My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 134B, which is in my name. Last year, on what became the Modern Slavery Act, we made progress even on the long-vexed question of foreign—that is, non-EU—domestic workers coming to this country on the tied, short-term visa or working for diplomats here in London.
The Government appointed Mr James Ewins QC to do an independent review of the effects, in practice, of the restrictive visa. He took evidence and considered whether there was sufficient protection from abuse of those workers’ fundamental rights, such as would amount to modern slavery and human trafficking. In November last year, as has been mentioned, on the balance of the evidence, he found that the tie to a specific employer without the right to change or to apply for a visa extension was incompatible—I repeat, incompatible—with reasonable protection, as was mentioned previously by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser. Today, his Amendment 133 goes a long way to meeting the Ewins recommendations. I believe that it repeats the wording of my previous amendment from last year, which was approved by your Lordships on a Division during the progress of the Modern Slavery Bill.
However, I wish to go just a little further and be a little clearer on the instructions to the Secretary of State. My amendment would implement the improvements by changes to the Immigration Rules, making them variable but without recourse to new primary legislation. Proposed new paragraphs (a), (c) and (f) in my amendment are the same as those in Amendment 133. My paragraph (b) provides for an,
“information session within one month of the commencement of their visa”.
This would allow the workers to be fully informed of their rights. Checks could be made at that time that they had contracts of employment and understood them, that they had access to their passports—a point which has been mentioned very often in previous debates —and that they knew how to raise complaints.
My proposed new paragraph (d) would probably not apply to workers on a six-month visa unless the employers themselves obtained extensions of stay, as does in fact quite often happen. It would also be helpful for diplomatic employees and in some irregular situations where time had passed by but there were strong grounds for allowing settlement. It would, furthermore, make possible applications in this country without the applicant having to return to another country and therefore apply from outside the United Kingdom.
My proposed new paragraph (e) would not apply automatically but would helpfully assist family reunion and parental ties—for example, in cases where small children had been left behind in the country of origin. This is obviously a very hard choice but one into which mothers may be forced by extreme poverty. With these explanations, I trust Amendment 134B will commend itself to your Lordships and provide the Government with satisfactory guidance on how to implement the Ewins recommendations. This protection for highly vulnerable people is urgently needed, and further delays would be quite unacceptable.