Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

My Lords, I am grateful, not least to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lyell, for joining our debate. We spelt out in our debates in Committee many of the issues that he rightly wishes to address. There is a maximum penalty. It can be applied at different levels in order to recognise the contribution of employers in making sure that they were trying to act reasonably and so on. The Secretary of State is required to act reasonably. Perhaps I may refer the noble and learned Lord to those discussions. He can then come back to me if I can give him further detail. I completely accept the points about behaving reasonably and trying to make the system work appropriately. The noble and learned Lord will know that we have brought it in in order to try to deal with a problem without criminalising employers, but recognising that some perhaps do not do their job properly and are sloppy and those who cannot be bothered need to recognise that a penalty is involved. The majority of employers do not behave in that way; and hence part of what we are seeking to do is to address working with employers to recognise that we all have a bit of a part to play in making sure that the right workforce is operating for business. In a quick snapshot that is the background to the amendments; I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for giving me the chance to make those remarks. As the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay knows, I have met Christine and other members of the Chinese community and representatives of the Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi restaurant community too. We talked about food a great deal and it was hugely enjoyable. We talked a great deal about the issues of small employers and their concerns. It was not a formal consultation but I am happy for the correspondence to be placed in the public domain. I am not sure whether a record of the meeting was taken, but I have no difficulty with the points from the meeting being made public and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, will accept that I will do that in good faith. I turn to the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay. She invited me to talk further about the draft code, around which we had a discussion. It is currently being revised in the light of our discussions in Committee. As soon as I have a new version I will make it available to your Lordships. We took on board the need to be clearer about the way in which the penalties will operate and we recognise the role that employers will play in collaborating when issues arise. The critical question within Amendment No. 22 is the yellow cards system—as I referred to it before—which the CBI has felt strongly about. The difficulty I have is that it provides a complete excuse not to have recognised the fact that one has not done something that one should have done. I turn to the conversations with the different communities. It was clear to me that they were concerned that what they were being asked to do should not be onerous. I completely agree with that. We do not expect employers to become experts in forgery, nor indeed necessarily to have a great understanding of all the documentation. However, it is reasonable to ask them to look at documents and to check photographs of the person involved. We will be working through the helpline and with the different officers who will be working with them to give support and advice to employers so that they become better at understanding what the documents will do. We also talked to the community about how frequently one would be expecting to consider documents again. Noble Lords will know from Committee that we discussed 12 months as being the point, regardless of whether the employee had a six-month visa and was going to renew it. We are not expecting them to keep track of individuals in that way, but we think that about once a year is right. In speaking to the community I believe that at the end of the meeting there was great reassurance about the way in which we are seeking to approach the issue and that it is not about trying to catch people out or to make life more difficult. The representatives also spoke about circumstances where they felt it would be better if there was greater clarity and understanding about what they had to do so that they would be clear about the process. They wanted to make sure that they were employing people legally for all the reasons that noble Lords would expect. So we made significant progress in talking through how this measure would work. The noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, talked about consulting. I agree that we cannot consult people whom we do not know exist. We certainly now have in mind to make sure that the Chinese community and the Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Indian community, particularly around the restaurant business, are consulted. I am grateful again that the late Lord Chan was able to do that for us. They will certainly be part of what will be a consultation. I place on the record that this will be a full, detailed, public consultation on the measures proposed. It will be in accordance with the Better Regulation Executive’s code of practice on consultation. It will last for 12 weeks and responses will be analysed. It will pay particular attention to possible new approaches to the questions that have been consulted on, evidence given on the impact of the proposal and the strength of feeling among particular groups, which in part seeks to deal with the issue that Mr May raised, as the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, mentioned. I will commit to taking that issue away to discuss with my colleagues in the Home Office, and I will come back to the noble Baroness with copies to other noble Lords of what has been determined. Once the consultation has taken place, copies will be placed in the Libraries of both your Lordships’ House and another place to ensure that they are available to noble Lords as well. I hope that that will be sufficient to enable noble Lords to feel comfortable that we are determined to make sure that employers work collaboratively with us and that the civil penalty side is simply to address the fact that we know there will be circumstances where unfortunately perhaps a few employers do not do that and we need to deal with that properly and efficiently. In Committee and, I hope, this evening, I have made it clear how we will do that and I have indicated that we will obtain more details of the latest code of practice, which will take on board points to be made. I turn to Amendment No. 23 in the name of my noble friend Lady Turner of Camden. I am sorry that I did not address it properly in Committee, although I sought to do so. My difficulty is that it is in the wrong place, because in this Bill we are trying to deal with illegal working. There are specific issues where we are seeking to deal with illegality that do not apply to those people working legally and who, as my noble friend rightly said—I sensed a great deal of support for her proposals—were people who work legally in the system but are not treated properly. They are not treated properly in part because people think that because they are migrant workers they do not need to be. Because I am a DCA Minister I am not sure where to take the proposal, except to say that I could not agree more with the sentiments behind it. However, I cannot insert it here in the Bill because the Bill is about illegality and I would not want migrant workers working properly and legally to be mixed up in our minds with those who work illegally. All I can do that might help is to commit to take away the issue and look at it with the appropriate department, which may be the Department for Trade and Industry rather than the Home Office. We can then come back to my noble friend and invite other Minister colleagues to meet her to see what more could be done to address the issue. It is an incredibly important issue but I hope my noble friend will understand that it is not right in this Bill, not least because we do not want to mix up illegality and legality for this important group of people. I hope that I have reassured the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and that she will be able to withdraw her amendment.