Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [Lords]

I very much agree, and I shall come on to the point about destitution. On the issue of transitional arrangements, which was raised earlier, there is some protection now through clause 39, which was introduced in the Lords, for people who have applied for citizenship or indefinite leave and for people in the final qualifying year. I am not convinced that that goes far enough. We ought to learn from the fiasco resulting from the changes to the highly skilled migrants programme, when the rule was changed from a four-year qualifying period to a five-year qualifying period to get indefinite leave. That led to a High Court case, which was lost, leading to the policy having to be thought through again. I suspect we may end up along the same route if we are not careful and if we do not make sure that there are transitional arrangements in the Bill. I accept that it is impossible for transitional arrangements to exempt from the provisions anybody who is already in the country for whatever reason, but people who are already well through the process and getting towards the point where they can acquire citizenship ought to be protected in the transitional arrangements. On qualification for citizenship, there is another issue: employment for people who have entered the country as migrant workers. The Lords discussed the requirement for continuous employment, and I have concerns about how that might be interpreted, especially if, as may be, the courts get involved in the interpretation of continuous employment. In the Lords debates, Ministers said that there would be circumstances in which an employer could change. For instance, if an employer went bankrupt, it would clearly not be reasonable to say that a person had been out of continuous employment if they then went into another job. People may well find themselves locked into staying with the same employer, however, and they may find it difficult to change jobs during the qualifying period. Concerns have been expressed—certainly by a number of trade unions—about what that might mean: the potential for exploitation, and the potential for people to be locked into working conditions that are even unlawful. Indeed, we know that that happens now. Someone who has a dubious immigration status or is scared about what might happen to them if they lose their job can end up working in unlawful conditions, not being paid the minimum wage and so on. They are scared to complain, however, because they are scared of the consequences. They are scared that they will lose their job, apart from anything else. If another consequence is going to be that they lose their qualifying period for citizenship and have to go back to the beginning of the process, that will act as a further incentive not to complain. We must therefore look at introducing some safeguards on the qualifying periods. A similar point arises about safeguards on periods of absence from the country. Ministers gave some assurances in the Lords, but it is currently possible to average periods of absence over the five years, and I should like the Bill to retain that averaging system.