Tom
Brake: I think that the Minister has opened a can of
worms, intentionally or otherwise. I wonder how he is going to put all
these worms back in the can. I do not think that it is entirely clear
what the position of Members of Parliament is. He seemed to indicate
that the letters that MPs sent with the attachments from Ministers
would in some circumstances be valid and in others they would
not. It is not clear how the charging system is going to
operate—MPs will not be charged, but if constituents approach
us, are we going to have to tell them the bad news? There is a host of
issues around the way this is going to be handled, which are not clear
to me. Will the Minister explain how he will address
that?
Mr.
Woolas: I thank the hon. Gentleman for the opportunity to
clarify again the answer to the question. The problems that have been
raised in this debate already exist. With regard to MPs’ letters
as opposed to Ministers’ letters, it is already the case that
authorities—private sector as well as public sector—can
choose not to take an MP’s letter as validation. I made the
point about the status. Of course, it can cause huge annoyance when an
MP’s letter is not taken as valid and authentic.
The question
about Ministers’ letters is important and I do not know the
answer. I will get an answer. It applies in other areas, of course. I
will not attempt to answer it now. I thank the hon. Member for
Aldridge-Brownhills for the question. I will write to the Committee and
hope that that will clarify the position. It does not affect the
principle that we are debating of the power to raise fees for these
services.
The other
suggestion I would like to make—I will come back to this in the
second half—is that it would be helpful to the Committee, in the
light of the scrutiny that we have had today, if guidance on these
points were issued by UKBA on its website and elsewhere. I know from my
own experience that an MP’s letter is sought frequently in many
circumstances.
I hope that I
have answered the questions. Perhaps I have strayed beyond the remit of
this SI in attempting to be helpful, but an important point has been
raised.
Mr.
Shepherd: This is a very important point. I cannot imagine
circumstances where I have written to a Minister, had an authoritative
letter back and not enclosed a copy of that letter to the constituent.
It is effectively the Crown answering my constituent’s query. In
his hesitancy over this, the Minister is undermining a clear
constitutional position: the relationship of Parliament to the Ministry
and the clarity of that—that when a Minister gives an
undertaking or an answer, that is of value. That is central. Unintended
consequences are balanced by that, as we have just heard. Naturally,
any sane person would come to a Member of Parliament to make inquiries
on their behalf to the Minister, or agencies under his control, and
seek an answer that way—because it is an easier way, with often
a faster response than trying to apply through agencies. Therefore,
this is very muddled, but at the heart of it is the Minister’s
own confusion over the importance of a letter from a Minister of the
Crown, stating what the position
is.
Mr.
Woolas: I thank the hon. Gentleman. I agree with him; he
raises an important point. My hesitancy was not because I do not wish
the Minister’s letter to the MP to have that status—it is
highly desirable that we clarify that it does have that status. I am
not briefed on this issue.
Mr.
Shepherd: It is a fundamental
concept.
Mr.
Woolas: The hon. Gentleman says that it is a fundamental
point and he is right that it is. It is right, therefore, that I should
seek legal advice so that we can give reassurance to Members. This is
way outside the remit of the power that this statutory instrument is
asking for but, to reassure him, of course a letter from a Minister to
an MP must carry status. I will seek, in relation to the areas that we
are debating today, the reassurance that he needs and I will write to
members of the Committee about that. I believe that that will be
helpful to the House and helpful to Members of
Parliament.
Ms
Stuart: I am trying to be helpful. The statutory
instrument refers to the ability to charge a
fee “for
a letter or other document confirming a person’s immigration or
nationality status”.
As I understand it,
when I write to the Minister on behalf of a constituent, it is the
letter that I get back from the Minister that will tell me, in one way
or another, whether an official document has been issued. That letter
is not the official authorisation, it just confirms the absence or
existence of another document—that is why the debate is getting
a bit muddled. The letter itself does not confer the status. The
Minister’s letter usually tells me what status, in one way or
another, has been
issued.
Mr.
Woolas: That intervention was extremely helpful. In
practice, I think that that is the case. If it were not the case then,
in addition to the many hundreds of letters that I am asked to sign
each evening, I would be asked
to sign a lot more, but it is not contradictory to the point that the
hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills is
making. Mr.
Dai Havard (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab): The
question regarding the status of the replies has been helpful. My
concern is to clarify what happens if someone comes to me and I make an
inquiry on their behalf. What if I get a letter back that says that
some document has been issued, I give that to the constituent and they
get a bill for the inquiry that I have made on their behalf, so there
is an indirect charge? I think that that needs to be clarified as well.
The agency will not charge me for making the inquiry, but it will
indirectly charge the constituent on whose behalf I made the
inquiry.
Mr.
Woolas: Let me give the reassurance that that would not
and could not happen. The fee is levied at the point of application for
the letter. If a constituent requests help from an MP, there is no
relationship directly between that constituent and the MP. To reassure
the Committee again, that problem and that indirect route already
exist, irrespective of fee charges.
Damian
Green: With reference to the intervention of the hon.
Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston and the confusion about the fact that
an MP could receive a Minister’s letter, that itself, of course,
would not be the document, but it would assert something as though the
document existed, and if the document is going to cost hundreds of
pounds, a peculiar limbo is created by those circumstances. In light of
the confusion caused even by helpful interventions, I suggest that
the Minister withdraws this measure, because it has clearly
not been thought through properly, and if he does not, I will urge my
hon. Friends—and indeed others—to vote against
it.
Mr.
Woolas: I do not think that that is a fair point. As I
have tried to emphasise, the problems of the status of letters from
Ministers to MPs and of MPs being used to bypass procedures or to
perform an advocacy role, sometimes in parallel with legal
representations, sometimes in place of representations by solicitors
and authorised immigration advisory services, already exist. The
order
seeks the power to levy a fee. That power is sought, irrespective of the
very helpful debate that we have had about the status of letters from
Ministers to MPs and the separate point about MPs’ letters. I
take that point, but I argue that it is completely separate from what
we are seeking in this section 51 order.
Ms
Stuart: To make sure that we get out of the hole of when
the fee kicks in, can my hon. Friend make it clear that the fee kicks
in when the constituent applies for the document? The MP comes in after
the fee has been paid. That exchange deals with the
status.
Mr.
Woolas: I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. She
is right. The fee is levied at the point of application. Such
circumstances exist in a wide area of public administration. To those
hon. Members who say that there is confusion, I say that I agree with
that point in the narrow area. It would be beneficial to the House if
the status of those ministerial letters were clarified. It would also
be beneficial to good government. But I argue strongly that that is an
entirely different point from the powers that we are seeking through
section 51. On that basis, I commend the order.
Question
put. The
Committee divided: Ayes 8, Noes
5.
Division
No.
1] Question
accordingly agreed to.
Resolved, That
the Committee has considered the draft Immigration and Nationality
(Fees) (Amendment) Order
2009. 3.29
pm Committee
rose.
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