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Security Industry Authority

My Lords, I rise to repeat the Statement made earlier in the other place by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary. The Statement is as follows: ““With permission Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a Statement to the House on the Security Industry Authority licensing checks and the issue of entitlement to work in the United Kingdom. ““The SIA was established in 2003 under the terms of the Private Security Industry Act 2001. Before its establishment, the private security industry was largely unregulated, with no national licensing system for the private security industry. ““The legislation sets out that the SIA must establish that applicants are fit and proper before granting them a licence. The detailed criteria are set out in the SIA publication Get Licensed. The fit and proper person requirement primarily involves establishing that the applicant has undergone training and that identity and criminality checks have been completed. To date, more than 250,000 licences have been issued. ““I must make it clear from the outset that it is the legal duty of all employers to ensure that those they employ are entitled to work in the United Kingdom. The SIA has not failed to do anything that it was obliged to do in law. As my honourable friend the Minister of State for Immigration stated on 11 September 2006, in response to a question from the honourable Member for Monmouth: "““Employers have clear legal responsibilities under the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 which makes it a criminal offence to employ a person who is subject to immigration control unless that person has permission to work in the UK. The possession of a Security Industry Authority licence does not give a person a right to work in the UK, and employers are still expected to assure themselves that their employees have the necessary permission.””—[Official Report, Commons, 11/9/06; col. 2234W.]" That is a matter of record in this House. ““While under no obligation, the SIA has the discretion to seek information that applicants have the right to work in the United Kingdom. As a responsible organisation, the SIA decided in April 2005 to initiate a limited right-to-work check on 10 per cent of non-EEA applicants. I am informed by the SIA that between April 2005 and December 2006, more than 3,000 checks were conducted and 41 individuals were identified who were not entitled to work in the United Kingdom. Licences for these individuals were refused. ““Ministers were informed in April 2007 that a Border and Immigration Agency enforcement operation had identified that 44 people employed by a security company did not have the right to work in the United Kingdom. Of these, 12 had been subcontracted to a further company that provided staff to guard locations under Metropolitan Police contracts. One of the individuals was involved in guarding an MPS facility where modified cars, such as the Prime Minister's, would be taken for any repair work. Those identified at this stage were immediately removed from their posts. The Metropolitan Police have assured me that there was no security threat to any of the vehicles that had to visit that facility. ““In June this year, the Border and Immigration Agency and the Security Industry Authority agreed that the BIA would carry out a more intensive check of the 10 per cent sample of non-EEA applicants. That analysis showed that a higher proportion of non-EEA applicants might not have the right to work than the earlier work had suggested. Ministers were informed of this. Immediate action was taken. ““From 2 July this year, every applicant identified as a non-EEA national by the SIA also has their right to work in the United Kingdom checked. I am informed by the SIA that, since 2 July 2007, of the 32,500 licence decisions made, 740 were refused because the SIA was not satisfied that the applicant had a right to work in the United Kingdom. I have been advised by the BIA that all these cases are in the process of being investigated with a view to enforcement action. In addition, from 1 October the SIA has required new and tighter identity checks for all applications and renewals. ““While action could be and was immediately taken in relation to new applicants, it remained unclear how many people who had been granted licences prior to 2 July did not have the right to work. The SIA undertook further work to assess the potential volume of licences that might have been given to people who did not have the right to work in the United Kingdom to consider what remedial action should be taken. ““On 9 August, I set out my approach to the advice that I had received. My approach was that the responsible thing to do was to establish the full nature and scale of the problem and take appropriate action to deal with it, rather than immediately to put incomplete and potentially misleading information into the public domain. Much has been made of the fact that I said that the lines to take were not good enough for the press office or Ministers to explain the situation. The fact is that they were not good enough because the analysis of the issue had not been completed. I took immediate action by asking for work to estimate the numbers involved to be speeded up. I was not content to wait 10 weeks to get these numbers, and I asked for this time to be halved and to have preliminary advice on my return to the office on 20 August. ““I approved a letter from the SIA to senior managers of all 2,000 private security companies on its records, reminding them of their obligation as employers to check entitlement under Section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996. I made it clear that I did not want to delay the schedule for its release. I also approved with modifications a second letter from the Cabinet Office to government HR directors and departmental security officers, reminding them that all staff with access to government assets should be subject to the requirements of the baseline personnel security standard, which includes the verification of an individual’s right to work in the United Kingdom. I will place copies of these two letters in the Library of the House. ““I requested an update by 2 pm on the following day, and received a further update from officials on 10 August. In that update, officials believed it should be possible to provide revised estimates of the numbers involved by the end of August. In the advice that I received on 30 August, I was informed that the SIA and the BIA could build the capacity to check the estimated 40,000 non-EEA nationals who had previously been granted licences at the rate of 4,000 a month from October 2007. ““On 5 September, I asked for further details on why this process should take so long, and I also asked my honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for crime reduction to chair a task force to resolve, and if possible increase, the 4,000 monthly figure. The task force met on 8 October. As a result of this, the current estimate is that these checks will now be completed in December—much more quickly than originally planned—and I will report again to Parliament when this work is complete. ““Preliminary work by the BIA has categorised the 6,000 cases checked so far into three groups. Provisional assessment from the BIA reports that 77 per cent of those checked have been shown to have a right to work, with 10.5 per cent shown not to have a right to work. Checks are ongoing on the remaining 12.5 per cent. ““I believe this is a very clear example of the Government’s determination to put in place effective systems and procedures further to protect the public and to keep those systems under review. As has been made clear, possession of an SIA licence does not give a person a right to work in the United Kingdom. Employers are expected to assure themselves that their employees have permission to work in the United Kingdom. This is what the law requires of them. ““We nevertheless have taken action to tackle illegal working in the security industry sector. As I have demonstrated today, Ministers and officials are taking robust action to satisfy ourselves of the scale of the problem and to ensure that the SIA and BIA work together to address it””. My Lords, that concludes the Statement.