Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving me the chance to make sure that we have on record the issues which have been raised. I believe that it has been made clear as we have brought the Bill through your Lordships’ House and another place that there will be a full, detailed public consultation on the illegal working measures proposed. It is not necessary to create a statutory requirement on the Government to consult as that is done as a matter of course whenever options are being considered for new regulations on business. The consultation will be undertaken in accordance with the better regulation executives code of practice on consultation which sets out the basic principles for effective government consultations. Therefore, the consultation will last for a minimum of 12 weeks. The responses will be analysed with particular attention paid to possible new approaches to the questions consulted on, further evidence given on the impact of the proposals, and the strength of feeling among particular groups. A report including a summary of responses received during the course of the consultation will be produced and published at the end of the consultation and a copy placed in both Houses and published on the IND website. We followed this practice in relation to the legal working measures in the 2004 order and will make sure that we do the same now. I hope that we have made it clear that we are receptive to comments made during the passage of the Bill. The same spirit will apply to the consultation exercise. The draft code of practice under Clause 19 was initially published in October. It has been revised and republished in the light of comments made in Committee. It contains the following changes: a revised definition of illegal employee to reflect the government amendments tabled on Report in this House in relation to cancellation, curtailment and revocation of leave; it explicitly states that consideration of the fairness of the financial penalty to be imposed must be made by the Secretary of State together with the proportionality of the amount; that if objection to a civil penalty is made the Secretary of State must consider evidence as to the effect of the civil penalty on the viability of the employer’s business; and it explicitly states that consideration will be given to requests from employers that payment of a civil penalty may be made in monthly instalments over a period of 12 months. As I have indicated, the draft code will be subject to full public consultation and may well be amended further in the light of the results of that consultation. I turn to the issues raised by the noble Baroness regarding the CRE. The CRE had sight of the original draft before it was published. We welcome its active participation in the consultation exercise, in particular over compatibility issues between Clause 23, the code and the 2005 CRE statutory code of practice on race equality. For example, the CRE might need to think about whether it needs to amend its statutory code in light of the Bill. We discussed with the CRE the fact that civil penalties were coming before the code was published. I hope that there will be a chance now to consider that again. It is a member of the illegal working stakeholder group chaired by my right honourable friend Tony McNulty. We shall work with the group on the implementation of civil penalties, thereby ensuring that it is indeed participating fully. We shall work with it in the industrial tribunal system and researches to monitor compliance with the statutory non-discrimination code. I hope that that meets the commitment I made and that on that basis the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.