MS LIN HOMER AND MS EMILY MILES

15 JANUARY 2008

  Q20  Mr Clappison: Can I ask you about another subject which you have answered a written question to me on, and the Chairman knows that I am moving on to this subject, the "resident labour market test". In October of last year, in your joint submission with the Department for Work and Pensions to the House of Lords, you said that you were removing the requirement of the "resident labour market test", which, broadly speaking, requires employers to look to employ somebody from the United Kingdom before they can recruit somebody from outside the EU. You were looking to remove that for jobs above a certain salary. In an answer which I received from the Minister in your department more recently, in fact yesterday, I received a more opaque answer which did not really say what you were going to do at all. Would you tell me: are you still planning to do away with it above a certain level?

  Ms Homer: Chairman, I will struggle to answer this question less opaquely than the Minister without seeing it and having the detail to the fore. Mr Clappison has given us quite a large number of PQs recently and I would not confess to retaining—

  Q21  Chairman: He is a busy man.

  Ms Homer: Yes, that is absolutely clear, and I would not want to suggest I retain all of them in my mind.

  Q22  Mr Clappison: I am happy to show you the answer. I will read it to you in fact. I ask you what plans you have for changing the "resident labour market test", and I am told in the answer, "We have not finalised details of how the `resident labour market test' will work under tier two of the points-based system. We are discussing the operation of a test of employer representatives and others and will publish details of the test in the Statement of Intent for next year." It does not say what you are doing. I can hand that to you.

  Ms Homer: No, that is fine.

  Q23  Mr Clappison: The question I have for you is: is the policy still the same as last October, where you said, and I will read it to you (this was your submission to the House of Lords), "Under the new points-based system, the `resident labour market test' will only apply to jobs below a certain salary, since it is here that there is most public concern about the impact of migrant labour on the domestic labour market." My question to you is simply: are you still planning to remove the "resident labour market test" requirement for jobs above a certain salary?

  Ms Homer: Chairman, I would have to say, I am not sure, I think, the answer that has been given is opaque. I think it makes it plain that we are in discussion. The introduction of the whole of the points-based system has been undertaken in a way where we sought to involve business and other lobby groups in designing the system to make sure it is as fit as we can make it, and if there are on-going discussions, I think that alludes to the fact that we are just making sure that everybody agrees with the way that we are going forward.

  Q24  Mr Clappison: I am not accusing you of giving an opaque answer, but could I have an answer to the first question? Are you still planning to remove it?

  Ms Homer: I think what that makes plain is we are having some conversations at the moment and we are clearly just making sure that everybody agrees with our procedures. I would have to say, I will struggle to give a more detailed answer on that without notice today. I am very happy to write further to Mr Clappison.

  Q25  Chairman: Will you write to us about that?

  Ms Homer: I will.

  Q26  Mr Winnick: On deportation, can we be satisfied that where the courts have recommended deportation, including those who have been sentenced to less than 12 months, although I suppose in such cases the recommendations have been much fewer, this has actually been implemented and they are being deported?

  Ms Homer: Yes, Chairman. I am very satisfied.

  Q27  Mr Winnick: Because that was what the row was about at page 11.

  Ms Homer: It was. I can well recall, you and I were both in the room, I think, one member of the committee was able to read out a reference from one judge who effectively said he was not going to recommend deportation because he did not trust me to do it. I paraphrase, but that was the comment. I am very clear that that is now happening much more frequently, and the reason why is because I sign the deportation orders. As I have said before, a significant number of those are court recommended and it is pleasing to say a significant number of those are for lesser sentences, where the court is clearly taking the view that despite the lesser sentence the circumstances warrant it, and they now, I think, do have a higher degree of trust that we will put that into effect.

  Q28  Mr Winnick: Is the Home Secretary kept informed, which apparently was not the position previously? Where the court has recommended deportation, the Home Secretary will have the appropriate list on a regular basis.

  Ms Homer: We provide some very detailed performance information to our Minister and through him to the Home Secretary now; so I would feel confident that the Home Secretary is getting much better quality of information. I would have to say, and I hope you will understand, that the comments that the previous Home Secretary made about the quality of our management information, although much of it is improved, I think every time I write to you I do repeat the point, we are still in a situation where we are improving some historic and some old databases and there are still times, I think, when the quality of my information is not as good as I would want it to be, but I feel much more confident that the general picture I am sharing with you as a committee, my Minister and the Home Secretary is improving and can have much more reliance placed on it than when I first arrived.

  Q29  Mrs Dean: I understand that prisoners from EEA countries are not normally considered for deportation unless they have been sentenced to two years' imprisonment or longer. Can you confirm whether that is correct and, if it is, could you respond to the fact that other European countries, such as Italy, take a harder line approach to deporting EEA convicted criminals and why do not we?

  Ms Homer: The rules for Europeans are different than the rules for the rest of the world, though the basic criteria of 24 versus 12 is there. What we have been looking at is making sure that we are as robust in deporting Europeans as we can be and, indeed, we do deport a significant number of Europeans. Whenever we see something happening in the rest of Europe that looks interesting, different, tougher or different to us, I have to say, we always look. There is sometimes a gap between the rhetoric of what you read about what people are doing and what is actually happening, and it is always difficult to be very sure, so we make a particular effort to inquire. The situation is that many European countries have not really been deporting other Europeans at all, and so some of the movement you are seeing is them beginning, in a sense, to get into the territory that we have been in for some time. Of course, part of that is the Schengen border makes movement between European countries slightly more difficult. The Italians can take people back to Romania on a coach however they like, but, of course, there are no checks if they then get on a different coach and come back the next day, whereas we, of course, have the border. So we do not think there is anything of a tougher or different nature, but we are engaging very closely with our European colleagues so that if there is any shift at all, either in the policy thinking in Europe or in the practice, both that we are informed and inform that debate. We think we are at the leading edge of it, if I am honest.

  Q30  Mr Winnick: Are there difficulties about deporting foreign national prisoners because home countries will not accept them?

  Ms Homer: There are still difficulties about re-documenting not only foreign national prisoners—

  Q31  Mr Winnick: Name the countries which are the most difficult.

  Ms Homer: The way we have been going is we have been identifying countries where there are challenges and then we go and talk to them. For instance, if I had talked to you, I guess, a year ago, I would have said that we had problems with China at the pace at which we got documents, but we have now signed an MOU with China which is speeding up the rate at which we get documents and hugely improving the interaction between our countries. The Chinese Ambassador has put personal interest into making that work. We had, similarly, had difficulties with Jamaica, and the President of Jamaica and our own Prime Minister have talked directly about that. We have improved the procedures and, indeed, between Christmas and New Year a charter—

  Q32  Mr Winnick: The situation with Jamaica is resolved.

  Ms Homer: It is improving, ditto with Vietnam, and, in fact, what we are looking at just now are those countries where we should start those dialogues for this year. There obviously remain some difficult—

  Q33  Chairman: I think Mr Winnick is keen to know which are the difficult countries.

  Ms Homer: There are some countries like Somalia where it is very difficult to have a conversation because there really is not a government to have a conversation with, and I think those will prove problematic, but even with Somalia we achieved one return during the last year, which may seem small but enables—

  Q34  Chairman: One out of how many?

  Ms Homer: There are hundreds of Somalians in the system, both asylum and criminals, but what we find is when we achieve one enforced return we succeed in voluntary returns; so it is often worth us opening the pipeline. We have, similarly, achieved very small numbers of returns to countries like Algeria, to Eritrea, and so our view is that there is no country that is not capable of us making a return to, but there can be challenges. Zimbabwe, I suspect, is the one many of you will know best. There has been a very protracted and very complex court case, which is still going through the final stages but where, at the last result, again it was confirmed that we would be able to make returns to Zimbabwe. So, we take a practical and, I think I would say, tenacious approach to opening up return routes. Once we do, then we focus both on forced returns and voluntary returns and, as you will have heard me say before, where we can persuade people to go back under their own steam that is always our preferred option.

  Q35  Chairman: Are there any countries in Europe in the same category?

  Ms Homer: No, in many European countries prisoners, if I revert to prisoners, will prefer to serve the end of their sentence in their own country of origin, and I have to say I do not believe there are. We are, however, progressing the policy movement that Europe started of having repatriation agreements for prisoners that do not require their consent, and that would be a big movement forward for us and we would be a net gainer from that approach, we believe.

  Q36  Chairman: At the moment, as a result of what you said a moment ago, there are prisoners that you want to deport but cannot actually do so because of the difficulties with the countries you mention?

  Ms Homer: Yes.

  Q37  Chairman: And some of them would be pretty hardened criminals, would they not?

  Ms Homer: Yes, and in those cases we would detain them. I have many prisoners detained beyond the end of their sentence because I am still seeking to return them, but it is taking a long time.

  Q38  Chairman: Give an estimated figure of those prisoners who you would very much like to have deported and it would be in the national interest to deport but cannot?

  Ms Homer: I would not say cannot. What I was going to say is some would take me longer than I would like. We think we have two or three hundred in our estate where the length of time it has taken us to get close to being able to remove them is frustratingly slow, and that does use up detention capacity.

  Q39  Mr Streeter: I want to ask in a moment about resettlement deals. Before I do that, it occurs to me to ask you, as you sign up for these deportation orders, where do most of these foreign criminals come from? Is there a top ten in your mind?

  Ms Homer: There are a number of countries that I see fairly regularly, and some of the countries I have mentioned where we have put particular effort into getting arrangements would clearly be in the top ten.