Draft Immigration (Employment of Adults Subject to Immigration Control) (Maximum Penalty) (Amendment) Order 2014
The Committee consisted of the following Members:
Ainsworth, Mr Bob (Coventry North East) (Lab)
† Blunkett, Mr David (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
† Brokenshire, James (Minister for Security and Immigration)
† Carswell, Mr Douglas (Clacton) (Con)
† Clarke, Mr Tom (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
† Goldsmith, Zac (Richmond Park) (Con)
† Griffiths, Andrew (Burton) (Con)
† Hames, Duncan (Chippenham) (LD)
† Hanson, Mr David (Delyn) (Lab)
† Hemming, John (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
† Lee, Dr Phillip (Bracknell) (Con)
† McKechin, Ann (Glasgow North) (Lab)
† Milton, Anne (Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury)
Munn, Meg (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
† Opperman, Guy (Hexham) (Con)
† Shannon, Jim (Strangford) (DUP)
† Stewart, Rory (Penrith and The Border) (Con)
† Wilson, Phil (Sedgefield) (Lab)
John-Paul Flaherty, Committee Clerk
† attended the Committee
The following also attended (Standing Order No. 118(2) )
Chope, Mr Christopher (Christchurch) (Con)
Twelfth Delegated Legislation Committee
Wednesday 19 March 2014
[Mrs Linda Riordan in the Chair]
Draft Immigration (Employment of Adults Subject to Immigration Control) (Maximum Penalty) (Amendment) Order 2014
2.30 pm
The Minister for Security and Immigration (James Brokenshire): I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Immigration (Employment of Adults Subject to Immigration Control) (Maximum Penalty) (Amendment) Order 2014.
May I welcome you, Mrs Riordan, to the Chair, and other members of the Committee to our consideration of the draft order?
On 29 February 2008, a new system of civil penalties came into force. It made employers of illegal workers liable to a civil penalty of up to £10,000 for each illegal worker. The maximum civil penalty is set by affirmative resolution. Six years on, after a full review of the operation of the civil penalty regime and public consultation, the Government propose to increase the maximum penalty from £10,000 for each illegal worker to £20,000. This time last year, the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister both expressed their support for the proposal, and the resolution is the purpose of today’s debate.
We need to be clear about the harm that illegal working causes. Access to work is the main incentive for illegal immigration. The Home Office is committed to operating firm and secure border controls. However, we can deliver a comprehensive response to illegal immigration, including overstaying, only if we work with United Kingdom employers to deny employment to those who do not have the right to live or work in this country. Illegal working is often associated with abusive and exploitative behaviour by rogue employers; the mistreatment of illegal migrant workers; tax evasion; and illegal housing conditions. The rogue employers who benefit from illegal working also undercut legitimate businesses, and the use of illegal workers has an adverse impact on the employment of people who are lawfully in the UK.
As I said, the civil penalty scheme was originally introduced in 2008 to provide a proportionate and effective sanction on employers of illegal workers. The scheme was designed better to encourage employers to comply with their legal obligations to check the right to work of all prospective employers, without criminalising those who make a mistake in their recruitment and employment practices. The legislation provides a separate criminal offence for those who knowingly use illegal labour.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP): In Northern Ireland, the UK Border Agency is very active on this matter. In almost all the cases, those who are involved seem to be of Chinese or Indian origin, because of the type of business that they have. Does the Minister intend to
take special steps to make people of those ethnic origins aware of the new laws, so that they can take the necessary steps to ensure that they are not outside the law?James Brokenshire: It is important to emphasise the work of our immigration enforcement unit. We have separated out the old UK Border Agency, with immigration enforcement taking the lead on this type of activity and stepping up our response. I am working with them to examine ways in which we can advance that further.
I think there is a communications issue that sits alongside the draft order. I take seriously the hon. Gentleman’s point about ensuring that there is good communication and that people understand why the penalty is being increased, and ensuring that we follow through on the matter and provide good guidance and information.
As I said, the maximum penalty was originally set at £10,000 for each illegal worker. That maximum applies only to employers who repeatedly breach illegal working provisions. For first-time offenders, the penalty imposed would be less, and some employers receive only a warning letter, if there are clear mitigating factors and they co-operate with Home Office enforcement officers. There is guidance that sits behind the provisions to give a sense of how the rules would be applied, and it is important to understand that.
The penalty framework has remained the same since 2008, and the Government are concerned that it no longer provides a sufficient deterrent to reflect properly the full economic advantage that can be derived by those who profit from illegal labour, or the wider costs to society. Accordingly, the Government intend to reform the scheme so that it becomes tougher on rogue employers by increasing the level of the maximum penalty to £20,000 for each illegal worker. As is the case now, the maximum penalty will be levied only on an employer who breaches the legislation on more than one occasion, but we are also strengthening the penalty scale as a whole to ensure that higher penalties are applied where employers fail in their duty to conduct proper right-to-work checks.
The scheme will continue to incorporate sensible penalty reductions for those employers who actively co-operate with the Home Office when failings in their recruitment processes come to light. A revised draft code of practice that updates the position and specifies the factors to be considered in determining the amount of the penalty will shortly be laid before the House. Accordingly, I commend the order to the Committee.
2.36 pm
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab): I welcome you to the Chair, Mrs Riordan, and the Minister to his relatively new position; it has been more than a month since the change took place. It is quite ironic that we are dealing with this order today, given the circumstances in which he secured his post, but we will put that aside, because we had a fair discussion about the matter at the time. I pay tribute to his predecessor, who did a good job as the Minister for Immigration. He was fair and open with me, as the shadow Minister, and we had a fruitful relationship. I am sure, having been shadowed by the current Minister when I was a Minister, that we will have a similar open and fair discussion today.
The Minister can relax, as can the Government Whip, in the knowledge that the Opposition will not oppose this motion today; in fact, the Opposition will welcome this motion today. Illegal employment is a scourge. It undercuts the wages of people who are here legally. It forces down wages. We need to crack down on it, and the Minister will have our support in doing that.
However, Mrs Riordan, you would expect me to ask the Minister some questions, and I think that it is only appropriate that we do so as the official Opposition. I am sure that you have read the evidence-based summary sheets provided with the documentation for the Committee, so you will know that since the measure was introduced by the Labour Government in February 2008, some 10,000 civil penalty notices have been issued.
We are talking today about increasing the penalty from £10,000 to £20,000. In the evidence-based information that we have been given, we are told that from February 2008 to the end of 2013 the gross value of penalties levied was about £90 million. After appeals, that figure fell to £70.8 million. During that period—this is from the Minister’s own notes—almost £30 million was collected and civil penalties to the value of £20 million were written off. That means, presumably, that £20.8 million is outstanding. Whether the penalty is £10,000 or £20,000, it strikes me, if penalties with a net value of £70.8 million have been levied and only £30 million of that has been collected, that it is not much of a deterrent if individuals do not have to pay the money when discovered to be breaching the law and a total of £20 million is written off by the Government accordingly.
The Minister has a duty to explain—in case I have misread the position, because such things can happen in opposition—why and in what circumstances £20 million was written off, why only £30 million of the £70.8 million was collected and what will happen to the £20.8 million that currently has been neither collected nor written off. It does not seem to be much of a penalty if that can happen.
Yesterday evening, because I prepare for these things, I googled illegal immigration, illegal staffing and fines, and by chance, just yesterday, a piece was put up on the website of the Derby Telegraph. A Derby takeaway owner—the owner of a USA Fried Chicken—applied to reinstate his late licence, having lost it some 12 months previously when two Afghani citizens, with no right to work in the United Kingdom, were found to be employed by him. They were subsequently deported. What struck me was this quotation from the paper:
“The Home Office said yesterday that USA Fried Chicken remained liable for a £10,000 penalty following the arrests”.
Now, the arrests were in April 2013 and this report was from yesterday. I quote from the article, which must be true because it is the Derby Telegraph and I am sure that it provides factually good reporting from the Home Office:
“A Home Office spokeswoman said: ‘USA Fried Chicken remains liable for a £10,000 civil penalty following the arrest of two illegal workers at the business. We will continue to take strong action against those employers who chose to use illegal labour’”.
This is yesterday, the offence was in April 2013 and a Home Office spokesperson says they remain liable for £10,000.
When and in what circumstances are such £10,000 fines liable? What is the Minister’s estimate of the time between incident and ultimate fine being levied? An
eleven and a half month period from offence to liability, when the owner of the premises is reapplying for a late licence having not, according to the report, even paid the fine that he was liable for in April last year, possibly falls within our gap here today.I would like to know from the Minister not just about the increase of the £10,000 fine to £20,000, but about the level and type of enforcement, what happens when individuals do not pay, how many people are not paying and how we can ensure that if it is to be a deterrent it is one that means that people actually pay the fine.
I should also like to know from the Minister, out of interest—this may require him to write to me or may require me to table a parliamentary question following this Committee—how many people have actually paid the maximum £10,000. If we raise the maximum from £10,000 to £20,000 but a proportion of people actually pay well below the £10,000 figure, then raising it to £20,000 may or may not add to the level of deterrent. If people do not have a high level of fine levied, then I would welcome some statistics about the fines that are actually levied.
Finally, although we support the order and will not vote against it, in paragraph 9.3 of the explanatory memorandum, the Minister—who happened to be the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) at the stage when it was signed off—indicated that there is an existing employer checking service, which we are aware of. The memorandum says, interestingly and beguilingly:
“The Home Office is considering how these services may be enhanced as part of the Department’s wider consideration of support for employers and providers of public services.”
I would welcome not just the Minister’s teasing us with the thought that the services may be enhanced. Perhaps he could outline to the Committee now what steps he is taking to ensure that there is support for employers to check whether individuals who come to the UK are here legally.
Employers can be fooled, and can find themselves liable for a very hefty fine. Currently, the Government offer support from offices in Sheffield for employee checks. Given that the Immigration Bill, which has already been through this House and is now in another place, looks to increase the number of checks by the offices in Sheffield on landlord provisions, it is important that the Government indicate what checking mechanisms they intend to enhance. The Minister has teased us in his document by saying that he plans to enhance them. Now is the time to tell the Committee how he intends to do it.
These proposals will have our support, but there are important issues that we need to explore and if the Minister cannot answer them today, or supply the answers in written form, I am sure that I will press him further at another opportunity.
2.44 pm
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con): It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Riordan. May I begin by also paying tribute to the Minister’s predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean? He did a fantastic job in trying to address the problems of immigration into this country. It was most unfortunate that he was, in a sense, caught out by the very subject we are discussing this afternoon.
I am as concerned as my constituents are about the fact that the Government have so far failed manifestly to reduce net migration to their target of tens of thousands. The rationale for the order, which incidentally I support, is largely the need to deter illegal migrants from coming to this country and deter people who have already come lawfully from overstaying, thereby becoming illegal. One of the most obvious methods we could use to deter such behaviour would be to make it unlawful. Although the explanatory memorandum repeatedly mentions illegality, it is not illegal—against the criminal law—to be in the United Kingdom without authority: to be a foreign national without permission to stay. Nor is it illegal to enter the country by subterfuge—using false papers or whatever—and be here as an illegal immigrant.
When I put to the Minister’s predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean, the question of why we do not make it a criminal offence to be an illegal immigrant, he said that we do not want to lock up in prison all the illegal immigrants, because it would be better to deport them. I fear that we are neither locking them up nor deporting them. Of the 10,000 cases where civil penalties for employing illegal migrants have been imposed, how many of those 10,000 illegal migrants have been deported? I suspect the number is pretty small. In any event, it probably pales into insignificance compared with the estimated 1 million illegal migrants currently in country.
Like so much legislation that we consider in the House, the order is perfectly worthy but only scratches the surface of a serious problem. Very large networks operate to bring illegal migrants into the country. Illegal migrants come here in the knowledge that they can enter the underworld and engage in receiving remuneration illegally from a network of illegal employers. When in my constituency the law-abiding people of Christchurch occasionally try to raise with the authorities concerns about particular cases of people who are obviously illegal migrants or working here illegally, the only response they get is that it is all far too difficult. One hears of cases of people getting out of trucks on the A31 having come through the immigration controls at Poole port; when law-abiding citizens phone the police to say, “There are people who have obviously arrived here illegally. Please do something about it,” the police say, “We can’t do anything about it because they are not committing any criminal offence.” The best we can do is ask them to report to Croydon and register themselves with the Home Office, so that they can in due course be subject to deportation or leave voluntarily. That shows that there are already enormous gaps in the law, which feed in to illegal systems.
In a detention centre in Greece, I met an individual who had transited from Afghanistan across Turkey. He then got a network to take him by boat from the eastern Mediterranean seaboard to Italy, but unfortunately his boat floundered. He was rescued by the Greek coastguard and put into a detention centre. I asked him in that detention centre why he engaged on a journey to London and he said, “Well, until about three months ago, I was in London. I was then deported back to Afghanistan.” He had paid another €10,000 to get back into Britain.
The Chair: Order. As interesting as the hon. Gentleman’s speech is, he seems to be straying a little from the subject matter and on to detention. Could he keep his remarks closely related to the subject?
Mr Chope: Absolutely, Mrs Riordan. I will try to bring myself back into order. You will be as aware as I am that the rationale for this measure is that it will deter illegal migrants. I am trying to explain by means of one example that, whatever else we are doing, we do not seem to be deterring them very effectively. This network resulted in this person getting to Greece. He paid €10,000 and he was on his way back to London because he knew that, once he got to Italy, he could then use the European system of free movement to get himself to Calais, and although we are told by the Minister and others that often people who get to Calais are detected and sent back, we do not know how many of them then try again. It is an iterative process. “You may not get across from Calais to the United Kingdom at your first attempt, but don’t worry; in the end you will succeed.” That seems to be the message.
The question that I want to ask the Minister, who I hope will respond, is, what are we doing about this? If we cannot deter the employer—we know from the contributions from the Labour Benches that the sanctions do not seem to be effective, because less than half the civil penalties have actually been paid—why are we not taking a stronger line to try to deter people from applying for jobs, knowing that they are illegal migrants in this country, quite often using forged or false documentation? Surely, those people should also be subject to criminal penalties. At the moment, they are not subject to any penalty at all. We use the term “illegal” rather widely but without much precision, because it is not illegal to be in this country as a migrant who has come across the border into the United Kingdom or overstayed without authority.
I close by saying that there is a big anomaly in this. We penalise people who are genuine asylum seekers by preventing them from being able to obtain work here. A genuine asylum seeker is not allowed to work immediately on coming into the United Kingdom. I emphasise to Labour Members that I believe in some rationalisation of our regulations. I have been proposing in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe a motion that would allow all asylum seekers to have the right to work, because surely people who come here seeking asylum should not be put in a position where they cannot do anything to help themselves.
The Chair: Order. Again I remind the hon. Gentleman to bring his speech back to the subject. The Minister may only reply on the subject of the motion, if he chooses to do that.
Mr Chope: I am sorry; I got carried away by my enthusiasm for this subject. I am sure that even if the Minister is not able to respond to all my points, while keeping in order as far as you are concerned, Mrs Riordan, he will wish to volunteer to respond to them through the usual means of communication that are available to us as parliamentarians.
The document refers to about 1.2 million businesses potentially being affected, with 250,000 new businesses starting each year—these are officially recognised businesses. I think the biggest problem we have—I
am not sure that the measure addresses it—is the unofficial businesses: the network of illegality that is increasingly prevalent across the length and breadth of our country. This increasing problem is contributing to the very high rates of immigrant activity—particularly illegal migrant activity—and feeding into the criminal gangs that exploit those who are illegal. As the memorandum points out, illegal migrants are unable to get protection from the national minimum wage legislation if they are exploited labour and not entitled to be here. I do not wish to change that rule, but it just shows how vulnerable these people are to exploitation. This is a much bigger issue than has been addressed so far by this Committee.2.55 pm
Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab): I shall not detain the Committee longer than is necessary, Mrs Riordan. I also welcome the Minister. I commiserate with him for extending his remit—it is a minefield, and we all sympathised with the hon. Member for Forest of Dean. It is a major challenge to get this right. Many Secretaries of State and Ministers of Immigration have endeavoured to do so.
I want to make two quick points. First, if we are going to—as is intended—clarify the situation for employers and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn has said, for landlords, then enforcement has to be practical. On a slightly, not facetious, but perhaps nostalgic note, I wonder whether the Minister regrets that in the first measure that the Government took, they did away with the one thing that would have assisted the call for action of the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope)—that was to have a clean, proper identity register for all those who were legitimately in this country and therefore permitted to work. Without it, we do not stand a cat in hell’s chance of knowing whether there are a million people who work here illegally or not. Even when they touch the system at whatever point, we cannot identify whether they are legally here.
Secondly, enforcement is a hell of job because employers and landlords will say, quite rightly, that they cannot legitimately get to the bottom of whether the person has a right to be here and therefore to work. It may be that Governments in future will come back to this. Nor can an embarkation system be operated; therefore it is impossible to verify whether people who have been thrown out have come back into the country.
2.57 pm
James Brokenshire: Although the measure before us is relatively and focused on the level of penalty, we have had quite a wide-ranging debate. When we discuss issues of immigration enforcement, it is right for Members to express views about how we can ensure that the system is effective, is made better and can address some of the broader themes, such as ensuring that we do control immigration. People have concerns about the impact on the labour market—which is directly relevant to this order—but also about broader issues to do with integration and the pressure on public services, so I recognise the concerns that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch set out in his contribution. He has made the effort to come here, not as a formal member of the Committee, but as a Member with an interest in this subject matter. I respect his contribution. I will seek
to address some of his points about immigration enforcement in the context of the order under consideration. I am grateful for his participation.May I also thank the right hon. Member for Delyn for his kind and warm welcome? I very much look forward in my new role to continuing some of the debates and discussions that he and I have had not just in this Parliament, but in the preceding Parliament, when I was a shadow Minister. He was fair-minded as a Minister in those days and we had some good exchanges in debates. I look forward to continuing that dialogue.
I also recognise the comments that the right hon. Gentleman made about the contribution of my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean, who I thought was a really good, effective Minister. It was a pleasure to work as part of his team and equally, as he said at the time, with the high standards that he set. I hope he will return to government in the near future. He is a real asset; he is assiduous, works hard and has a real passion for the issues that he advocates. I know that that has been reflected in a number of the contributions this afternoon.
The right hon. Member for Delyn asked a number of questions, in particular about enforcement issues. I should highlight the fact that over the last financial year the Government have stepped up their enforcement on these sorts of issue, with 47% more civil penalties levied in the current financial year than in the preceding one. It is important to underline—as I think I did to the hon. Member for Strangford in my contribution earlier—that we have established immigration enforcement to focus on dealing with the organised crime gangs that can lie behind the trade in, literally, human misery into this country.
I want to see immigration enforcement working with the border command of the National Crime Agency, harnessing the intelligence we see and co-ordinating its work with Border Force to ensure that our borders are robust and effective and that where intelligence identifies people seeking to bring people into this country illegally, we are in a stronger position—and a strengthening position—to take firm enforcement action, and criminal action where necessary, against those seeking to exploit the legislation and trade in trafficked people into this country. Indeed, the issue of modern slavery is broadly parallel, and the Government are making a commitment to stepping up our response and shining a light on this appalling trade in human misery. We all have a moral duty to seek to prevent people from being enslaved in that way.
Let me turn to the specifics of the increase in the penalty. The right hon. Member for Delyn highlighted the issue of enforcement and why civil penalties may be written off—he highlighted the figure of £20 million. In simple terms, the figure I have is that £7.9 million of the £20 million of debts that were written off related to companies against which civil penalties had been raised, but which have been dissolved or liquidated. Therefore, the assets are not there to claim those funds against. What I do agree with is that we need to step up our enforcement. I hope the right hon. Gentleman accepts that the Immigration Bill will make it easier to enforce unpaid civil penalties in the courts. However, we are also incorporating debt recovery best practice from across Departments to improve processes and possible enforcement actions, thereby making them more effective
and robust, with earlier initiation of legal proceedings for legal recovery if required, therefore ensuring that any cases where matters are left outstanding are dealt with more promptly and swiftly, which directly addresses the point on which he challenged us.Mr Hanson: The Minister has just said that £7.2 million has been written off from companies that have been dissolved. Fair enough, but that leaves £12.8 million that has not. Why was that written off?
James Brokenshire: I am quite sure that there will be a number of different reasons. It may well be that individuals were bankrupted or difficult to trace. For me, the question is about ensuring that we are swifter in our response, to track those people down and use the powers under the Immigration Bill to act firmly and effectively, such that when civil penalties are levied, they are pursued and enforced. That is certainly something that the provisions in the Immigration Bill will give the Government. Indeed, although the Opposition have opposed some measures in the Bill, I hope they will recognise that as an important step forward, adding to some of the measures that assist in the operation of the civil penalties regime, which were not attended to when it was originally established.
Mr Hanson: Could the Minister therefore tell the Committee what happened to the £30 million that has not been collected? The figures I have, which are from his own document, are: £70.8 million levied, £30 million collected and £20 million written off, and therefore around £20.8 million still not collected.
James Brokenshire: Those outstanding debts are being pursued, and we have put additional measures in the Immigration Bill to assist in that collection. That is important. It is important to support the measures and the increase we are proposing in the order, and I hope we will attract support from the Committee today. I hope the provisions in the Immigration Bill will also attract support. Yes, we can take the step of publishing a list of non-compliant employers whose penalties remain unpaid; that is what we will do. We will make the name-and-shame approach to rogue employers as robust and visible as possible in addressing further enforcement and challenging outstanding debts.
I know that the right hon. Gentleman made other points about the scale of the penalties. We will publish further guidance on the circumstances in which the penalty regime will operate and the changes that we think are appropriate in the context of the new enhanced penalty that will be available. There will be guidance on where the new initial penalty should be for a first offence. I have said that the maximum penalty would normally be available only for a repeat offence, but there is more we can do in the overall regime—something that can act as a disincentive—to ensure that employers are compliant with the measures.
I am conscious of the need for support to be provided. Employers will be able to receive support from the Home Office checking service to assist them in complying with their duties. Employers who are conducting checks e-mail their inquiries to the Home Office. We are committed
to providing a good service and further improving our support for employers. Our aim is to turn checks around in five working days, but we are currently averaging three days. I want us to continue to focus on that quality of service in our support to employers. We can learn from those practices and approaches as we deliver a similar service to landlords when we implement the measures in the Immigration Bill, which will be even more responsive.The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough reminisced about the ID cards debate. I am sorry to disappoint him this afternoon, but I am not persuaded of the need for ID cards. I do not want go back over old ground and reopen that debate, but I recognise the point he made about identity documentation for overseas nationals.
One important step forward that we have seen in recent years has been the biometric residence permits. We intend to focus increasingly on those and base the checking system for non-European economic area nationals around such permits. A secure credit card-sized immigration document containing all the basic information can be an important way to undertake checks.
Mr Chope: Will my hon. Friend give way?
James Brokenshire: I was about to return to my hon. Friend’s point, but I will let him intervene.
Mr Chope: When will biometric residence permits be universally issued?
James Brokenshire: The biometric residence permits are being issued now. The permit is a means of showing permission. It is a simple way of dealing with things and is important in assisting the enforcement of the regime that we are talking about this afternoon.
Let me come to my hon. Friend’s broader point about immigration enforcement, which is a key factor. That is why I highlighted the structural changes we have made in the UK Border Agency. Immigration enforcement is increasingly stepping up its response, but there is more we can do. Although I appreciate what he said, it is illegal to enter and remain in the UK illegally. There are criminal offences under the Immigration Act 1971, but such matters are usually dealt with by administrative removal. There are steps that we are taking through the Immigration Bill to make it harder for people to remain here. We have direct removals, and voluntary removals are also increasing. The steps we are putting in place in the Immigration Bill will support that further.
Our focus is on reducing migration—the challenge that my hon. Friend rightly mentioned. Although this may go beyond the remit of this Committee—I will therefore not stray too far—that is an important and refined part of a range of measures that operate together to meet our challenge of having an immigration system that is sustainable, given that the last Government did not have a sustainable migration system, because immigration was not firmly controlled. It is through such measures, allied to other steps we are taking, that we are delivering on that commitment. From the end of 2014, the biometric residence permit will be the only
document we will give to non-EEA nationals coming for more than six months under the immigration rules. I hope that reassures my hon. Friend.It is important that we communicate the changes effectively, and we will do so through employer groups, Her Majesty Revenue and Customs and other channels. Although I do not want to stray into a broader debate about asylum, it is important that the Government have made a distinction between migration and asylum. We have welcomed, and will continue to welcome, people from around the world who are fleeing persecution. We should be proud about the way we have done so as a country, but if we were to merge that towards working entitlements, there is a risk of increasing abuses in the overall migration system. That is why we have drawn that distinction. The key thing is obviously to ensure that we process asylum applications as effectively as we can, so that matters are resolved.
Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con) rose—
James Brokenshire: I am conscious of the need to focus on the debate this afternoon, which is clearly about the increases in the penalties, but I give way to my hon. Friend.
Rory Stewart: I simply want to reinforce the huge support for the decision to continue to focus on our moral obligation in relation to asylum. I congratulate the Government on what they have done so far for Syrian refugees and to encourage us to keep those two issues as separate as we can.
James Brokenshire: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He will know that, in the context of our duties to ensure that we uphold rights in relation to employees—which is where this measure comes directly into play—this is part of our overall system. He underlines the moral obligations that we have as a Government and that we all have as parliamentarians. I am proud that the Government have introduced the vulnerable persons relocation scheme for the most vulnerable Syrians to come to this country. We are working to see that the first families arrive by the end of this month. That is an important commitment to state.
To return to the specifics, I welcome the support that I think we have across the Committee for the order. It is about stepping up enforcement against illegal working. It is part of a range of measures that are practical, as well as legal, that we are putting in place. I welcome that support and look forward to seeing these new powers implemented so that we can get on with the job, ensuring that lawful employment is supported, but also stepping up our response to illegal employment, so that those employers who meet their responsibilities are recognised and enforcement action is taken against those who do not.
That the Committee has considered the draft Immigration (Employment of Adults Subject to Immigration Control) (Maximum Penalty) (Amendment) Order 2014.