Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

I would like to remind the Minister of what the noble Lord, Lord Chan, said at Second Reading, apart from the representations that my noble friend received from the Chinese community. The noble Lord, Lord Chan, pointed out that the Chinese food and catering industry was worth £1 billion a year to the Treasury through the taxes that it pays. He mentioned a survey that he had conducted as long ago as 1987. He found that fewer than 5 per cent of the children of the owners of these businesses wanted to follow in their parents’ footsteps. The Chinese community is well known for its love of education and a very high percentage of the children of immigrants go to university, acquire professional qualifications and move out of the industry. That means that the retiring owner has to find a buyer when he decides to retire. The only potential purchasers are normally people from either China or south Asia. The noble Lord explained that those people tend to come in for one year to make up their mind about buying the restaurant, which is usually below the limit of £200,000 that would allow them to enter as business people. If the prospects of getting an extension of their leave to remain at the end of that period are jeopardised, as they see it, the seller will not be able to realise the proper value of the business and may be impoverished in his retirement when he ought to be enjoying the fruits of many years of hard labour. I thought that it was worth reminding the Committee about what the noble Lord, Lord Chan, said about a particular difficulties of people trying to dispose of the business on their retirement to someone who, by definition, is likely to be coming in as an immigrant for a short period of time to ascertain that he is willing to pay the price that has been asked and is capable of running the business effectively.