Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

My Lords, my name is to these amendments and I spoke on Clauses 40 and 41 in Grand Committee. At that time I was speaking on a brief supplied by the Public and Commercial Services Union, the union to which immigration officers belong. They are concerned about the provisions in the clauses for part of the services their members now provide to be contracted out to private operators. Obviously, they are worried about what they see as a threat to their jobs. Contractors currently operating under arrangements with France are paid less than the UK Immigration Service staff, with no access to pension provision and no career prospects—at least, so I am told. The union is also concerned about maintaining the professional and security standards which apply to their members. I raised some of these issues in Grand Committee. Since then I have received further briefing, this time from the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association. It points out that Clause 40 would allow the contracting out of powers to search and detain for up to three hours at ports to other authorised persons—i.e. to private contractors. The contractors would be used to seek out and to detect people hidden in vehicles, and to expose and arrest them. It is generally accepted that extremely difficult conditions can arise when desperate and vulnerable people, who may include children, are detected. The Minister said the Government intended that contracting out would relieve immigration officers of what she termed ““mundane work””. The Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association points out that while it may be mundane to walk alongside vehicles looking for people, it is anything but mundane to find them. This is where experience and professionalism become all-important, and that is particularly true where children are involved. The Government have not fully explained why contracting out is necessary. I hope it is not thought that it will be cheaper to use less well-paid people and that is why the Government want to proceed down that path. That does not seem acceptable to me and I hope the Government will look at this again. Indeed, experience of contracting out in the public sector has not always been good. The Institute of Employment Relations, of which I am a member, has recently published research into what it calls the impact of contracting out on employment relations in public services. The experience, quite clearly, is not uniformly good. Accountability, as they say, is impaired as responsibility is shed—the point that has just been made by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. Can the Minister explain why it is necessary to go down this path, to contract out the work of highly skilled, professional and well-trained people—people, moreover, who are subject to a very rigorous security check? I think, in the present circumstances, that that is of utmost importance and I support the amendments.