Draft Immigration Act 2014 (Residential Accommodation) (Maximum Penalty) Order 2023 Draft Immigration (Employment of Adults Subject to Immigration Control) (Maximum Penalty) (Amendment) Order 2023

Debate between Ben Bradshaw and Stephen Kinnock

Monday 15th January 2024 General Committees

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I will first respond to the Minister’s comments on the illegal working penalties and then address the draft order that relates to rental accommodation.

Labour supports the principle of prohibiting those with no legal right to be in the UK from undertaking paid employment here. Indeed, it was a Labour Government who in 2006 enacted legislation that first established civil penalties for employers who fail to comply with those restrictions. For the restrictions to have teeth, civil penalties must be set at a level that is onerous enough to deter employers from knowingly and deliberately breaking the law.

With that goal in mind, it is right that the maximum fines for employers should be kept under review and, where necessary, increased. However, I am sure that the Government do not want to impose burdensome regulations on small businesses just for the sake of it. That can be avoided easily enough, provided that the Government consult with employers on the potential impact of any changes and take action to mitigate any undue burdens or unintended consequences for the businesses affected.

Not for the first time, the Home Office has fallen short of what might reasonably have been expected of it. The only reference in the explanatory memorandum to any consultation with employers is in a terse paragraph that confirms that none has taken place. Given the magnitude of the proposed changes—a tripling of penalties from £15,000 to £45,000 per worker for first offences—the failure to consult is surprising and disappointing. The party that the Minister represents claims to be pro-business, yet it appears not to have consulted with business on this important change. If the Minister can provide an explanation for the lack of consultation with business, I am sure hon. Members will be happy to hear it.

More broadly, the draft order represents a missed opportunity on the Government’s part to set out a clear, comprehensive and effective strategy for combating illegal working across the board, including through the use of the civil penalty scheme. The failure of Ministers to do so is all the more disappointing in view of the fact that a review was promised by the Home Office following a recommendation from the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration back in 2019. It appears to have gone the way of most recommendations that are “accepted” by the Department, which is to say put in a drawer and forgotten about. Perhaps my cynicism is unjustified, in which case the Minister is more than welcome to correct me and tell me exactly when the fabled strategy on illegal working will be published.

As with the other statutory instrument that we will be discussing, there is a risk of these higher fines feeling like another case of the Government running out of ideas and just making things that are already illegal a bit more illegal.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that tackling this problem would be an awful lot easier if the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP had not ganged up to defeat our plans for identity cards when we were in government? Every other European Union country has them; there is absolutely no reason at all why we should not. That is why the Government are facing these humongous problems.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that excellent intervention. The debate around identity cards has been raging, one could say, for a very long time. It is something that needs to be looked at very seriously, but as he knows, the whole project was kiboshed at the time. It is certainly something that merits further discussion.

I turn to the right-to-rent checks and the civil penalties for non-compliance. These are a means of supporting the objective of tackling and deterring illegal migration. On that basis, the argument goes, the higher the penalties imposed on landlords for letting to migrants who are in the UK illegally, the stronger the deterrent against further unlawful migration. Given how emphatically the Government draw a direct link between these higher penalties and tackling illegal migration, hon. Members might have expected Ministers to put forward stronger evidence to support the policy and to support that link, yet they have not done so. Again, it feels rather as if the Government are running out of ideas and resorting to making illegal things more illegal.

It feels fairly unlikely that channel crossings would be deterred if only immigrants could see that it would be hard to rent a home on arrival in the UK. If there is genuine evidence to support the effectiveness of these penalties in deterring irregular migration, I am sure hon. Members would be very grateful if the Minister pointed it out.

For the sake of argument, let us say that penalties on landlords do serve as a deterrent. The question the Government then have to answer is whether there could be any unintended consequences of the proposed increase. If so, what steps would be taken to mitigate any harm to those who are here perfectly legally?

I do not think the Minister mentioned this in his comments—my apologies if he did; I may have missed it—but I am sure he is aware that there is evidence that lawful residents, including British nationals, have faced significant barriers to securing accommodation as a result of landlords’ fears of being penalised for even unintended breaches of the right-to-rent requirement. Evidence published by the Minister’s own Department shows that; as early as 2014, when the scheme was first piloted, research showed that landlords, out of an abundance of caution, reacted to the new rules by favouring would-be tenants who were white and who could produce a UK passport on request—and even, in 27% of cases, those who did not have “foreign-sounding” accents or names.

As was all too common with the old hostile environment policies, at least as much of a burden seems to be being placed on lawful migrants and British-born citizens as on the unlawful migrants the policy is supposed to target. The problem is not that the Home Office was not aware of this evidence; the problem is that it simply dismissed it. In doing so, Ministers said that clear guidance to landlords was available in the case of any doubt as to what they are or are not required to do. In the Minister’s view, is the guidance sufficiently clear? More importantly, has the guidance been made known to landlords so that any risk of unintended discriminatory consequences is minimised as far as is practically possible?

To be clear, the Opposition are not saying that the right-to-rent system is inherently unworkable or unacceptable, but it is incumbent on Ministers to set out what specific steps the Government will take both to mitigate any adverse effects on lawful migrants and citizens and to ensure that any evidence of discrimination that is brought to Ministers’ attention is swiftly acted on with appropriate remedies and safeguards. I look forward to hearing a clear commitment to that effect from the Minister.