Surrender of Offensive Weapons (Compensation) Regulations 2020

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is a continuing sadness to me that the Government chose not to follow their memorandum of 26 June 2018 and allow defences of nature and purpose, as is the case with many other dangerous weapons, and decided instead that we must destroy a chunk of our World War II heritage. Gravity knives, for example, which were used by parachutists to escape from tangled lines, have never been used in crime since the last war because they are far too expensive to use in crime—the better ones cost several thousand pounds—and are far too fragile. So it saddens me greatly that we have this order in front of us.

However, given that we have this order, I am puzzled that the Home Office thinks it can get away with a couple of hundred thousand pounds in compensation for these knives. The ministry need only turn to the internet to see how these knives have been traded—the most recent trade that I can find was in May this year—openly, without any interference from the authorities and, as I say, often for several thousand pounds apiece. Are the Government really expecting that people who have paid that sort of money for a knife will turn it in if they are to be denied compensation because they cannot prove that they received it as a gift or an inheritance? In what other way does the ministry reconcile the total figure of compensation expected with the value of the knives concerned?

Windrush Compensation Scheme

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I think the only answer to that is yes, my Lords.

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, would it not be wonderful and do a much better job of helping us make a prosperous new place for the UK in the world if the first thing that a prospective student read on the Home Office website was “Welcome”, if the first thing we said to someone who wanted to make their life here was “We appreciate the honour that you are doing us”, and if after that their cases and the hurdles and limitations were dealt with as if they were about people and were rooted in humanity, as Wendy Williams says? Does my noble friend think that there really is hope for such a culture change in the Home Office?

Data Protection Bill [HL]

Lord Lucas Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 10th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have enjoyed the debate very much so far. I hope that the same can be said of my noble friend the Minister, who will clearly find support from all around the House for a large number of amendments. I found myself agreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, on several points, not least on the question of adequacy, which seems to me absolutely fundamental to getting this Bill right. I hope that my noble friend will be able to be very clear on how the Government intend to tackle this key aspect.

I agreed with the noble Lord, Lord McNally, too, and his worries about standing up to the tech giants. They are not our friends. They are big, powerful companies that are not citizens of this country. They pay as little tax here as possible and several of them actively help tax evaders in order that they can make more profits out of the transactions that that involves. They control what we see on the internet through algorithms and extract vast quantities of data and know more about us than we know ourselves. In the interests of democracy we really must stand up to them and say, “No, we are the people who matter. It is great you are doing well, but we are the people who matter”. Bills like this are part of that, and it is important that we stand up for ourselves and our citizens.

I agreed very much with my noble friend Lady Neville-Jones that research is crucial. In my context as editor of the Good Schools Guide we use a fair bit of government data and do research with it. I will pick my noble friend’s brain afterwards on what her worries are about the use of data by non-standard researchers because I certainly qualify as that.

My noble friend Lord Arbuthnot referred to a Keeling schedule. It would be wonderful to receive it. For some reason I cannot pick it up on the email. It is not in the documents listed on the Parliament website, not in any location, and it does not Google or come up on GOV.UK. One way or another, I think the simplest thing to ask is: please can we put it on the parliamentary website in the list of documents related to the Bill? I know that it exists, but I just cannot find it. It would be nice if it appeared on the departmental website too.

It seems to me that bits are missing in a number of areas. Where are Articles 3, 27, 22(2)(b) and 35(4) to 35(6)? Where is Article 80(2), as the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, mentioned? That is an absolutely crucial article. Why has it gone missing? How exactly is recital 71 implemented? I cannot see how the protections for children in that recital are picked up in the Bill. There are a lot of things that Keeling schedules are important for. In a detailed Bill like this, they help us to understand how the underlying European legislation will be reflected, which will be crucial for the acceptance of this Bill by the European Union—I pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson—and what bits are missing.

And what has been added? Where does paragraph 8 of Schedule 11 come from? It is a very large, loose power. Where are its edges? What is an example of that? I would be very grateful if my noble friend could drop me a note on that before we reach Committee. What is an arguable point under that provision? Where are the limits of our economic interest so far as its influence on this Bill is concerned?

Paragraph 4 of Schedule 10 is another place that worries me. We all make our personal data public, but a lot of the time we do it in a particular context. If I take a photograph with my parliamentary-supplied iPhone, on which there is an app that I have granted the power to look at my photographs for some purpose that I use that app for, I have made that photograph and all the metadata public. That is not what I intended; I made it public for a particular purpose in a particular context—that of social media. A lot of people use things like dating websites. They do not put information on there which is intended to be totally public. Therefore, the wording of paragraph 4 of Schedule 10 seems to be far too wide in the context of the way people use the internet. Principle 2 of the Data Protection Act covers this. It gives us protection against the use of information for purposes which it clearly has not been released for. There does not appear to be any equivalent in the Bill—although I have not picked up the Keeling schedule, so perhaps it is there. However, I would like to know where it is.

On other little bits and pieces, I would like to see the public policy documents under Clause 33(4) and Clause 33(5) made public; at the moment they are not. How is age verification supposed to work? Does it involve the release of data by parents to prove that the child is the necessary age to permit the child access, and if so, what happens to that data? Paragraph 23 of Schedule 2 addresses exam scripts. Why are these suddenly being made things that you cannot retrieve? What are the Government up to here? Paragraph 4 of Schedule 2, on immigration, takes away rights immigrants have at the moment under the Data Protection Act. Why? What is going on?

There are lots of bits and pieces which I hope we can pick up in Committee. I look forward to going through the Bill with a very fine-toothed comb—it is an important piece of legislation.

Immigration: Overseas Students

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2016 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lucas]

That this House takes note of the application of immigration policy to overseas students at United Kingdom universities and colleges.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, after our decision to leave the European Union, we are now setting out to woo the world. In the words of the Prime Minister at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, we are a “flexible, ambitious country” stepping up to “a new global role”.

Higher education and further education both incorporate a large number of world-leading courses and institutions. They have long-standing success and reputations overseas. They bring in a great deal of money in a growth market. They give us relationships across the world and over time that we can use for other purposes. They should be absolutely central to the Prime Minister’s ambition, but we are making a complete mess and losing market share. We need to sort that out together.

What each of us does affects the whole, as should be obvious to the Home Office from the effects of the random policy announcements at the Conservative Party conference. Some of the remedy, of course, is in the hands of universities, and the Home Office has my sympathy in having to deal with them. They move slowly, they tend to set the bar at the bottom—when faced with a range of performance they tend to set it at the lowest setting possible and then say, “Aren’t we good? We all do better than that”. They are very slow to engage with politicians. Despite having the support of the editor of the Times Higher Educational Supplement, I have had no response from anybody in academia, other than those I have approached myself, as to what policy changes the Government ought to make. They seem, judging from the pronouncements one comes across in the press and other media, to be mostly concerned with their own affairs and not really with what is happening to the rest of us. They do not appear to be as collaborative as they should be in this world. They market themselves individually overseas; the GREAT campaign, which succeeded in other areas of the economy, has really not made as much progress in knowledge, to my mind, as it should have.

However, it is the Home Office we have in front of us today, so most of my speech will concentrate on what I think it could do to improve things. My first question for my noble friend is, what is the problem? I do not mean that pejoratively; it is a bemused inquiry. No one I have spoken to in doing research for this debate has a clue as to what the Home Office thinks the problem is. What is the problem? Why is it a problem? What are its priorities? Nobody knows and it is really hard to collaborate with the Home Office and think of ways to help it while we help ourselves when we have no clue what it wants. It strikes me that the Home Office thinks that it does not need to communicate—it knows what the problems are, it is in charge of solving the problems and only it need do anything. It is a half-starved bulldog chained up outside in all weathers, waiting to bite anyone who tries to get in the front door. This is not true, particularly with Brexit: we are all in this together, we all have responsibility, particularly for immigration, since controlling immigration is clearly one of our objectives, post-Brexit.

All of us—the Government, employers, universities and individuals—have a shared responsibility, over time, to do something about the level of immigration. The Home Office is going to have plenty of trouble with employers on that; I wish more power to its elbow, but it should expect our collaboration and co-operation and it should involve us. Similarly, the Home Office has a responsibility for the economy, for trade, for employment and for the reputation of Britain as a whole, to which it must pay attention, rather than thinking it can make pronouncements and policies in total isolation.

Things have improved over the past few years. It is now possible for a university to have a dedicated officer at UKVI, paid for by the university—quite rightly so—to deal with problems as they arise and act as a conduit for questions. There is a very interesting pilot going on with Imperial College and some other universities to see what can be done to improve things further in return for privileges in the way that overseas students are dealt with. I thoroughly approve of that as a way of developing things, but much more needs to be done.

Fundamentally, as I have said, the Home Office needs to share its concerns. We are not, thank goodness, in the era of the Somme or Balaclava; it is not ours to do or die and not to reason why. We want things to be explained to us and to be allowed to contribute to decisions, to make them better and to make them things that we all own. I greatly encourage the Home Office to open up so that we can really know what the problem is and how we can set about solving it together. We have to wait, quite reasonably, for the Home Office to develop immigration policy generally. The post-study work route, which matters a lot when it comes to marketing university courses overseas, is fundamentally subservient to our overall, detailed immigration objectives. It has a lot of attractions as a method of immigration. By the time people become qualified, they have been with us a long time, we know them, they know us, and they have a loyalty and affection for us. They are a very good source of migration, if that is what we want and if it is where we want it. Once we have that policy I very much hope that post-study work visas will re-emerge as a very good way of bringing in whatever it is we want by way of immigration.

There is scope for a much more open, much deeper relationship between the Home Office and universities. Over the past six years or so the Government have created high-performing, highly accountable partners in universities, people who are used to working positively with the Home Office, who are greatly incentivised to work well with the Home Office and who can and should be relied on. However, they are not involved where they absolutely should be: designing systems, forms and websites. All these things make a great difference to how potential students perceive the UK. The connection with in-country officers is far too loose. This is true even for schools. Immigration to independent schools is pretty well trouble-free except for the behaviour of some in-country officers. It really does not seem to be integrated with the systems that the Home Office has. There needs to be much better connection there.

There needs to be fast correction of mistakes. Even obviously wrong decisions can take six months to set right. If it is a problem of finance then the Home Office should draw money from the university system to staff things properly. If a university notifies the Home Office that a particular student is sick and needs to defer their course for a year, the Home Office takes six months to register that fact and that six months is then deducted from a student’s right to study in the UK. That is not correct. We have just introduced the right to rent. Nothing has been done, as far as I can find out, to make that an easier policy for universities to navigate or to make it easier for them to help their students rent privately, as many of them have to. There does not appear to be any positive approach to the idea of students coming here at 14 or 16 and our taking them through to the end of a degree in a UK university, which is a growing part of the market.

There are lots of areas where there is scope for collaboration and continuous improvement in the way that the Home Office and universities work together to make us a better destination for overseas students. I would really like to see an “educated in Britain” database that records every student who has been the beneficiary of UK education, so that we can support them and they can support each other to create opportunities for trade and to help market UK education for future students.

The conference speech by the Home Secretary was a particular disappointment to me in the way it addressed universities. The idea of discrimination on quality, that there are courses so bad that they are fit only for putting our own children into debt, is not something that appeals to me or has any resonance overseas. I come back to my initial question: what is the problem to which this is an answer? There must be better ways of tackling it, if only we could be told what the problem is. I do not want to see, and I am sure that my noble friend does not want to see, the University of Huddersfield struck off the list as not being grand enough for overseas students. Why should we discriminate in that way? If overseas people want to study at our further education colleges—there are some wonderful, world-leading courses—or even if they just want to come here to study English, why should we put them off if we are in proper control of the consequences of our immigration policies?

That comes back to the old problem of the treatment of students as immigrants. Yesterday Jo Johnson restated to the APPG on International Students that there is no cap on student numbers; there is no cap on tier 2. Clearly, a group of people to whom that applies are not immigrants in the way that we usually think of them; nor do people around the country think of them as immigrants in the usual way. Their inclusion in the figures means that every time we do something to try to control immigration, which we will be doing pretty frequently, that is read overseas as an attack on overseas students.

We are completely muddying the waters. The problem is overstayers. We do not know how many overstayers there are. There are some good low estimates; there may be other estimates, but the fact that there are no data is down to the Home Office because it is not recording exits properly. Why should the Home Office’s failure be visited on universities? There is no good reason for it. It would be much better for everybody if the figures were separated and we could have a clear view of what is happening in the areas of immigration that we all care about.

The Home Office has demonstrated a great ability to be destructive to the reputation of higher education abroad. I believe that it could become a constructive partner and still achieve its objectives but that belief is based on my imagination as to what those objectives are. I wish it would. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. I think that we have made a very good job of celebrating the excellence of our universities and the importance to us of international students. I even found that I agreed with much that the noble Lord, Lord Green, said. It was a pleasant debate all round.

I have listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, over many years, so I had high expectations of her maiden speech and was in no way disappointed. I look forward to listening to her many times again.

I have also listened to Home Office Ministers’ speeches on many occasions, so I had low expectations. I was pretty certain that the Minister would be issued with a stick of candy-floss—sweet but very little substance—and so it turned out. It was comforting that she said such nice things about welcoming international students, but she absolutely did not say, “We, the Home Office, will be putting our backs into making sure we get lots more of them”. I am sad that she did not.

Motion agreed.

EU Citizens in the UK

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Lucas]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether it is their policy that European Union citizens lawfully resident or working in the United Kingdom at the date when the United Kingdom leaves the European Union will have an unconditional right to remain in the United Kingdom.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper but I do not expect my noble and learned friend Lord Keen to answer it. He is a Minister, but for how long? I hope that it is a long time but he does not know to which Minister he is now responsible. He does not even know which department will be responsible for dealing with this Question, so to ask for an Answer seems too much. However, I hope that I can ask him to relay to his colleagues, whoever they may turn out to be over the next day or two, the content of this debate and the way that this House clearly feels about this Question.

The EU citizens who are the subject of this Question fall into three segments. There are those who have been resident here for five years or more, or rather who will have been when we leave the European Union. It ought to be possible for the Government to say with total clarity that those people have a right to remain. It is so clearly in law but we have not quite got there in what Ministers have been able to say to date. If I could tempt my noble and learned friend in any way, it would be to give clarity—to give something unequivocal which we can take to our European friends out there and say, “You will qualify. You’ll be all right”. Then there are those who have moved here in the last three years or so, who may well not have passed the five-year mark when we leave the European Union and who are the main subject of this debate. Then there are those who are yet to join us from the European Union; I will cover those people too.

The Government have argued that giving a unilateral reassurance to EU citizens in this country that they have an unqualified right to remain would leave our citizens in European countries unprotected. My view is that the negotiating advantages which the Government seek by withholding reassurance from EU citizens here have gone but that the costs of that attitude remain. The Commons vote on 6 July was unequivocal. After that vote and all the discussions surrounding it, the EU can be in no doubt whatever as to what action we will take. It must be clear to it that our attitude as a country is that we welcomed our EU friends here, to work and to make their lives, and that although we have set a new course for ourselves we will stand by the deal that we did with our EU friends and be true to our word. There is no negotiating value in maintaining otherwise. It is obvious what we are going to do; there can be nothing to negotiate, whether we do it now or later.

Thinking that there will somehow be some kind of fast track for items in European negotiations is to underestimate the European Commission. If we want something fast, we will be made to pay for that. Nor do I think that there will be any likely action by the European Union or its component states in regard to our citizens living there. That would prompt in us some cynical tit-for-tat with their citizens living here. It seems to me that there is no longer any force in the argument that there is something to be gained by delay, but there are a great deal of costs involved in delaying. We already know that there are some instances of valuable employees choosing to leave the UK for somewhere they feel more certain of building a career over the long term. That can be withstood in the short term but if we let it persist it will start to be the jobs that move too, not just the people, and we will suffer permanent damage. I talked yesterday to a senior manager in the NHS who was recording how his European colleagues were feeling that they were “other” or unwanted—and that is in the environment of the NHS, which is essentially friendly and welcoming. If we let that continue, it will be corrosive of relationships within this country and abroad.

Surely the best protection for our citizens abroad is for us to remove the uncertainty for their equivalents here and to set a strong, moral example at the beginning of our Brexit negotiations. As my right honourable friend David Davis has pointed out, it is the countries that matter at this stage. Although they obviously all have their own interest at heart, below that lies friendship and understanding. There is no motivation there to harm our citizens. If we do the right thing now, we will set the tone for the Brexit negotiations as one of friendship, understanding and mutual advantage. I do not see the point in waiting for Jean-Claude Juncker to do the opposite.

If we take that attitude, we can commit to other things now with advantage which will help us in the short term and help the negotiations to be amicable. We can look at the question of people from the EU who want to come and work here now. Unlike citizens of any other part of the world, they cannot be certain on what conditions they would join hereon. If you come here from Australia, you know exactly what the rules are; if you come here from the EU, you do not have a clue what is happening after Brexit. We know for certain that we want some of these people. We need an inflow of doctors and nurses to the NHS; we want the brightest and the best coming in under tiers 1 and 2 to help us run the economy; we want their students in our universities. Why put off a decision on those sort of things? Why not end the uncertainty? We would gain a great deal and lose nothing.

We are aware too of the concerns of our research establishment that it is starting to be excluded from bids, as a result of it not being clear whether we will continue to qualify for Horizon 2020 and its equivalents. Instead of sitting and suffering that for a couple of years, let us instead make it clear that leaving the EU will make us a better collaborator and adopt a really positive tone towards international collaboration. Let us make it clear how these long-term relationships will continue to be nourished.

We should also support our tech start-ups. Particularly in areas where there is heavy regulation, such as medicine, it is clear already that US funders are thinking that a company starting in Britain will have two sets of regulations to deal with rather than one, and they would rather back the same idea in Berlin. We have to do something about that, and not wait until the end of negotiations.

If we are constructive and positive from the outset regarding peripheral areas and do what we know we will do eventually anyway, we will avoid the costs of prolonged uncertainty. We will reinforce our friendships around Europe and do nothing but good to the prospects of agreement in the main contentious areas such as trade and immigration.

Rail Franchises

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

As I said previously, the Government’s position is very clear. We want both parties to come to the negotiating table and find a resolution for long-suffering commuters. It is very clear what has happened. I do not accept the noble Lord’s point about not meeting. We meet regularly with all people concerned, and we have implored them to take action to ensure that we get a more effective service. As to the way forward, I think it right that we allow the two parties to come together at the negotiating table. The Government will play their part in ensuring an effective service for Southern commuters who, as I have said, have suffered for far too long.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it ought, at least, to be the object of a rail franchise that the day-to-day experience of the travelling public should get better over the long term? What would he say about a franchisee which, from its first moment in possession of a railway, has set out to do the exact opposite? Is there no way to set it on a right course?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

There are various procedures open to the Government if the contract fails in its objectives. As I have already indicated, I take on board what my noble friend has said on the issue in respect of which the franchisee is claiming force majeure, which is part of the franchise. I assure him that the Government are looking at this very closely. There are various enforcement policy options available to the Secretary of State and we continue to monitor the position very carefully to ensure that we see an improvement in service. Prior to the early part of this year, we saw service levels rise to 83%. The noble Lord picked out the issue of industrial action and I talked about high levels of sickness leave. These have seen performance go from 83% to about 63% since May.

EU Nationals in the UK

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Lucas]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to take steps to reassure European Union nationals currently resident in the United Kingdom that their future in this country will not be affected as a result of the European Union referendum result.

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie) (Con)]

My Lords, as the Prime Minister has said, there will be no immediate changes in the circumstances of European nationals currently residing in the United Kingdom. European Union nationals do not need to apply at present for a resident’s card or a permanent resident’s card to enjoy their free movement rights and responsibilities.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that Answer. However, does he not agree that unless we make it clear to European Union nationals, who we have welcomed here to work and make their careers, that in the event of Brexit they will have an unconditional right to remain and to continue in those careers, we will find it impossible to recruit such people for our businesses, particularly in the City, and will do ourselves a great deal of damage?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

Any criteria set which enable EU citizens to remain in the United Kingdom following exit from the European Union will depend on the outcome of the negotiations and the scope of any reciprocal agreements concerning British citizens who live in other member states.

Investigatory Powers Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I could not agree more with the noble Lord, Lord Birt. The Government are inviting us to walk down the digital street, but it is a street which would have frightened Dickens. The Bill misses opportunities to do something about that. The information which the Government are giving themselves access to in the Bill would enable them to help us, as ordinary citizens, to deal with the tide of three-card-trick salesmen, conmen and pimps that assails us every day on the internet. However, there are no proposals in the Bill to do anything, which is quite astonishing. Of course, it is not astonishing because it is a Home Office Bill. We have had this before: noble Lords on the Benches opposite will remember when they tried to get us to take identity cards. That failed because it was a Home Office Bill; there was nothing in it for the ordinary citizen. All the advantages for the ordinary citizen that might have come from an identity card system were neglected. There was nothing there; it was just, “we want to control you”. Yet, as others have pointed out, we readily accept an enormous exchange of information and control with the likes of Google and Facebook because they offer us something in exchange.

The Home Office will have to get a grip on this. How are we to deal with open borders, post-Brexit? Presumably we will still have visa-free travel with Europe, as is proposed for Canada and other countries. It would be very odd to introduce visas, so we are going to need some kind of identity system so we can catch up on people after they have got in. This is about the only way one could police a border in Ireland, let alone one with Scotland. We really have to change the Home Office to an organisation which thinks of us as citizens as well as thinking of itself as a controller of citizens. It would be excellent if the Bill could start to do that by making sure that the Home Office at least has the power to use all the information it is gathering to start reducing the level of crime described by the noble Lord, Lord Birt. I also agree very much with the noble Lord and others on the need for international collaboration. That has to be the way forward. I do not share with him and the provisional Opposition opposite—I do not think that, after today’s meeting, I can call them the Official Opposition any more—the feeling that disconnecting from Europe will slow this down. This will be an international thing that does not care for other structures: a community that all nations committed to democracy will join, whether or not they are part of any individual organisation.

I have worries, too, that the Bill has not really addressed the question of speed. There are circumstances where the Government need quick access to information. In the course of the London riots, it was really noticeable how slow official processes were in catching up with information as to what was going on but communication service companies have those capabilities. They will perform checks online in real time if someone proposes to do a financial transaction. That is routine but you need access to and collaboration with the computing power that communication service providers have to make good use of it. You cannot seek to have a second-hand flow of information and hope to build government systems that will do the deed in real time, enabling you to get on top of the flow of information taking place among people in the middle of a civil disturbance. In the course of the Bill, we have to look at how to enable the Government to collaborate with the communication service providers when speed becomes of the essence and to make sure that we are not putting any obstacles to doing so in their way.

However, I share some of the concerns about the ICR and what we are creating with the request filter. We are producing a resource there that Francis Urquhart would have loved to have his fingers on: absolute knowledge of everyone’s private life. We would have to be so clear that what we are doing will not be abused and is not open to abuse. To have a system which can be accessed without warrant or proper record of what has been done—without proper supervision of those records—really opens us up to abuses of power and of position, in a way we should not do. I am very encouraged by the quality of the debate. This House is clearly full of people who understand these problems a great deal better than I do, so I am confident that we will do something about it. We should take this seriously and I look forward to Committee to do just that.

Railways: Southern, Southeastern and Thameslink Franchises

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

It is always my pleasure to meet noble Lords.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I will add my name to that list. Southern is absolutely dedicated to reducing service to customers in all possible ways. Its first action when it took up the franchise was to abolish tea trolleys; its latest action is to abolish ticket offices, even though the ticket machines will not offer the best price and are extremely hard to use. Will the Government please take this franchise to task and either abolish it or make it better?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I assure my noble friend that we are of course holding those operating the franchises to task, as I have already said in your Lordships’ House. If they do not deliver, they will be held to account. We are going to see the completion of the investment by the end of 2018 and I think that that will be the real challenge and test of how efficient these franchises are.

Immigration Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 20th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I thank the two noble Baronesses who have spoken. I start by making the general point that these powers will be used only for repeat offenders. They will not be used widely; they are for the most egregious offenders. As well as employing illegal workers, they must already have had illegal working penalties or convictions.

Clause 12, which gives effect to Schedule 3, sets out the regime for illegal working closure notices and illegal working compliance orders. The clause and schedule provide new powers to deal with businesses that repeatedly flout the law by employing illegal workers. The intention is to use them in the most serious cases, as I have just indicated, where civil penalties or previous convictions have failed to change employer behaviour. Such employers may also be exploiting their workers, including legal workers, by not paying the minimum wage or by breaking health and safety legislation. When immigration officers conduct an enforcement visit under existing powers to an employer’s premises, any illegal workers identified may be arrested and the employer may be liable to pay a civil penalty or to prosecution for an offence. Despite this, the employer may continue to use illegal workers who are not apprehended at the time of the visit or who are recruited subsequently. Furthermore, some businesses dissolve to evade sanctions and then reopen in a new name and continue their non-compliance as before. My notes tell me that this is often referred to as “phoenixism” and that may be so. The provisions are designed to break this cycle of non-compliant business behaviour.

The provisions create a new power for immigration officers to close premises for up to 48 hours in certain cases, where the employer or a connected person in relation to the employer has previously faced sanctions for employing illegal workers. An application must be made to a court for an illegal working compliance order, unless the closure notice is cancelled. This compliance order may extend the closure of the premises or make any order the court decides is appropriate to prevent an employer operating at the premises from employing an illegal worker. This might include ordering the business to perform right-to-work checks to ensure that illegal workers are not employed, or to permit immigration officers to enter the premises to ensure that the employer is complying with illegal working rules.

These provisions are loosely modelled on the power to close premises associated with nuisance or disorder, which is in Part 4 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. Let me reassure the House that this power will be subject to appropriate safeguards and its use will not be considered lightly. It is designed to be used as a last resort in the most serious cases, where established methods of securing compliance have been unsuccessful, by limiting the duration of the closure notice that may be served by immigration officers; by making the courts responsible for determining whether a compliance order should be imposed; by providing a right of appeal against a compliance order; and by providing a mechanism to apply for compensation, should mistakes be made, we believe that Schedule 3 provides appropriate judicial oversight of the use of these powers and sufficient safeguards and remedies for those who feel that they have been treated unfairly.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Ludford, talked about what records will be kept and the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, talked about the transparency in the process. Guidance may be published under paragraph 16 of Schedule 3, after appropriate consultation, which would provide for guidance for immigration officers in respect of how their immigration powers should be exercised and recorded. We will ensure that immigration officers make operational records in their pocket notebooks, as is standard practice, and that this is supported by guidance issued under paragraph 16. The Home Office will monitor compliance as a matter of course.

On the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, the compensation mechanism in paragraph 15 does not apply where the court has made an order, since an adversely affected party should, in this case, appeal the order. The court, on hearing an appeal, may make any order it considers appropriate under paragraph 9(5) and this might include the award of compensation. The noble Baroness also asked whether compensation should be payable when inaccurate information is presented to a court by an immigration officer. If a court considers that the conditions for issuing the notice under paragraph 1(3) or paragraph 1(6) were not satisfied, the court may award compensation to a claimant who has suffered financial loss, if it considers it is appropriate. The compensation mechanism in paragraph 15(3), as I have just said, does not apply when the court has made an order, since the adversely affected party should appeal the order. Compensation may be payable at the discretion of the court if the immigration officer supplied inaccurate information to the court as to whether any illegal workers were present at the property or if the employer had not previously been convicted of an immigration offence or received an immigration penalty. Compensation may also be payable when the immigration officer has not used reasonable efforts to notify people who live at or have an interest in the property.

As to the point that the initial closure order should be issued by a court and not an immigration officer, the Government respectfully disagree. We think that the immediacy of the present approach is designed to serve as a deterrent to employers who have repeatedly flouted illegal working rules. The present approach allows for the trigger conditions to be applied to a particular moment in time. Imposing a requirement for an initial court order would give the employer an opportunity to hide their illegal working, including through dissolving the company.

The noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, mentioned that she thought the powers were oppressive and contrary to the rule of law. I point out that the closure of a business premises by law enforcement officers is not unprecedented and the proposal in this Bill, including the safeguards, is modelled on the approach taken in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. As a result of those remarks, I hope that in due course the noble Baroness will accept that Clause 12 and Schedule 3, to which it gives effect, should remain part of the Bill.

Turning to the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, Amendment 135 would require the immigration officer to consult the employer,

“people who live on the premises … and … any person who has an interest in the premises”.

The officer will already be required by Schedule 3 to consult any person they think appropriate before issuing a closure notice, and this may include many of those interested parties. In addition, immigration officers are already required to make reasonable efforts to inform any person who lives on the premises and any person who has an interest in the premises that the notice is going to be issued. A requirement to also consult such people—who, I remind noble Lords, have already committed an illegal working offence—seems an unnecessary additional requirement. Also, paragraph 1 makes it clear that a closure notice cannot prohibit access to premises to any person who habitually lives on the premises.

The amendment also requires the employer to be consulted. I can reassure noble Lords that employers will be given an opportunity to demonstrate that they have complied with the law in this area. The decision to serve a closure notice will not be taken lightly. If the employer can produce evidence that right-to-work checks have been undertaken, Schedule 3 makes it clear that the notice must not be issued, or if such evidence is produced after the notice has been issued, the notice may be cancelled. The whole purpose of serving the closure notice is because the business has repeatedly flouted the law in this area. It will be a serious case where the established civil penalty scheme or previous convictions have not prevented continued illegal behaviour.

Amendment 146 would have the effect of always giving the court the discretion to award compensation, even where immigration officers have acted lawfully and the claimant was responsible for illegal working on the premises. This would frustrate the objective of the proposed scheme of closure notices, which is to strengthen our ability to deal with repeat offenders involved in the use of illegal workers. It would be inappropriate to provide the facility for such persons to obtain compensation for financial loss where the immigration authorities have acted correctly in closing their premises.

In the light of my explanation of these provisions, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able not to press her amendments.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I might ask my noble friend a couple of questions. He said several times that this is to deal with people who are repeat offenders—the most serious offenders—but paragraph 1(6) requires only one offence. As with certain members of the Government who make mistakes in employing illegal workers from time to time, as do many people, it seems unfair to lump them in with people who are deliberately flouting immigration rules. It sounds very much from what my noble friend is saying that the guidance would require many more offences to have been committed than just the one in the previous three years. I would be comforted if he could reinforce that that is the case and say why paragraph 1(6) says only once.

The other thing that I wanted to raise with him is the conjunction between paragraph 1(3) and 1(11). Surely if the person who is employing gets even a few moments’ prior notice that this procedure is about to be activated, he has a “Lord Sugar” defence—all he has to say is, “You’re fired”, and he is no longer employing anyone.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, in answer to the first question, the whole point is that it is not just sub-paragraph (6) that has to be taken into account before a closure notice is provided; it is in combination with sub-paragraph (3). The condition is that an employer is employing someone illegally and, in sub-paragraph (6), they have to have previously been convicted of an offence. If an immigration officer suspects that illegal working is going on, they can apply for the closure notice if, and only if, sub-paragraph (6) also applies where they have previous convictions in respect of illegal working.

On my noble friend’s second point about giving notice, that is precisely why for the first 24 hours, which may be extended to 48 hours, we feel that an immediate closure notice can be served, before the court is applied to, to prevent employers doing things which would enable them to continue employing illegal workers. The fact that we can do it immediately, albeit for only up to 48 hours, is an important factor in clamping down on this offence.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, when paragraph 1(11) says,

“An illegal working closure notice may be issued only if reasonable efforts have been made to inform”,

that surely says that the person who is running the premises has to be told beforehand that a notice is to be issued and therefore there is a small space of time in which people can be disemployed. I agree that a company could not be closed. I understand how sub-paragraphs (3) and (6) work together, but sub-paragraph (6) is the bit that covers the previous convictions and, in my opinion, it does not match the words of my noble friend that this is for the most serious offences and the really rogue offenders. This catches anyone who has made one mistake beforehand. If we are giving the Executive this power, which I do not disapprove of in extreme cases, we should restrict it to extreme cases and not include a person who makes a second mistake within three years, which in the retail industry is not hard to do.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, we are talking about illegal working by illegal immigrants. It is just a question of what you define as serious. In our view, with employers who have previously been convicted of illegal working offences and who are suspected of employing illegal workers, we regard that as serious. I think it is a question of definition whether you have to have had one, two or three convictions before it applies. At the moment that is where we consider it should be and we consider that serious.

With regard to my noble friend’s earlier point, sub-paragraph (11) says that there is a duty to inform,

“people who live on the premises”—

not necessarily the employer—but we think it is reasonable that people who live on a premises should be informed that a premises might be closed.