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Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

The German economy has many problems. One could argue that macro-economic mismanagement and, above all, an extreme rigidity and lack of flexibility have cancelled out many of the benefits that the immigrant work force might have brought. Germany certainly flourished in the post-war period on the back of a great many immigrant workers. However, Madam Deputy Speaker, you have pointed out that you do not want us to go too far down that road, so I shall restrict my comments specifically to the Bill. The Government have not addressed the fundamental question of the economics of immigration. They have tried to make a distinction simply between the legal and the illegal, and want to bring in new powers to clamp down on racketeers. I think that we would all broadly endorse that, but it has been pointed out that powers already exist in the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996—they were strengthened in the 1999 Act—to deal with racketeering and the serious abuse of immigration rules. They have rarely been invoked, and it is difficult to see what the new legislation could add that would be helpful. Indeed, many aspects of the Bill are very worrying. Employers already have to go through a substantial process of compliance in order to meet the employment requirements of the 1996 and 1999 Acts. When we debated the Bill that became the 1999 Act—I served on its Standing Committee—it was pointed out to us by employers associations that to be fully compliant, a company had to carry out approximately 50 tests to establish that all its employees were compliant with visa and other immigration requirements. That was an enormously difficult administrative task. What is crucial about this new piece of legislation is that it will penalise companies even if they are unwittingly employing illegal immigrants. The Home Secretary did not make that point. He concentrated on the deliberate criminal abuse of the immigration rules, but he did not stress the key new element of the Bill, namely, that such unwitting behaviour by employers will lay them open to substantial charges. I can see no reference to a regulatory impact assessment of the Bill. Perhaps the Minister will tell us whether one has been, or is going to be, carried out, so that we can have some idea of the implications for employers who are going to go through this process. Because the process is difficult, particularly for small and medium-sized firms, many of them will, understandably, take the safest course of action when faced with someone with dark skin or a foreign accent who is looking for a job—they will simply not employ them. Of course, that will then open them up to challenges under race discrimination legislation. The balance that will have to be struck in order to deal with this problem is, I believe, going to be set out in a code of conduct, but none of us knows what it contains. Some very worrying conflicts could arise for perfectly law-abiding, fair-minded employers. In addition, companies will face a new set of charges, which will be set according to civil, rather than criminal, proof. It will be easy to impose a charge on an employer on an allegation that they have unwittingly hired an illegal immigrant. That is a potential nightmare for law-abiding employers and hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized companies that do not have the capacity to engage in sophisticated compliance. At an early stage, we need a proper statement from the Government about the implications for the employer. I want to support the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Stephen Williams) about students. It is clear that overseas students make an enormous contribution to British universities, both intellectually and financially. They account, I think, for about 10 per cent. of undergraduates and 38 per cent. of postgraduates. What is worrying is that Britain is already seeing a significant slowdown in the number of overseas students coming here, contrary to the Prime Minister’s expressed ambition to make Britain a magnet for overseas students. There are several reasons for that, such as the world economy, trends in countries such as China, visa fees and the additional deterrent of the removal of appeals in student visa applications. As I pointed out in an intervention, if universities in this country see their source of income from overseas students drying up or substantially decreasing, they might have no alternative but to resort to other sources of income generation, the most important of which is top-up fees. Universities will come under great pressure from their vice-chancellors to demand much higher top-up fees than we have seen so far. That is one of the unintended consequences of this tightening-up of immigration control legislation. Many aspects of the Bill worry me and I would be tempted to vote against it were there a consensus, but I think that we will all be well-behaved and abstain. There are many sources of concern, however, and I trust that at least some of them will be resolved before Third Reading.