty. Employers who are found to have been knowingly or deliberately
employing illegal migrant workers will face
prosecution.
Last
month, two codes of practice to underpin the new civil penalty system
were laid before the House and the other place to help employers. One
sets out the factors that we will consider in determining the level of
penalty, and the other provides guidance to employers on how to avoid
breaching race relations legislation while attempting to comply with
the law on illegal working. Those codes outline the more detailed
regulations that we laid on 22 November to bring the legislation into
force.
I believe that
the proposed £10,000 maximum penalty is about right for
employers who conduct no document checks and wilfully abuse the system,
but penalties will be imposed on a case-by-case basis. The sliding
scale will set the parameters, but we will consider a range of factors,
including the severity of the offence and the ability of the employer
to pay. The idea is not to cripple small businesses that have made an
error, but to work alongside them when there is a problem, and to
ensure that such a thing does not happen again. However, we shall be
quite tough on repeat offenders, which is appropriate, especially if
employers are repeatedly slipshod rather than merely committing a small
error.
I trust that
hon. Members will support the measure to help to combat illegal
migration and, particularly, the exploitation of vulnerable workers. It
will demonstrate to the public and our partners in Europe that we are
serious about tackling one of the root causes of illegal
immigration.
I shall
deal with the intervention and any other questions raised by hon.
Members when I sum
up.
9.4
am
Damian
Green (Ashford) (Con): It is always a pleasure to serve
under your chairmanship, Mr. Taylor.
I am grateful for the
Ministers explanation. It was a touch thin, but that is not
surprising because this is not a serious piece of legislation; it is a
press release dressed up as a statutory instrument. The order was
designed to make Ministers look tough with £10,000 fines, as
though that would have a huge effect in cracking down on illegal
working. As ever, I seek consensus with the Minister, who is of course
right to say that illegal working is one of the principal drivers of
illegal immigration and often leads to vulnerable people being
exploited by unscrupulous employers. To that extent, I agree with her,
and I agree with the Government that we need more effective action to
crack down on illegal
working. The issue before the Committee, however, is whether the order
is the most effective way of achieving that end.
Privately, I
am sure, the Minister knows that the order will be largely irrelevant
and will do neither any active harm nor any active good. As she and the
Committee will be aware, the overwhelming factor that determines
whether somebody who is that way inclined is likely to commit a crime
is the likelihood of being caught, yet none of the provisions before
the Committee suggests that unscrupulous employers will be more likely
to be caught if they employ illegal
immigrants.
Mr.
Jeremy Browne (Taunton) (LD): Will the hon. Gentleman
expand on that point? When the Conservatives were last in government,
the then Home Secretary introduced minimum sentencing guidelines, and I
assume that part of the reason for that was to deter people from
criminality. Is the hon. Gentleman now saying that it is not
sentencing, but the likelihood of being caught, that acts as a
deterrent?
Damian
Green:
Such things need to be done in conjunction with
better policing, which is what we had under the previous Conservative
Government, although we do not have it under this Government. I am
extremely happy for the hon. Gentleman to lead us into a debate on the
effective policing of illegal immigration, because that would give me
the chance, which I always enjoy, of reaffirming my partys
commitment to a proper, integrated border force combing the police, the
immigration service and Her Majestys Revenue and Customs so
that we have proper
control
The
Chairman:
Order. Will the hon. Gentleman focus on the
topic of the debate, which is the level of the maximum penalty set in
the order?
Damian
Green:
I am very happy to do so. I merely sought to put
into context the helpful intervention by the hon. Member for Taunton,
which illustrated why the order, which will do neither much harm nor
much good, is largely irrelevant to our attempts to crack down on
illegal working, which the Minister rightly called an important
issue.
In that
respect, will the Minister tell us what estimates the Government have
made of the number of people who are currently working illegally and of
the changepresumably, the reductionthat will result
from the introduction of the penalty before us? A recent Government
press release said that the Border and Immigration Agency conducted
5,200 illegal working operations in 2006 and removed 22,000 people from
the UK, and it would be interesting to know what percentage of the
number of people working illegally those 22,000 people constitute. It
would also be interesting to know how many prosecutions were made in
2006 and how many the Minister estimates will be made in
2007.
The Minister has
promised to return to the very good point made by my right hon. Friend
the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden, and she should certainly do so,
because it is not only private sector employers who employ illegal
workers. As we have discovered to the Governments embarrassment
in recent months, the
public sector also employs illegal workers. The Home
Office famously employed agency cleaners who were illegal workers, and
the situation at the company that the Minister recently visited was
similar. That gives rise to the important question raised by my right
hon. Friend: who is responsible? Is it the Home Office, the agency that
supplies the Home Office, or other parts of the public sector?
Recently, we have heard of security guards who were working illegally
guarding not only Metropolitan police installations, but the Prime
Ministers
car.
The problem is
likely to be severe across the public sector. The Minister owes it to
the Committee to explain who will be responsible for paying the fines,
assuming that they are incurred, and whether any provision is made in
departmental budgets for the extra expense that will certainly accrue
if public sector institutions are made responsible for paying the
fines. She will presumably know how much is in the Home Office budget
for that.
That point
highlights the underlying problem of this approach to policy, whereby
Ministers are seeking a headline with a tough-sounding fine. Sounding
tough for the sake of it does not achieve anything. One of the more
disturbing parts of the Ministers speech was when she mentioned
individual cases and said, We will be very tough. One
hopes that the courts will actually take the decisions on individual
sentences. Last time I looked, there was still a distinction between
the Executive and judiciary, yet Ministers gaily say what the toughness
of individual cases will be. She has said specifically that there will
be a sliding scale, so consideration will presumably be given to
whether employers acted in good faith and were deceived by employees,
or acted in bad
faith.
Mr.
Browne:
Does the hon. Gentleman anticipate that the courts
will look sympathetically on the Government, given the state of the
public finances, and fine them less than those in the private
sector?
Damian
Green:
I profoundly hope and expect that the courts will
act fairly in any case and show neither fear nor favour towards the
Home Office. Relations between the Home Office and the judiciary are
rather better than those between the Home Office and the police, for
instance, and other agents of the state over which the Home Office has
control. I am sure that the courts will act
fairly.
The order will
be largely irrelevant to the fight against illegal working. Proper
enforcement will make more difference than the level of a fine, whether
it is for a criminal offence, or a civil penalty. The order will not do
much harm, but it will not do very much good
either.
9.12
am
Mr.
Browne:
I am grateful to you, Mr. Taylor, for
calling me to speak.
I
share the abhorrence of hon. Member for Ashford of the
Governments rather crude populism on immigration control. If
their policy were effective, we would not need to revise the rules so
frequently and come up with new initiativesgimmicks, in some
casesthat are designed to make a difference.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman
that the likelihood of getting caught is the greatest deterrent for
anybody who is minded to commit a criminal act, although I was
surprised that he seemed to downplay the penalty as a deterrent, which
I believe it is. Nevertheless, I do not wish to find disagreement with
him where it does not
exist.
My
party supports the order. We hope that it will make some difference to
reduce illegal working and give greater protection to people who work
illegally and are often exploited by unscrupulous employers. After all,
people who employ illegal workers are likely to be less concerned than
many about the circumstances under which those workers are employed.
For example, they might not pay them the legal minimum wage. If the
order acts as a deterrent to that, it will be welcome
news.
I have a few
questions to ask the Minister. On what basis was the level set at
£10,000, and will she explain at greater length how much scope
there is for variation? She said that judgments would be made on a
case-by-case basis, but if the headline figure is £10,000, does
she have an estimate of the average, minimum or typical figures? How
many cases does she anticipate involving a fine of less than
£5,000, or of less than £1,000? If the maximum is
£10,000, but the norm is £100, £10,000 is a truly
headline figure. It reminds me of those signs that one sees on trains
saying, Anyone caught dropping litter will be fined up to
£1,000. I have never once seen anyone on a train being
fined £1,000 for dropping litter or for smoking. The figure
exists for the purpose of sounding sound tough and authoritative, but
in most cases it is not applied. I should be interested to know the
percentage of cases to which she anticipates the £10,000 maximum
being applied, and to hear answers to the other questions that I have
asked.
It is also
reasonable to ask how much total revenue the Government anticipate
raising annually from the measure. Indeed, following the point made by
the hon. Member for Ashford, how much do the Government expect to pay
each year to comply with the penalties that they, as employers, will
incur as a result of the measure? I should also be interested to know
how the revenue will be spent. Will it be earmarked for projects to
reduce illegal immigration, will it stay in the Home Office budget, or
will it go into the overall public spending
pot?
There is an
opportunity for the Government to make a wider political point, not
because the revenue will be significant in the grand scheme of things,
but because, in other areas of the criminal justice system, they have
sought to correlate penalties with good deeds. For example, when
magistrates fine people who commit offences, the penalties or the
results of the fine go towards the victims of crime, so I should be
interested to know whether a similar scheme is envisaged for the
penalties under discussion.
Finally, does the Minister
believe that the deterrent will be sufficient to have an impact on
serious and organised crime? Some people might fear that the odd
restaurant owner who employs an illegal immigrant to do the washing up
will be caught in the system, but it is right that they are, because
they ought not to do that. There will be a case-by-case judgment, so if
an employer runs only a small restaurant or cafĂ(c), they will
receive only a small fine. However, the big
organised criminal enterprises that oversee cockle pickers, or are part
of lower profile cases that, none the less, often involve greater
numbers of people, will be caught in the net less frequently. In other
words, the relatively small fry will end up being targeted and will
inflate the Governments figures to demonstrate that progress
has been made. The measure will not necessarily address the nub of the
problem.
In summary,
I have no objection to the proposal. I want reasonable measures to be
taken to reduce the problem of illegal immigration and to protect
people of all types in the workplace. However, I am sceptical about how
effective the proposal will be, given my doubts about how often the
maximum fine will be applied in
practice.
9.18
am
Mr.
Lilley:
In considering such an order, which imposes a
fine, the Committee faces a central challenge: to ensure that the
penalty fits the crime. We must evaluate the damage done by illegal
immigration and ensure that the penalties that we impose are
proportionate and appropriate. I want the Government to spell out the
damage done to the community by illegal immigrants and by their
employment, because it is not clear to me what damage the Government
believe is done by illegal
immigration.
The
Government say very clearly that legal immigration is unequivocally
beneficial to this country, and that when people are allowed lawfully
to work here, they benefit the economy through increasing the size of
our gross domestic product, through taking jobs that British workers
are not willing to do, through being employed and thereby in future
paying our pensions, and due to several other reasons. All the reasons
that they give for welcoming lawful immigration imply that the benefits
are proportionate to the number of lawful immigrants we havethe
more immigrants, the greater the benefits. It is not clear to me why
simply because someone falls into the category of illegal they do not
bring the same benefits. Therefore, the appropriate view, according to
the Governments logic, is to legalise all
immigrationindeed, I believe that is more or less the unspoken
policy of the Liberal Democrats, and all credit to them for at least
the logic of their position.
Mr.
Browne:
Will the right hon. Gentleman give
way?
Mr.
Lilley:
In a moment. I do not think that the benefits of
immigration are proportionate to the numbers, and I have spelled that
out. I believe that there are limited categories of immigration that
are beneficial to this
country.
The
Chairman:
Order. May I remind the right hon. Gentleman
that the debate concentrates on the maximum penalty set by the draft
order?
Mr.
Lilley:
I take your point absolutely, Mr.
Taylor. I am trying to establish the damage done by immigration so that
I can relate the size of the penalty to that. Unless and until the
Government spell out the damage done by illegal immigration, how can we
relate the penalty to it? The Governments argument is that far
from any damage being done by immigration, it is
entirely beneficial. If that is the case, why are they penalising it,
restricting it and saying that some categories should be prevented? I
simply want the Government to explain that.
I have
explained the rationale for limiting immigration, but accepting that
requires one to disabuse oneself of the argument the Government advance
in favour of lawful immigration, because it applies just as much to the
workers employed by the Home Office and the Metropolitan police. Those
workers were doing jobs that otherwise would presumably have not been
filled by British workers. Why are we to punish those people, or those
who employed those people? Until we have a rationale from the
Government for setting some restrictions, limits and punishments, we
cannot rationally decide what the size of the punishment should
be.
Chris
Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab): Would the right hon.
Gentleman include in the group of illegal immigrants cockle pickers and
the pickers of fruit in Lincolnshire, who are run by gangmasters who do
not pay any tax? Would he say that they were beneficial to the British
economy?
Mr.
Lilley:
The hon. Gentleman misunderstands me. I am saying
that his partys logic is that all immigrants are beneficial to
the economy. I have never maintained that. I think that the economic
benefits of mass immigration are negligible. Limited immigration is a
good thingit is like oil in a motor car; oil is a lubricant and
to have no immigration would be as absurd as trying to run a car with
no oil. However, immigration is not the fuel, and the benefits to the
economy are not proportionate to the amount of immigration in the same
way as the amount of gasoline is of benefit when it is put in a car. We
need a certain minimum amount of immigration and beyond that there
should be a restrictive policy. That is a logical position from which
to restrict the amount of immigration. The Government say very
differently
[Interruption]
The
Chairman:
Order. Is the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd
seeking to
intervene?
Chris
Ruane
indicated
dissent.
Mr.
Lilley:
I am sure the hon. Gentleman made a very important
point and I am sorry that I missed it and cannot respond.
I appreciate that Labour
Members are embarrassed at finding that they have no rationale for
restricting immigration, but until they do have one, they cannot
logically set a penalty for
it.
Mr.
Browne:
I just want to clarify that it is not the policy
of the Liberal Democrats to legalise all immigration. However, we have
observed that the joint policy of the Labour and Conservative
partiesthat all illegal immigrants in the United Kingdom will
be forcibly deportedis unlikely ever to be realised. I wait
with eager anticipation to see whether that policy will come to
fruition, or whether both the Labour and Conservative parties are
colluding by advancing a policy that they know perfectly well that they
cannot deliver.
Mr.
Lilley:
I am sorry that I accidentally attribute to the
Liberal party a degree of coherence that their policies do not actually
possess. To make it clear, the Liberal party of course simply oppose
every specific restriction on
immigration
The
Chairman:
Order. These matters are appropriate for a wider
debate, but the Committee is discussing the maximum penalty in the
draft order.
Mr.
Lilley:
I shall therefore bring my remarks rapidly to a
close. I simply wanted to leave the Government with a conundrum: unless
and until they give us the rationale for restricting immigration, they
cannot set penalties. However, I eagerly await the Ministers
reply to the question that I posed earlier, which she promised to
answer.
9.25
am
Meg
Hillier:
It is my custom and practice in Committee to deal
with specific points raised at the end of the
debate.
I thank the
hon. Member for Ashford for his comments, and I am interested to hear
that he thinks that we govern by press release because I understood
that to be his partys policy. The Government are in the
business of government and policy making, and we take the legislative
process very seriouslyI am sure that everyone is reassured to
know that. I am proposing the order because it is important that we
improve the processes for tackling illegal immigration on a proper
footing. If his party chooses to operate by press release, that is
fine, but he should not tar all of us with the same
brush.
The hon.
Gentleman raised the significance of the penalty figure as if it was
our key headline, but we actually carried out a large public
consultation and the amount is in line with the mid-point in European
figures and equates to the cost of returning people. The hon. Member
for Taunton might also be interested to know the cost of deporting an
illegal worker. The Hampton and Macrory reports looked into it, and our
proposals pick up on a number of the recommendations
made.
I would also
contest the point made by the hon. Member for Ashford about the order
being largely irrelevant. We have seen a big shift already. Employers
have redoubled their checks on employees simply because this has been
in the pipeline. I know from ministerial correspondence that illegal
workers from up and down the country have been turning up at
MPs surgeries asking what they should do. Hopefully, MPs on
both sides of the House have been reminding them that they are here
illegally and encouraging them to leave the country. Our efforts have
flushed out a number of people who slipped through the net before
because employers did not think that they would face such a stiff
penalty.
The hon.
Gentleman touched on estimates of the number of people working
illegally. We are introducing the new points-based system, e-borders
and visas, fingerprints for foreign nationals and foreign national
identity cards, partly so that we know precisely who is in the country
and what they are doingwe want to be able to count people in
and out, as they do in Australia.
I am sure that he is very familiar with the work of my hon. Friend the
Minister for Borders and Immigration in developing this important and
significant change to our immigration policies, which I commend to the
Committee.
It is worth
reminding the Committee that in 2006 we removed 63,000
peopleone every eight minutes. We removed people for different
reasons. Some were removed for immigration offences and some for work
offences. In 2005, there were 13 prosecutions under section 8 of the
1996 Act, which will apply until 28 February 2008. That is the
most recent year for which figures are available. For the rest of the
information we rely on management figures, but I shall write to hon.
Members with precise details rather than going through them in
Committee.
Ten years
after the 1996 Act, we introduced the 2006 Act, and we are
introducing this proposal partly because the criminal approach was slow
and clunky. The system of civil penalties should be swifter and better.
As I said, employers are already cracking down on illegal workers. The
penalties are an incentive to obey the rules, so the number of
prosecutions is not necessarily an indicator of successit is
just one of many steps on the way to
success.
The right
hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden raised a number of points,
including one about public authorities. Government Departments are in a
peculiar position because strictly speaking they are immune under the
Crown, but of course security and identity checks are undertaken on
Government-employed staff as standard practice. Problems arising from
the employment of peoplefor the Government and other
organisationsthrough agencies often grab headlines. Measures
that we have taken have helped to tackle those problems by ensuring
that people cannot hide behind the nature of their
employment.
We need
to ensure that the rules apply equally to all businesses employing
people. If people are employed through an agency, that agency, as the
employer, is responsible. However, any organisationwhether the
Government or any otherthat uses such an agency also has a
responsibility to ensure that agencies comply with the law. I raised
that with the East London Bus Group, in my constituency, which took a
very responsible approach, along with its contractor agency, to tackle
those problems. That illustrates my point
entirely.
Damian
Green:
This is an important point. If I understand the
Minister rightly, when a public bodyor, logically, a private
companyuses an agency, the agency will be responsible. The
consequence of that will presumably be that the cost of using agencies
will rise. The agencies will know that people have slipped through the
net and that they will end up paying fines, and they will want to cover
the associated
costs.
Meg
Hillier:
I suspect that hon. Members have not had the
opportunity to visit such organisationsI would happily organise
a visit. The Border and Immigration Agency would certainly facilitate a
visit for Members so that they could see what happens in good,
reputable companies.
Gordon
Banks (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Lab): Does my hon.
Friend agree that it is the basic responsibility of all employers to
provide legal checks, and that employment agencies should be no
different from the end
employer?
Meg
Hillier:
Exactly so. My hon. Friend raises a point that I
was about to make. Whoever the employer is, he is responsible. The
fines come into force only if a company does not fulfil that
responsibility. Responsible companies, including agencies that employ
people to do contract work on behalf of others, already do so. It is
important that all of them, including those that are perhaps less
compliant, hear that message.
I am not clear what the hon.
Member for Ashford was referring to when he spoke of extra costs for
employers. Responsible employers would not want to employ someone who
was illegal.
The hon.
Gentleman also asked about projections of the number of people likely
to be prosecuted. As I said, there is a sliding scale of sanctions, so
a simple projection is not necessarily possible. However, we will be
watching to see how things work out, judging how different companies
work, and listening to feedback from them and from the public sector
organisations involved.
Reference was made to matters
involving the Security Industry Authority. I alert the Committee to the
fact that the Home Secretary will be making a statement on the
authority in the House today after business questions. If hon. Members
wish to know more about progress on that front, I refer to them to that
statement. As for budgets, £500,000 of the Border and
Immigration Agencys overall budget is allocated for
enforcement.
On the
question of fines, the hon. Member for Ashford spoke about proper
enforcement. I agree, and I am glad that he, too, wants proper
enforcement. The level of fines is set very much as an incentive for
employers to tackle the issue. If they do not do things properly and
persistently break the rules, they will be fined quite a lot of money,
which will affect their business. That seems fair, and I would be
surprised if hon. Members were to disagree with that.
The hon. Member for
Tauntonwhat a turn of phrase he hasspoke of gimmicks
and said that we come back to things with such frequency. I know that
10 years in Parliament is quite quick in the grand scheme of things,
but it is 10 years since the 1996 Act was introduced. Last year, we
replaced it with the 2006 Act, and we are only now coming
forward with the orders and regulations.
I have addressed some of the
questions about why we settled for £10,000. I repeat that that
is about the mid-point for Europe. I can provide details of European
scales if the hon. Gentleman so wishes, but it will be easier to do so
in writing. The sum is a big incentive to comply and covers the full
cost of removal. We do not expect there to be a surplus, but the sum
will cover the costs of the process. However, we will keep an eye on
things. If there are too many bad employers out there, we might make
more money than expected, but removing people has to be paid for. The
system will not be used unfairlyit is about education as well
as providing sanctions. Our aim is to give employers support.
I have done a bit of mystery
shopping on the Border and Immigration Agency employers
hotline. One can ring up and ask for all sorts of information about an
employee or potential employeeor a fictional employee. I would
not recommend making fictional inquiries, but my inquiry was legitimate
because, as the Minister responsible, I was checking the hotline out. I
received good, sensible and simple advice that would have been easy to
use, and my call was answered within 30 seconds. I recommend that hon.
Members advertise that fact in their
constituencies.
The
hon. Member for Taunton also raised the issue of big, organised
enterprises. Organised criminal activity will still be subject to the
criminal offence of companies knowingly employing illegal workers, so
criminal sanctions will apply at the serious end of
things.
Mr.
Browne:
Before the Minister moves away from the
£10,000 figure, will she engage with my point about how many
times the maximum fine will be applied? Although the headline figure,
like the penalty for dropping litter on a bus, sounds like an enormous
deterrent that is out of all proportion to the offence, my concern is
that it will hardly ever be applied. The danger, as the hon. Member for
Ashford said, is that the press release might look far more draconian
than the reality. How many times, and in what percentage of cases, will
the maximum figure be applied, and in what percentage of cases will
half that figure be applied?
Meg
Hillier:
I hate to disappoint the hon. Gentleman, but we
are in the business of government, not speculation, and it would be
wrong and impossible for me to speculate in this case or to set a
target for the number of £10,000
fines
Mr.
Browne:
Perish the thought.
Meg
Hillier:
Indeed. It would clearly be ridiculous to do so
in this case.
The
provisions are a disincentive to employers to break the rules. In an
ideal world, everyone would comply with the rules because they were
afraid of getting a £10,000 fine, but we do not live in an ideal
world, so I suspect that there will be those who break them.
There could, however, be
reductions in fines, and, if I may, I will indulge hon. Members briefly
with an example. If there was a problem the first timeperhaps
someone had done a partial check, rather than a proper onea
warning letter would be issued. The maximum penalty would be up to
£5,000 a worker, but that would be reduced by half for every
illegal worker reported to the agency and for proper co-operation from
the organisation involved. For second and third transgressions, the
fine and the reduction in the co-operation would be balanced
out.
Mr.
Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con): Will the Minister give the
Governments best estimate of the number of people working
illegally in this country?
Meg
Hillier:
As I said, we will find out a lot more about who
is in the country. Unfortunately, the Conservative party abolished
border controls in 1994. We would have
much better figures if that had not happened, which would have made all
our lives considerably easier. That is why we are introducing the
changes.
Damian
Green:
Every time Ministers bring up that canard, it is
worth pointing out that they are wrong. The abolition of all controls
on exits actually happened in 1998, when, I believe, this Government
were in power.
Meg
Hillier:
I think that you have been rather indulgent,
Mr. Taylor, and I do not want to crave your indulgence any
more by going further down that line, much as I am tempted. Perhaps we
can pursue the issue outside the room.
Mr.
Blunt:
The Minister might have all sorts of reasons to
explain why there is no precise figureI am quite happy to
accept thembut there must be some form of working estimate. If
there is not, why have the Government introduced the
order?
The
Chairman:
Order. The debate has strayed beyond our terms
of reference. We are talking about the maximum penalty in the draft
order.
Meg
Hillier:
Thank you, Mr. Taylor. I will happily
conduct a conversation with the hon. Gentlemen outside the room, where
we can perhaps have a longer debate.
Mr.
Blunt:
On a point of order, Mr. Taylor. The
order has been introduced to addresses illegal working, and I should
have thought that it would be in order for the Minister to tell us the
Governments estimate of the number of illegal workers that the
order is intended to cover. I wonder whether you might re-examine the
issue to see whether it is in order for the Minister to answer my
question.
The
Chairman:
I will allow the Minister one sentence to
respond before she returns to the thrust of the
debate.
Meg
Hillier:
I never fail to find such things amusing and a
little sad. I have four younger brothers, and sometimes, indulgently, I
think of Opposition Members as little brothers who like to needle the
Government. They know that they cannot give an answer about the number
of people who are here illegally, and nor can the Government give a
straight, simple answer. That is precisely because those people are
here illegally, and a lot of them will go to great lengths to hide
their existence. Thanks to the Governments policy, however, we
are winkling them out. We are removing them, and some are choosing to
leave voluntarily because there will be nowhere for them to hide.
However, you have indulged me, Mr. Taylor, and I sense that
I had better move back to the point in question.
I recognise that hon. Members
might have things that they wish to go and do, but I am tempted to
respond to the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden at greater
length than I might otherwise do.
Chris
Ruane:
Perhaps to illustrate the Ministers point
further, will she say how many criminals have never been
caught?
The
Chairman:
Order. May I ask the Minister to return to the
topic of the
debate?
Meg
Hillier:
It gives me great pleasure to return to the
comments made by the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden, who
spoke about the penalty fitting the crime. That is exactly what we are
trying to achieve with the sliding scale of penalties. I am staggered
by his question about damage to the community. All hon. Members have
seen such damage. Illegal workers have been exploited, and people have
been trafficked to work illegally. I would have thought that the right
hon. Gentleman would be concerned about the tax has not been
paid.
Mr.
Lilley:
If the only damage results from immigrants
illegal status, is not that damage best removed by legalising them,
rather than by increasing penalties? I do not believe that the benefits
that the Government talk about exist, so enforcement is worth while,
but if the only disadvantages arise from the illegal status, surely the
logic of the Ministers position is to end the illegal
status.
Meg
Hillier:
I am not sure whether the right hon. Gentleman
considers himself to be an outrider for the right hon. Member for
Witney (Mr. Cameron), but we are hearing some interesting
ideas. I should be interested to know what his right hon. Friend thinks
about that, because if it is Conservative policy, that is very
interesting
[
Interruption.
]
Ah, I
see that there is a division among Conservative
Members.
I
alert the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden to the migration
impact forum, which we established to assess the impact of migration on
communities. It involves people from different public sector and
business organisations in regions throughout the country. There are
regional committees and a central committee, which has met twice under
the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Minister for Borders and
Immigration and the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local
Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Mr.
Dhanda) and considered the impact of migration. For many organisations,
illegal immigrants create pressure on services. We recognise that,
which was why we set up the
forum.
I
am tempted to go into detail about lawful immigration, but I will not
do so. We established the Migration Advisory Committee, which is made
up of a group of independent experts to advise the Government about the
skills that we need. We have already ruled out low-skilled workers from
outside the EU. Our assessment is that we do not need to encourage the
migration of such people when we have enough resources in
Europe.
In summary, it
is worth highlighting some of the key aspects of what we are trying to
do overall, particularly with regard to the order. First, we are
carrying out tougher checks overseas and strengthening our border
controls. The Border and Immigration Agency will be a unified border
force, integrating customs, immigration and our visa operations
overseas. The UK Borders
Act 2007 received Royal Assent in October, and will introduce mandatory
biometric identity cards for non-European economic area nationals with
fingerprints on cards to identify foreigners who are resident in the
UK. That will combat identity fraud. We are also considering how to
incorporate such data and identity cards into arrangements for
regulating access to employment and public services for those
individuals.
The new
points-based system, which starts in February, will introduce a
licensing system for employers who want to bring in skilled workers
from outside the EAA. It will be backed up by compliance and
inspection. We are increasing enforcement activity and closer joint
workingI hope that I highlighted thatwith other
enforcement departments to bear down on the harm that illegal
immigration causes to the United Kingdom and to make it clear that
illegal
migrants and those who choose to employ them face an increased chance of
being caught. We are also offering employers a checking service to help
them to comply with the law, and we have a public communications
campaign under wayI urge hon. Members to keep their eyes open
for some eye-catching adverts that will appear in the new
yearto ensure that employers are fully aware of the changes.
That brings me back to the civil penalties outlined in the order, which
I recommend to the Committee. I hope that hon. Members on both sides of
the Committee will agree to this important
improvement.
Question
put and agreed
to.
Resolved,
That
the Committee has considered the draft Immigration (Employment of
Adults Subject to Immigration Control) (Maximum Penalty) Order
2007.
Committee
rose at fifteen minutes to Ten
oclock.