Immigration Bill

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Monday 18th January 2016 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Hamwee]

1: Clause 1, page 1, line 5, after “State” insert “for the Home Department”

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I also have Amendments 2, 3, 6 and 13 in this group. My noble friend Lord Greaves commented the other day that it has become something of a custom—not as much as a convention—for the early speeches on amendments in Committee to turn into something like Second Reading speeches. I do not intend to make a Second Reading speech, and the comments with which I shall preface my remarks on Amendment 1 could not have been made at Second Reading.

I do not suppose that having to deal with 112 amendments at such a late stage was easy for the Minister or for officials. Indeed, I suspect that the officials who have had to deal in very short order with what is in effect a new Bill as regards the provisions for labour market enforcement have had a particularly difficult time, so I am sympathetic to all of them. However, others of us who have been involved in the Bill have not found it easy and, in particular, those outside this House who are involved in the sector and whose comments are always so valuable to us have had a really hard time. Frankly, this is no way to legislate.

A member of the Public Bill Committee in the Commons commented on how good the process had been, although he did say, “Pity about the content of the Bill”. The Minister has also commented on the evidence sessions in the Commons, saying that more detailed scrutiny was undertaken than is often the case. However, these new clauses dealing with the role and remit of the GLA affect the structural arrangements and the relationships of actors in the sector. They also introduce new measures and more, and I cannot see that anyone could describe this as best practice.

I apologise to the Committee for the late tabling of amendments to the government amendments—I tabled a number on Friday—but I wanted to look at them, with my own responses to them, at this stage rather than repeat the process on Report, as might have happened had I left it until then. As I said, how can the NGOs and others respond, presented with amendments in effect less than a week ago? It is not just their problem; it is ours as well, because we cannot do our job well if we are in a vacuum. I am sure the Minister will say that the consultation on the labour market sector, which closed in December, trailed the proposals, but it did not; not in the way in which we now see them. We are making law and therefore we have got to make it right, not just have a general narrative discourse on the arrangements.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)]

I begin, as I have been invited to, by apologising to the Committee for the late tabling of these amendments, but let me try to explain that a little further. We were faced with a particular challenge. Noble Lords will recall that we had the Second Reading on 22 December, and one issue raised at that point was that the scheduled date for the first day in Committee was 13 January. In the light of the likely publication of our response to the consultation, we agreed to see whether the start date could be put back—which it was until today, 18 January.

We were then faced with a challenge regarding the publication of the report, referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, in response to the consultation document on tackling exploitation in the labour market. We said that we would have a period of consultation, which ran from September through to December, and that we would legislate on the back of that consultation, which seems to me to be general good practice. The question was then: at what stage should the amendments be introduced? There was a little debate—I am looking at the Box, but it is probably best that I do not—as to whether they should be introduced on Report, or in Committee. My noble friends Lord Ashton, Lord Keen and I took the view that if they were introduced for the Committee stage, at least they could receive a thorough airing, which could be reflected on before Report.

There is a large number of amendments. We had a meeting with all interested Peers and again, we tried to listen carefully to the points that were being raised. One was that because the amendments were tabled, it was not easy for an opposition spokesman or any Member of the House, let alone the Minister responding, immediately to correlate the amendment to the specific recommendation. A suggestion was made that we should produce a schedule, which was done within 24 hours of that meeting. That then went out to noble Lords who had attended the meeting, through the usual channels to the official party groupings and to Cross-Benchers, of course.

I am trying to explain some of the thought process. It was not intended to be discourteous to your Lordships’ House but sought to be helpful. The other point is on the nature of these amendments. I think that 59 relate to the consultation document. There is also a vast swathe—I did not manage to calculate the number—linked to the licensing of private hire taxi companies. We shall be coming to that issue in later groups. I did not realise that it seems as if every locality in the entire country has its own regulation for private hire taxi companies, so one amendment cannot apply across the entire country but needs to amend legislation pertaining to a particular area. That deals with the large tranche of the amendments.

I add to the previous debate on the minimum wage regulations my appreciation and that of the whole House to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee for its incredibly speedy work, even if it did introduce a bit of a riposte by stating that,

“the Government tabled a substantial number of amendments—54 pages’ worth!”.

I think that is the first time I have seen an exclamation mark in one of its reports. The point was made eloquently by symbol on the committee’s feelings on that. I offer my apologies, and hope that this is by some way of explanation. I also express our appreciation to the Select Committee on the Constitution for its very helpful report, which I know we will be coming to in later stages.

With that attempt at setting out the position, which I know is not ideal, I now turn to the amendments before us. The noble Baroness has rightly noted that the Director of Labour Market Enforcement’s remit covers the work of enforcement bodies that sit under two departments: the Gangmasters Licensing Authority reports to the Home Secretary while the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills is responsible for the work of the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate and the HMRC’s national minimum wage team.

The Government have been clear in the consultation that we published and our response to it, as well as in assurances made by my right honourable friend James Brokenshire in Committee in another place, that the director will be a joint appointment by the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills. They will jointly appoint the director and receive the strategy. The noble Baroness may have concerns about how the two Secretaries of State will reach agreement, but I reassure her that preventing abuse of labour market laws is a priority for both departments. Subject to parliamentary approval of the role, they will both be looking to appoint a director with the necessary skills and experience to make a difference.

The requirement to consult Scottish and Northern Irish Ministers in Amendment 3 brings me to the territorial extent of this role. Employment law is broadly reserved as the UK operating as a single labour market brings great benefits to workers and employers. Therefore, the director’s remit will be UK-wide. However, there are parts of the remit where the policy is not reserved. To deal with this, we are legislating to ensure that the director can set the strategy to enforce labour market legislation only to the extent that it already applies and is reserved. That is: the whole of the UK in respect of the national minimum wage; Great Britain for the Employment Agencies Act 1973 and the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004; and England and Wales in respect of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. Therefore, there will be no need for Ministers formally to consult Scottish Ministers or the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland.

However, to allow the strategy to be successful, the legislation requires it to be evidence-based and include the director’s assessment of the scale and nature of non-compliance in the labour market. To do this, the director will draw on the widest possible range of sources. This will include the intelligence hub provided for in Clause 6, but will inevitably include engaging non-governmental organisations, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, requested, bodies representing employers, bodies representing workers and other organisations to develop the fullest possible picture. These will include charities, the enforcement bodies themselves, and other organisations such as the police.

Amendments 6 and 13 would require the Director of Labour Market Enforcement to engage certain people in the development of the labour market enforcement strategy, while Amendment 11 would require the Director of Labour Market Enforcement to engage with civil society and voluntary organisations in the development of the labour market enforcement strategy. It is not yet clear how the director would be able to discharge the legal requirement to,

“engage with civil society and voluntary organisations”,

which is not defined. I fear that putting this duty on the director would be unhelpful as it does not specify the full range of organisations that the Government expect would need to be consulted as part of that provision. These include non-governmental organisations, bodies representing employers, bodies representing workers and other organisations not specified in the amendment. Therefore, my opposition to it rests on it being unnecessary, while risking unhelpfully to narrow the director’s focus.

Amendments 12 and 14 appear to limit the director’s proposed role by not permitting his strategy to alter the strategies set out by any of the other enforcement bodies, or binding the enforcement bodies to delivering the director’s strategy. The director’s strategy is not intended to undermine the strategies of the enforcement bodies, or to take precedence. Rather, we expect those strategies to be informed by the director’s strategy as they deliver their contribution to tackling labour market exploitation.

On the GLA, the GLA board will continue to be responsible for the delivery of the GLA’s functions. What will change is that the delivery of those functions will sit within a wider vision of tackling labour market exploitation. While I will address this in due course, the Government’s amendments will add the functions of the GLA board to the list of labour market enforcement functions as specified. Furthermore, the GLA board will have a duty to exercise its functions in accordance with the director’s strategy. We believe that this will ensure that the enforcement bodies and the director work together more effectively.

The final amendment in this group, Amendment 38, brings me to the intelligence hub. Clause 6 as drafted gives the new director the duty to lead an intelligence hub that forms a coherent view of the nature and extent of exploitation and non-compliance in the labour market.

[Baroness Hamwee]

I think the Minister may have turned over two pages and gone on to the next group.

[Lord Bates]

Well, I have to say in that respect, I have not turned over two pages, but I may well be on to the next group. If so, and with that helpful prompt from the ever-helpful Baroness, I give way.

[Lord Bates]

I can certainly say that. That is a very helpful intervention on a number of levels. I know that officials found our meetings last week and before Christmas very helpful. I think that that will continue to strengthen the work of the Committee. With that, I will pause my remarks and hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment at this stage.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I certainly will. It would not be profitable to continue the discussion now about the tabling of these quite considerable changes. I. too, am grateful to the officials who have been very helpful in the most difficult circumstances.

It is extraordinary to me how many people outside this House read the report of our proceedings in very considerable detail, particularly those who have an interest in the subject matter. For them, I will say that I checked with the Public Bill Office this morning and it was confirmed to me that, provided we do not divide but merely agree the government amendments, there are no bars to our tabling amendments to what will then be part of the Bill on Report. I apologise to the Minister and officials if that prompts a flood of further amendments—but so be it.

My only other point, with regard to the Minister’s remarks on taxis, is to offer him a piece of advice. He should never tell a taxi driver that he is a Minister in the Government—or indeed a Member of this House—because he will not get out of the taxi without a most difficult conversation.

On Amendment 11, I understand the technical points that the Minister makes, but the third sector is hugely important. As has been said, it is the linchpin of the way in which our immigration service—if that is the right word—deals with asylum seekers and some other immigrants. It is absolutely central. It should not need saying that there will be the contact with the voluntary sector and other organisations that has been spelled out. I think that it says a lot that it was felt necessary to put that down.

With regard to my amendments and which departments do what and how they work together, we are told that the legislation is a priority for both departments, but I would say that each department has its own distinctive and different priorities. That is where I see problems, perhaps, coming. I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 1.

Amendment 1 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

It would be helpful if the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Bates, could interpret the seemingly contradictory and complex comments by the Minister in the other place by spelling out what protections, if any, are provided under the Bill to workers irrespective of immigration status, and what role the Director of Labour Market Enforcement will play in respect of labour exploitation and abuse in the workplace of those who do not have the required immigration status to be in this country. I beg to move Amendment 4.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Paddick and I have Amendments 5, 8, 10, 25, 28, 32 to 34 and 37 in this group. Our names are also put to Amendments 7 and 36, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, like whom I think it is important that the legislation is clear as to the director’s purpose. In other words, what is the point of the director? The director’s strategy is, in my eyes, a mechanism for implementing his purpose, and unless we spell out the purpose in a succinct fashion then we go straight to the strategy and that does not seem to be logical.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, before the noble Lord responds, perhaps I may take some of those comments but in something of a reverse order. On the question of resources, the Minister referred to Clause 1(4), but that relates to provision for the director. Of course, we are concerned not just about the director but about the organisations—if that is the right term for the various entities—which will be implementing the strategy. Whoever’s strategy it turns out to be is the subject of another debate. So, although I accept the point that the Minister has made, I do not think that it goes all the way, as some of us were seeking.

[Lord Bates]

If it would be helpful to noble Lords, I should be happy to set this out in writing. However, I can tell them that the 2015-16 budget for the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate is £0.5 million and it has 8.6 full-time-equivalent staff. For the same period, the Gangmasters Licensing Authority has funding of £4.268 million, including £100,000 for Northern Ireland enforcement, and it has 66 full-time-equivalent staff. The budget for the national minimum wage enforcement team was increased by £4 million to the current figure of £13.2 million, and it has 230 full-time-equivalent staff. We are saying that the helpful part of the role of the Director of Labour Market Enforcement will be to look at those three groups and the current basket of resource, which has been increased substantially over the past year, and to see how it can be most effectively deployed to tackle the types of wrongs that we are seeing.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, the figures are interesting. Nobody is ever content and no one will say, “That’s enough”, but my impression—I say this as somebody who hears those figures, although they do not really mean anything to me; I am not an expert in any of those fields—is that there are organisations struggling to do the job that they have and which in some cases they do absolutely extraordinarily. Just hearing figures expressed in millions does not advance the argument in the way that I know the noble Lord and I are concerned with.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

Before the noble Baroness leaves the point about resources, she may recall that during the proceedings on the modern slavery and human trafficking legislation we were told that between 2011 and 2014 the Gangmasters Licensing Authority saw a reduction of 17% in its budget—a figure that I think we can all comprehend very easily. I wonder—this is directed at the Minister partly through the noble Baroness—whether the figures that he has just given represent a real increase on those reductions and whether we are seeing a reinstatement of the moneys that were cut.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I am looking to the Minister, but he has not received inspiration on that yet.

[Lord Bates]

I have not received inspiration, but I do not doubt for one minute what the noble Lord rightly observes. He refers to a time when we were having to tackle some pretty sizable problems in the public finances, and that continues to be a pressure. That is one reason why, I think, we are bringing these resources together. It would be helpful—and I will certainly undertake to do this—to set out in one letter to Members of the Committee in your Lordships’ House the situation on resources, perhaps in a way that is easier to assess. However, the point is that when you have different pots in different areas with different groups of people, it makes it all the more important that they are joined up, that there is co-ordination and that we get the maximum effect for every taxpayer pound that is spent. That is, of course, what the remit of the Director of Labour Market Enforcement is envisaged to be.

[Baroness Hamwee]

But within the budgets set by the two departments, as we have just heard. I do not think that anyone is arguing against efficiency, but those budgets are being spent, I assume, to their maximum now. So it is a discussion that will go on.

With regard to the point about the regulations and the possibility of extending the scope of the director’s work, the Minister mentioned parliamentary oversight. Of course, that is a very current issue, because oversight only goes so far. Indeed, one might say that it is “sight” but not “change”, because we cannot do anything about secondary legislation.

I want to comment on the points that have been made about trends and the work, other than that to which the noble Lord and I have pointed, on the protection of workers. I realise that the way in which I have worded my amendment was perhaps not the most felicitous. I did in my speech mention things such as monitoring and trends, and I meant that in a very wide sense. I understand, for instance, that the GLA—this is a very important part of its work—has been extremely successful in its relationship with employers and runs a liaison group with employers and agents in the sectors in which it currently works. One might take any survey with a pinch of salt, but a 93% approval rating—I think I have got that right—from employers in their view of their own regulator strikes me as being pretty high, and I for one certainly do not dismiss the points that have been made by the two noble Lords on the other side.

[Lord Rosser]

My Lords, I will be brief in responding, with just one or two points to make. I have listened carefully to what the Minister has said in response but, frankly, I think that we are making a meal out of not being willing, as far as the Government are concerned, to put the primary purpose of the Director of Labour Market Enforcement in the Bill. I certainly do not accept any argument that it would somehow restrict the functions of that particular post.

I appreciate what the Minister has had to say about his willingness to send a letter relating to resources, and I am sure that that will be extremely helpful. It is certainly my intention to come back to the issue of resources in a later group of amendments.

On the issue of the involvement or otherwise of the Director of Labour Market Enforcement in the immigration system, the Minister repeated the part of his letter that I also referred to: that the new director’s role did not cover immigration control and that nowhere in this Bill is the director given the purpose or power to do that, and if he or she did they would be acting outside their statutory powers. This is a genuine question and not a challenge, but if the Minister is going to send a letter on resources, will he consider adding to it an indication of which clauses of the Bill would preclude the director from being involved in any aspect of immigration enforcement and control? I ask that partly in the context of Clause 2, which states that

“A labour market enforcement strategy … is a document which … deals with such other matters as the Director considers appropriate”.

What happens if the director considers that a strategy relating in part to some involvement in the immigration process is appropriate? Is he entitled under that particular subsection to get so involved? It would be extremely helpful if in his letter the Minister would address that point. With those comments, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.