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9.30 pm
Thirdly, the Government are supposed to be lifting the burdens on small businesses in this country--what a joke. How do they call imposing a potential fine of £5,000 on these people--and making them go through hoops to ensure that they do not have to take that risk--lifting the burdens? Nothing could be further from the truth. If it were simply a matter that employers had to be satisfied that their prospective employees could produce a national insurance number, that might not be too bad, but that is not the case. It is well known that national insurance numbers are 10 a penny on the black market if people wish to play the system.
There are those who seek to work illegally and who have a national insurance number, but there are others who have the right to work but who do not have a national insurance number--for example, residents of the European economic area and citizens of Iceland. There are some local benefit agencies that do not give national insurance numbers to young people until they have a job. There is the potential for a vicious circle--a person with black skin who goes along for a job interview is asked to produce his national insurance number, but because he does not have a job he does not have a national insurance number. It is a vicious circle most likely to be detrimental to that person's employment prospects if his skin is black because the chances are that if his skin is white the employer will not ask for that sort of certification.
In Committee, the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) said that 43 documents are acceptable as evidence of a person's status and fitness to work in this country, including a Liechtenstein passport and a Belgian identity card. How is an employer supposed to know what is a valid piece of documentation?
This is a squalid clause, and it is deeply offensive. The amendment goes a small way to lessening some of the burdens that it will place on business, and I support it.
Mr. Piara S. Khabra (Ealing, Southall):
I endorse what has been said by my hon. Friends. I speak with great credibility on behalf of Asian business because my constituency has a large number of people who are business men and run small and medium-sized businesses. They employ people and they contribute to the economy of this country. They are very concerned about the implications of this clause--a clause that, in my opinion, is despicable and affects their ability to carry out the requirements of the law and that will affect their businesses.
Clause 8 makes it a criminal offence to employ someone over the age of 16 who does not have an immigration entitlement to work in the United Kingdom. As has been said, the offence carries a punishment of a fine of up to £5,000. That will affect the ability of my constituents and the constituents of all hon. Members who run small businesses. Clause 8 empowers the Home Secretary arbitrarily to add categories of people who are not currently specially prohibited from working--such as people who entered legally but who have overstayed their permitted leave, or people who have appealed against a decision to refuse them further leave to remain--and it would be an offence for an employer to employ them.
An employer accused of employing an illegal immigrant has a possible line of defence if he can prove that he did not believe that he would be committing an
offence by employing that person because he had seen a document specified in an order issued by the Secretary of State. The clause imposes a significant new duty on employers, the neglect of which will result in their incurring criminal penalties.
The proposals assign to employers an immigration control function. I do not believe that that is right. Employers are being required to identify people who have entered illegally or overstayed or who are here lawfully, but are not entitled to do work of the sort offered. Those are policing functions that should be rightly and properly carried out by the immigration and nationality department, not employers. IND staff are specially trained to carry out those functions and are publicly accountable for the performance of their duties. Individual employers, whether they be large or small, will not be accountable for their performance of a public control function. I hope that the Minister will take note of that point, which is also a matter of public concern. In a recent survey, only 10 per cent. of respondents felt that employers should be responsible for immigration control.
Currently, under present law--the Immigration Act 1971 and subsequent Acts--employers may be prosecuted if they knowingly commit offences such as harbouring a person whom they know or believe is not entitled to work in the United Kingdom because of his or her immigration status. Employers may also be prosecuted if they aid or abet a person committing an immigration offence. A provision ensures that legal action can be taken against such people. Those are the intentional acts that directly inhibit effective immigration control.
The proposals contained in clause 8 would make it a criminal offence unknowingly to enter into a contractual relationship with people who, because of their immigration status, are not entitled to work in the UK. In other circumstances, a person does not commit a criminal offence if he or she fails to carry out checks on a person's bona fides before entering into a business relationship or if he or she fails to act to prevent another person from committing or continuing to commit an offence.
The proposals must be understood alongside other provisions in the Bill. They increase police powers, which concerns me. The police whom I know would not like to be given the powers, and the Home Secretary should take note of that. The increased powers of the police to arrest and to enter premises to search for suspects or to collect evidence, which are contained in clause 7, are likely to affect employers and the employment position of ethnic and national minorities. That power gives employers an added incentive to avoid recruiting anyone whose presence would give rise to police suspicion, and employers will be made unnecessarily fearful.
I am also worried about the impact of proposed powers to search for suspects or evidence, which might be used by the police to justify entering the premises of ethnic minority employers, which they already do when immigration officers enter premises and police officers accompany them. There have been circumstances that have caused much concern in the community and the press has reported certain things that might well be perceived as, or constitute, police harassment of ethnic minority communities. The possible implications for community and race relations are self-evident.
The proposals will therefore effectively encourage employers to work on a presumption that all prospective employees who are immigrants are illegal unless they demonstrate otherwise.
The compliance cost assessment, as has been said, puts the total non-recurrent cost of the proposals at more than £13.5 million, which is an enormous burden on business.
I do not condone illegal working. However, having given careful consideration to clause 8, the consultation document and the compliance cost assessment, I am of the view that the Government's proposal to prevent illegal working will not meet their stated objectives in introducing the proposal and, contrary to their express intentions, if implemented as proposed will lead to acts of racial discrimination, reduce equality of opportunity and damage race relations between persons of different groups.
The House should throw out clause 8 because it will damage the interests of business.
Ms Abbott:
It is hard to improve on the eloquence of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr. Khabra), but in the few minutes remaining I want to make it clear that Opposition Members oppose clause 8 in its entirety and say why we aim to ameliorate it by the amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson).
This is a proposal about race, and nowhere is the Bill's racist subtext more explicit than in clause 8, which will affect refugees and asylum seekers and has the potential to affect every British citizen who happens to have a black or brown skin or a foreign name.
There is deep hypocrisy at the heart of clause 8. Throughout the Committee stage, Ministers told the Committee that they incorporated the clause in the Bill because of their deep concern about illegal working. Time after time, we hear about their concern about illegal working, and many Conservative Members have wrung their hands and spoken about illegal workers taking jobs from British citizens.
What is the underlying cause of the employment of illegal immigrants? Do we imagine that employers employ illegal immigrants because they are humanitarians or internationalists? The underlying cause is the search for cheap labour. It ill behoves a Conservative Government whose Conservative predecessors, during the 1980s, did more to force down wages than any Government since the war, to weep crocodile tears about illegal workers.
The source of the market for the labour of illegal immigrants is the labour market policies of the Government.
Ms Abbott:
It is the source of the market for the labour of illegal immigrants because the Government's labour market policies are designed to force down wages and encourage casual and part-time working. That is the deep hypocrisy at the heart of the clause. The most damaging aspect of the clause is the effect that it will have on the employment prospects of black or brown Britons. Conservative Members have not given serious consideration to the effect of the clause on the
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