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The purpose of tier 1 of the points-based system is to attract the most talented migrants who have the most to contribute economically to the United Kingdom. The skilled migrant tier—tier 2—is aimed at enabling UK employers to recruit individuals from outside the European economic area to fill a job that cannot be filled by a British or European economic area worker. In common with other parts of the points-based system, on introduction tier 2 will require migrants to have a sponsor licensed by the UK Border Agency. The fee to register on the sponsor register was set in the regulations debated on 25 February. These regulations bring in fees for the different types of sponsor licences that businesses will be able to apply for.
We welcome the contribution that legal migrants make to the economy and cultural life of the United Kingdom, and we have ensured that the proposed fees are at levels that will not damage the UK’s international competitiveness. We believe these fees for the next part of the points-based system to be implemented are fair and proportionate, and are set at levels that recognise the value and benefits of a successful application to both the migrant and the employer. The fees have been set to ensure the UK maintains its position as an attractive destination for work and to do business.
We have consulted key stakeholders on our proposals, including the business community, and the majority of responses to our consultation document and at the
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Moved, That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Immigration and Nationality (Fees) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 2008. 20th report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.—(Lord West of Spithead.)
4.45 pm
Baroness Hanham: Once again I thank the Minister for introducing the regulations. I say from the outset that we support the principle behind making reasonable charges for people who wish to come to this country and for those firms that want to employ migrants, and that they should be licensed to do so. Therefore, we have no difficulty with the regulations. However, I have one or two questions.
In general, the level of fees is intended to exceed the cost of administration, but I think it is acknowledged that there will be an element of subsidy for applications that will be charged at below the administrative cost. Could the Minister tell us which applications will not have their administrative costs covered? I think he said that it applied to tiers 3 and 4, but I should like that to be confirmed. Is it anticipated that these fees will generate the £100 million suggested in the accompanying notes, and will that be total income or profit? What are the administrative costs alone likely to be? How long will the costs be set for? Are they annual costs or will they apply for longer that that? If they are to be increased, will that matter come back to the House? Have the Government any estimate of the number of applications that it is anticipated will be made under tiers 1 and 2? Is the Minister confident that the UK Border Agency has the expertise and resources, both human and financial, to deal with these expeditiously so that people will not be kept waiting? As I say, I have no objection to the regulations.
Lord Avebury: The regulations follow the statutory instrument that your Lordships debated at the end of February, when the Minister explained how current fee levels were being determined on the basis of the value of the services provided to the applicants. The noble Baroness has asked certain questions about these calculations, which I would like to follow up.
The intention is to make the aggregate total of fees charged for services connected with immigration and citizenship correspond with the money spent on securing our borders. The Minister gave the figure of £2 billion this year, and he expected £630 million to be generated from the fees. It would be useful to know whether that includes the amounts that are being generated by the applications under the regulations. If there has been any change in the arithmetic in the past four months, no doubt the Minister will let us know.
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The Minister also reeled off the various fees that are to be charged under the regulations, but he did not explain how the UK Border Agency calculates the individual fees. He explained that some fees are above cost recovery and some fees are below it, but not the total arithmetic, which it would be useful to know more about in the interests of transparency. I agree with the principle that certain fees should be charged more heavily than others because of the value of the services that are provided. That is particularly the case in tier 1 and to a lesser extent in tier 2, but we would like to know the extent to which some people are being made to pay over the odds for the services that are provided for others.
The fees in table A are for tier 1 and for sponsorship licences where the sponsor is not a small sponsor for all tiers, which were already discussed on the previous occasion. The Explanatory Memorandum to the regulations says that in tier 2, for skilled migrants, the certificate of sponsorship will cost £170. That certificate has to be issued by the sponsor to a person so that he can present it with his application for entry clearance or for leave to remain in the UK. In the UKBA statement of intent on skilled workers under the points-based system, the calculation of points is given, and it is clear that an applicant who does not fall into one of the categories in the list of shortage occupations defined by the Migration Advisory Committee will stand very little chance of getting in. A person belonging to one of those categories gets 50 points towards the required 70, while a job that satisfies only the resident labour market test of being advertised for two weeks without attracting an applicant gets only 35.
I am sorry not to have given the Minister prior notice of the point that I am now going to make. I tried to phone the Whips’ Office but no-one was there by the time I got around to it. My point concerns ministers of religion, who are included in tier 2. On 10 March, I asked a Question about the fees to be charged to unpaid Buddhist monks who enter the UK on short assignments, and asked what consultations the Government had undertaken with the Sangha on these matters. The noble Lord, Lord Malloch-Brown, the Minister who replied on that occasion, said that the entry clearance fee would be £200 under tier 2, but I do not see how a monk who is unpaid could possibly be dealt with under a scheme that is clearly designed only for employees. The Minister said that a monk could also apply under tier 5 as a temporary religious worker, but he did not respond to my question about the Sangha.
I wrote to Mr Liam Byrne, the Minister for Immigration, on 3 April. I got a reply from the deputy chief executive of the UKBA a month later saying it had consulted widely, including representatives of the Buddhist community, without mentioning with whom it had consulted. In a subsequent telephone call, I discovered that the two persons who were approached were both laypersons. If the Government are genuinely interested in consulting the Buddhist community, they should include the Sangha, which means the order of monks, just as in their consultations with Christians they would include ordained priests in the Catholic or Anglican Churches, and not just a couple of laymen picked at random.
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To ensure that there is no misunderstanding about this, a Buddhist monk is not paid anything and is not an employee. In the past, it has always been the practice for monasteries to bring in monks for short periods from their parent tradition in Sri Lanka or Thailand and I certainly hope that there will be some way of continuing that tradition under the points-based system. The chair of the Theravada Buddhist Sangha in the UK, the venerable Chao Khun Bhavanaviteht, whose letter I have passed to the officials, has written to confirm that there was no consultation with them and he fears that some temples may be forced to close.
I ask the Minister to ensure that any future consultation on matters affecting religion and immigration, whether by the Home Office, the UK Border Agency or any other public authority, includes the Sangha. If the only way for a monk from abroad to enter the United Kingdom is under TFI, the language of the UKBA statement of intent for TFI should be amended in so far as it deals with religious workers to cover the occupation of a monk, who is not employed and who is not filling a vacancy and does not have dependants.
I also suggest that the Theravada Buddhist Sangha be treated as a single sponsor for the purposes of issuing a certificate of sponsorship, notwithstanding the fact that Theravada temples and monasteries are autonomous, as it would otherwise be an expensive and burdensome task for individual monasteries or temples to obtain a separate licence. That is the kind of issue that could have been settled if the Home Office and UKBA had had proper consultations before the statement of intent had been issued.
At the foot of table A, we find that the fee for registration as a British citizen under the British Nationality (Hong Kong) Act 1997 increases from £120 or £200 to £400. I wonder how the Government can justify that enormous increase. The person concerned is already a British overseas citizen, a British national overseas, a British subject or a British protected person. He has to satisfy the consul in Hong Kong that he is ordinarily resident in Hong Kong now and was so before 4 February 1997 and that he would have been stateless if he had not had one of these inferior forms of British citizenship. He has to produce documentary evidence proving each one of those requirements.
The only problem that arises occasionally is where persons of Nepali ethnic origin have been issued with Nepali passports, notwithstanding their continued possession of BNO passports as adults and the provision in Nepalese law that a person cannot simultaneously hold Nepalese and any other citizenship. The British Consul in Hong Kong and the FCO demand the production of a certificate saying that the Nepalese document was issued in error. Their refusal to acknowledge the plain meaning of a Nepali statute in these cases has led to unnecessary correspondence and, previously, when they were equally pigheaded in the case of BNOs of Indian ethnic origin, they even went to the extent of sending a joint team of the Foreign Office and the Home Office to New Delhi to verify the interpretation of Indian law. No doubt, if the costs of trying to prevent anyone from entering the United Kingdom from Hong Kong who is entitled to British
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My concern about the points-based scheme, now that we see how it works, is its total lack of flexibility. Mr Jonathan Sedgwick, deputy chief executive of the UKBA, writes to me as follows:
“Requiring an application to be accompanied by the full fee before it is considered valid proves a more cost effective system to administer, and ensures a more robust application process. Waiving the fee for some applicants on the basis of their ability to pay would lead to an increase in the amount of administrative work to means test an applicant and chase any outstanding payments. If we apply the current principle of not considering an application until it has been paid, or a decision has been made on the applicant's ability to pay this could lead to long delays in our decision making process. Waiving the fee for some applicants would also lead to an increase in fees for other applicants to ensure that the costs of the Border and Immigration Agency are recovered”.
Precisely the same argument could be applied to many other services provided by public agencies of one kind or another. For instance, if we did not waive the prescription charge fee for the elderly, children or pregnant women, no doubt a considerable amount of administrative work would be saved. I expect it costs the Mayor of London a lot of money to give the elderly free underground and bus travel, so charges to other users of London transport must be higher to cover the loss of revenue.
The argument is spurious. As the noble Lord will be aware if he has seen some of my correspondence with the UKBA, serious hardship is caused to people upon whom these fees are imposed when they do not have the means to pay them. The scheme ought to have been made more flexible so that those who are not in employment or receiving income of any sort, such as many wives who come here to join their husbands, should be given some sort of concession so that they are not faced with the problem of borrowing money or getting it from a charity.
Lord West of Spithead: I thank Members of the Committee for the considered debate and the various points raised. I will try to answer the specific points put to me.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, asked whether tiers 4 and 5 would not recover costs while tiers 1 and 2 could. The answer is yes. It breaks down that the net benefit in the tier 1 area is about £561 million to the Exchequer; in tier 2 it is about £237 million; whereas in tier 5 we lose £31 million. We are not recouping all our costs on tiers 4 and 5. The noble Baroness is absolutely right that they are set annually. Of course, we will come back to the House each time we wish to change them.
The UK Border Agency is confident that it has the resources to deal with all these measures expeditiously. The fees secure the necessary financial resources to allow that expeditious delivery. In totality, we expect to generate in the region of £685 million in 2008-09, contributing significantly to the £2 billion we will spend on securing our border and managing the immigration system.
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The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, asked why we had set the fees at this level. We aim to keep the fees for the PBS route similar to the level of the pre-existing comparable route. We have increased several of the fees by approximately 3 per cent. Fees for new services or applications reflect the true operational costs of the system, while taking into account the value of a successful application in terms of entitlements and benefits to the migrant. Indeed, the British public at large feel that that is appropriate, as they get benefits from doing this. I have already mentioned that tiers 1 and 2 are higher than tiers 4 and 5. The majority of people we consulted supported our proposals. Some people felt that the fees could have been higher than they are, so we came to a sensible balance on that. We justify these fees by having debated with and talked to all the people involved—I hate the word “stakeholders”. We set higher fees in those areas where we have in accordance with comprehensive research, looking at those thresholds.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for telling me about his questions on Buddhist monks just before the debate, but I had no time to get a response. I will confront my noble friend Lord Malloch-Brown and ask him why he did not tell me that this had been asked; it has slightly caught me out. I think that tier 2 deals with religion but I take the point about people not being paid and whether one should look at tier 5 if they are coming to undertake non-graduate teaching. I am pretty certain that we have held discussions with the Buddhist community, but I hope that I may come back to the noble Lord in writing on that specific point.
Lord Avebury: My point was that the Government consulted two laypersons in the Buddhist community; they did not consult the ordained body of monks, the Sangha. As I said, that is like saying that you have consulted with the Church of England when you have ignored the whole of the Synod and just picked a couple of laymen at random.
Lord West of Spithead: I take that point. I shall get back to the noble Lord in writing on who we have talked to and what the position is, as I am not clear on that. He also asked whether consideration of applications should not be delayed pending payment of the fee. It is fair that users of the system rather than the UK taxpayer should contribute to this operation; that is the general consensus. If we considered applications before a fee was paid there would be no incentive for the applicant to pay. We must be a little wary of that. The costs for Hong Kong reflect the costs for citizenship and are in line with the 3 per cent increase. I shall come back to him in writing as regards Nepalese citizenship, as it is a detailed point and I am not absolutely clear about it. I do not want to mislead the Committee.
I hope that I have answered the key points. If I have missed any, I shall be happy to answer them in writing. However, most people accept that those who benefit from the immigration system should contribute most. As I say, that was very much reflected in our discussions with all the various interested groups. It is appropriate
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On Question, Motion agreed to.
Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Act 2006 (Sources of Energy and Technologies) Order 2008
5.07 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (Baroness Vadera) rose to move, That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Act 2006 (Sources of Energy and Technologies) Order 2008.
The noble Baroness said: Within their wider energy policy context, the Government are firmly committed to a major expansion of renewables and low-carbon technologies as part of a diverse energy mix. Generating low-carbon and renewable energy depends on developing reliable technologies, particularly appropriately installed microgeneration. Through this statutory instrument, the Government are seeking to define more precisely those sources of energy that they have already recognised as microgeneration and create a legal framework within which developing and possible future technologies can be encouraged.
This statutory instrument is also influenced by the development and marketing of air source heat pumps since the list was originally drawn up in 2006. Accordingly, it expands the major statutory definition of “microgeneration” to include technologies which wholly or mainly rely on,
The Committee will be familiar with the term “microgeneration” which is widely used to define either low-carbon or renewable energy technologies that produce under 45 kilowatts for heat and 50 kilowatts for electricity. Roof-mounted photovoltaic panels and small and micro wind turbines are increasingly common but there are also micro combined heat and power units, micro hydro technologies, domestic biomass generators, fuel cells and various kinds of heat pump.
The Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Act 2006 defines “microgeneration” for the purposes of that Act and is relied upon in the Electricity Act 1989, the Gas Act 1986 and the Electricity and Gas (Carbon Emissions Reduction) Order 2008. The legal definition of “microgeneration” is set out in Section 26(1) of the Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Act 2006, and provides that,
- “microgeneration” means the use for the generation of electricity or the production of heat of any plant (which, for this purpose, includes any equipment, apparatus or appliance)—
(a) which, in generating electricity or (as the case may be) producing heat, relies wholly or mainly on a source of energy or a technology mentioned in subsection (2), and
(b) the capacity of which to generate electricity or (as the case may be) to produce heat does not exceed the capacity mentioned in subsection (3)”.
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The capacity mentioned in subsection (3) is 45 kilowatts for the production of heat and 50 kilowatts for the generation of electricity. The list of sources and technologies is set out in Section 26(2) of the Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Act, which can be expanded or amended.
Section 26(4) provides that Section 26(2) may be amended by adding to the list of sources of energy and technologies when the Secretary of State considers that the use of that source of energy or technology would cut emissions of greenhouse gases in Great Britain. The Secretary of State considers that the use of heat from air, water or the ground would cut emissions of greenhouse gases in Great Britain.
The Energy Act 2004 also provides a statutory definition of microgeneration for the purposes of that Act and is relied on in the Income Tax (Trading and Other Income) Act 2005, the Taxation of Chargeable Gains Act 1992, the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order 1995 and some sections of the Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Act 2006. That definition is found at Section 82(6) and (7) and is framed in the same manner as the definition in the Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Act 2006. Section 82(7) includes the same sources or technologies as are currently in Section 26(2) of the Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Act 2006, but with an additional category:
- “other sources of energy and technologies for the generation of electricity or the production of heat, the use of which would, in the opinion of the secretary of state, cut emissions of greenhouse gases in Great Britain”.
This statutory instrument will not affect the definition of microgeneration in the Energy Act 2004. In accordance with Section 82(7)(j), however, since the Secretary of State is of the opinion that the use of heat from the air, water or the ground would cut emissions of greenhouse gases in Great Britain, the definition of microgeneration in that Act must be read as including heat from the air, water or the ground.
Noble lords will be aware that the heat pump is a technology that transfers low-grade heat energy from a medium such as the ground, the air and water to another location such as a building. Air-source heat pumps work on similar principles to ground-source pumps, but they are generally regarded as less efficient since the ratio of heat energy outputs to energy inputs is less. Instead of using coils in the earth, a fan is exposed to air. The pump can be attached to the exterior wall of a building such as a ventilation unit. Interior air-source heat pump units can be fitted in kitchens and may resemble a domestic fridge freezer.
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