– in a Public Bill Committee am ar 13 Mawrth 2007.
I remind Committee members and witnesses that today’s oral evidence session must stay within the scope of the UK Borders Bill. Please try to keep questions and answers concise and in order. This evidence session will last until 11.30 am, at which point I am required to end it. I apologise to whoever is speaking then, as I will be required to interrupt them.
Members of the Committee should be aware that we are using brief No. 2 for guidance. It is available in the Committee room should hon. Members require it. We shall proceed as we have in previous sittings, withhon. Members catching my eye if they wish to ask a question. Hon. Members and witnesses should remain seated during the evidence session, as we are using the desk microphones.
I welcome the witnesses from Migrationwatch UK: Sir Andrew Green, the chairman, Mr. Andrew Dennis, the head of research, and Mr. Richard Norman, executive member. Thank you for coming along to give evidence this morning, gentlemen.
One purpose of the Bill is to reduce the amount of illegal immigration into this country. To help put that in context, how big a problem do you see illegal immigration as being? Is it getting worse?
Sir Andrew Green: It is a very substantial problem and a continuing one. One Government estimate of illegals contained a central estimate of 470,000, which was three or four years out of date when published. We adjusted it to take account of a substantial number of failed asylum seekers in the interim and came up with the somewhat larger figure of 670,000 as a central estimate.
The key point is that the problem will continue.Even if you deal with the existing illegal immigrantsin whatever way—I will come back to that if I may—other people will come to this country ready and willing to work for a fiver an hour and send home what are substantial amounts of money by their own standards. On that point, I should like to pick up on some evidence that was offered to the Committee in an earlier evidence session by the TGWU, which argued for a phased system of legalising undocumented workers. It did not like the word “amnesty”, perhaps because it was a little too close to the truth.
We are strongly opposed to any such idea, for three very strong reasons. First, it is wrong in principle to reward illegal behaviour. The illegal immigrants to whom Mr. Damian Green referred are not innocents abroad. They knowingly enter or remain in Britain illegally; they have been undercutting British workers, and they have helped unscrupulous employers to compete with honest employers.
Secondly, an amnesty, by whatever name, is extremely expensive for the taxpayer. The Institute for Public Policy Research, which I think also gave evidence, claimed in a paper dated March 2006 that making illegal immigrants regular would “net”—note that word—the Treasury around £1 billion a year. Apart from being a shaky calculation, it was not honest, as it deliberately took no account of the extra cost to the Treasury of admitting 500,000 people to the welfare system. Our calculation, which corrects that, suggests that the additional cost to the Treasury would be £500 million or possibly £1,000 million, although I recognise that those calculations are very general.
A further important point never mentioned is that if we legalise illegal immigrants they immediately become entitled to social housing. They also become entitled to bring over their relatives, which will move them up the housing list. This brilliant idea would therefore add 500,000 to the housing list at a time when we have already given asylum or exceptional leave to remain to more people than we have built social housing for. Itis an extremely serious issue and I hope that the Committee will bear it well in mind.
My third reason is that they will be replaced. It is elementary that we should examine the experience of other countries. The Italians have given five amnesties in the past 20 years. The Spanish have given six.On virtually every occasion, there have been more applicants than at the previous amnesty, for the obvious reason that the word gets out: “Get there, stick around for a while and you will be legalised.” As a reward for his illegal entry and working in Britain, you are giving someone a meal ticket for life, free education, free health and free housing, so why would they not come to Britain? Let us look at Spain and what has happened to the territories in north Africa and the islands of the Atlantic. They are overwhelmed with illegal immigrants. The point is so clear that there can be only one policy.
I am delighted that the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality announced two or three days ago a clear and firm policy that the only way to go is to tighten up on illegal immigrants until it is no longer worth their while to stay. I suggest that the Minister considers a free exit policy. At the moment, if a person is arrested leaving the country, having been illegal, there is a risk that he will be put in jail at our expense for a year or so. I see no reason why we should not at the appropriate time say, “Okay, you can go. We won’t arrest you on your way out.” A time limit might have to be put on that, but it seems an entirely sensible way to proceed.
Clauses 28 to 35 of the Bill come under the general heading “Automatic deportation”, a phrase over which I and others have cast doubt. What is your assessment of that? Do you think that the deportation procedures under the clauses would be adequate for the purpose of getting rid of people who should not be in this country?
Sir Andrew Green: There will be no adequate means of deportation until we look again at the European convention on human rights. An immigration system is only as good as your ability to remove. The ECHR is a major obstacle. The refugee convention is not. As you know, it contains a let-out for serious offenders.The ECHR, particularly article 3 on torture and the well-known Chahal case that internationalises it, is a serious obstacle.
I should like to suggest some new thinking. Everybody in Britain is opposed to torture. It is out of the question. Everyone is deeply reluctant to send someone to a country where they might be tortured. That is common ground. But we must recognise that the present situation is actually a focus of attraction for people who have either committed a serious offence or intend to; I am thinking particularly of terrorism.
Sir Andrew, I want to stop you there. I ask witnesses only to respond to questions from the body of the Committee.
Sir Andrew Green: I suggest that we withdrawfrom the ECHR—we can do that after six months’ notice—and make a public statement to the effect that as from that date of withdrawal anyone convicted of a terrorist offence in Britain will be sent home with only a non-suspensive appeal. To anyone who says that that is terrible, the answer is, “You have brought it on yourselves. You were warned. If you come to Britain and conduct terrorist offences, you will be sent home.”
I was very interested,Sir Andrew, in what you were saying about illegal working in particular. Some of the evidence that we heard in the initial evidence sessions concerned a number of perspectives that echoed that. People felt that illegal working was one of the principal drivers of illegal immigration. Front-line immigration officers have said to me that when they come across people, they very rarely find them accessing benefits but often find them working illegally. I am interested in your perspective on how significant illegal working is as a pull factor for illegal immigrants.
Sir Andrew Green: I think that it is a very important pull factor and also an incentive for people to stay on illegally, which is another form of the same thing. There is no question about its importance. I would also add that the ease of getting away with it is another pull factor. The Bill addresses many of the issues. It is an excellent Bill and we are very supportive of it.
I was struck by some of the evidence that was given by National Car Parks, which is a business that takes its corporate reputation very seriously. The Home Office is indebted to it because of its pioneering work in developing different ways of identifying whether people are here illegally or not.
In his evidence, the director of risk management from National Car Parks called ID cards a very significant step forward. From National Car Parks’ point of view, it found that understanding the validity of 50 or 60 different bits of paper proffered by wayof evidence was expensive and not very reliable. An important part of the Bill is the introduction of compulsory ID cards for foreign nationals to help prove entitlement to work and public benefits. Do you think that that would make any difference to some of these issues?
Sir Andrew Green: Yes, it certainly would. We support that. As you probably know, the guidance to employers at the moment runs to 17 pages. It is really not reasonable to expect an employer to look at a document and go through 17 pages of guidance.So, yes, we believe that those ID cards will help substantially. Added to that, I think that the real penalty has to be on the employer. There is no point in trying to fine an illegal immigrant; he has not got any money. I have lost count of the number of magistrates who have expressed their concern on that point. A lot of people come before the courts for various offences and there is nothing that can be done about them. There is no room in the jails and they have no money to pay a fine. If what this leads to is a lot of impoverished people in front of the magistrates there is no point. If it leads to companies being fined £20,000 and company directors going to jail, then you are getting serious, and it is high time we did, in my view.
Sir Andrew, I believe that I am right in saying that your organisation warned of the problems over deportation that the Government encountered last May and June a little while before those problems arose. It appears to me from the House of Commons Library briefing that you were anticipating the reform of the law and deportation last January.
One of the points that you made in your proposals for reform was that the approach taken towards offenders who are illegally in the country as opposed to those with legal permission should be stronger than is reflected in the present Bill; is that right?
Sir Andrew Green: We would be happy with as strong a process as the House of Commons can agree to. There are very serious issues both of fact and of public opinion here. As regards being in advance of the Government, I think that we have been about five years in advance of them on most issues for the past five years, with respect, Mr. Illsley.
You would draw a distinction when dealing with offenders, between offenders with legal permission to be in the country and the illegal migrants, who we were talking about a few minutes ago.
I believe, from the Library paper, that you also want a tougher regime to deal with repeat offences in the country. As the Bill stands, what is described as automatic deportation would only apply to people who commit offences that result in a sentence of 12 months imprisonment, which leaves the prospect of somebody committing repeated offences and receiving shorter sentences of imprisonment, as, for example, from a magistrates court, where someone can only get a sentence of six months imprisonment. Is that right?
Sir Andrew Green: Yes, it is. I think that you have had some earlier discussion of this. That point needs to be looked at seriously. At the moment the position would be as you describe. There could be a whole series of offences and the guy is still here. That is not amusing for the public. If you want to rebuild public confidence in the immigration system, which certainly needs to be done, then that is one aspect that needs attention. It would be helpful if in some way the offences could be added together, so that on a second offence—certainly a third—they would be removed anyway.
Sir Andrew, I was interested in what you were saying earlier, particularly in response to the Minister’s question. Last week I was reading a report from the International Monetary Fund about the state of the UK economy. I was particularly struck by one bit:
“To prevent ‘welfare tourism’, the UK has restricted access to social benefits for new A8 immigrants during the first year of employment. That probably accounts for the fact that practically all immigrants hold jobs and the percentage on welfare is much smaller than that of the native population.”
The IMF obviously has robust analysis and interpretation. Do you think that the Bill will tighten up a process that has already been recognised internationally as tight?
Sir Andrew Green: No, I do not. What you are referring to was of course only for the A8 nationals. It was brought in at the last minute basically to try and deter welfare shopping by eastern Europeans, and has had some success in that. On the whole, we have not had people coming here just for the benefits, but as people come up to their 12 months on the register, they become qualified. Numbers are already increasing. I have no objection to that; that is part of being in Europe. However, I do not think that that, of itself, is enough to deal with the wider question of welfare shopping.
Indeed, there is an even wider point there too.In our negotiations with the European Union over enlargement, we—not just us, but Governments—completely failed to see, first, the potentially massive impact on migration from much poorer countries to richer ones and, secondly, the wide scope for eventual benefit shopping. Looking into the detail, we find that it will become extraordinarily easy for people from poorer countries in Europe to go benefit shopping in other countries, because measures brought in on the basis of free movement of labour have the effect that, once in the other country, people can claim benefits on a much higher level than in their own country. One quick example is child benefit, which eastern Europeans can already claim. They claim at British rates, which is about five times what is needed in Poland. That is just a small example.
On a slightly broader point, the IMF and recent PricewaterhouseCoopers reports seem to suggest that the UK economy has grown because of migrants coming in—relatively highly skilled young men, plugging domestic skills shortages. As a result, there is a higher tax receipt and the UK economy is growing more than it normally would. Does not the Bill tighten the illegal aspects of working in a positive manner, so that people who want to and are allowed to come here are much more controlled, so to speak? The tighter control regime is to the benefit of everybody—indigenous and migrant—because the migrants have positive reassurance that they can be here. Do you accept that?
Sir Andrew Green: There are two halves to that question, and I accept the second half but not the first. You said that migration is adding to economic growth, and that is undeniable. However, it is also adding to population. The normal measure of wealth is GDP per head. If you do the calculation that we have done, you will find that the addition to population is prettywell the same as the addition to production andthe resulting benefit to GDP per head, as the Government’s figures show, is less than a Mars bar a month. As far as eastern Europeans are concerned, at least in part, that is because they are low-paid and they go into low-paid jobs.
However, as a general proposition, if you look back over the years you will see that Government estimates of the addition to both production and growth, both of which have been quoted in the House of Commons, show very little per head. One gives 4p a week and the other 14p a week. Work in the United States, Canada and Holland points to a slightly higher figure—about 0.1 per cent. of GDP, which is about 40p. We are talking about very small sums, in so far as such things can be measured. However, I accept that a lot of things cannot be measured in terms of easing particular gaps or on matters such as diversity and new ideas. I do not suggest that everything in this world can be measured, or that money is everything, but I am saying thatthe Government’s case for large-scale immigration is absolute nonsense. That case does not exist.
Your second point concerned the value of tightening up on illegals. I certainly agree with that; there are many positive aspects to it. One of them is that if employers have to train more British indigenous workers, that is a very good thing, and they should not be allowed to dip out of it by employing illegals.
Sir Andrew, first I should like to commend your organisation for adding to the debate in an intelligent and rational way, although you would not take that view if you had heard the TGWU last week. There has been debate in this Committee over the past few weeks about the suggestion that this measure is a legislative sledgehammer to crack an administrative nut. Isnot the key issue the unreliability or unavailabilityof accurate data about immigration under this Government, and possibly under former Governments? Do you believe that that can be corrected, for instance by a more robust collection of statistics or even—dare I invite you to comment on this?—by a border agency such as that which this Committee has discussed? How can we rectify the situation so that we know what numbers we are talking about and can make intelligent policy decisions based on those data?
Sir Andrew Green: That is a good question. The first thing that I would say is that I do not believe that you are dealing with an administrative nut; you are dealing with a major issue about which there is extremely widespread concern among the public. As you probably know, 75 per cent. of the population would like an annual limit to immigration. That is just one measure, but every poll will tell you that and every poll will tell you that 80 per cent. have no confidence in the present system, so it is not an administrative nut.
Secondly, is this the right way to get a better idea of what is going on? It might be the only way. Its purpose is to provide a means of counting people in and counting people out as individuals. I have justbeen to the United States, New Zealand, Australia and Singapore. In all those countries, I was both counted in and counted out as Sir A. Green. It is perfectly possible to do that. That is what the measures are aiming at. Once we have that, we will have a number of other things. We will have a much more accurate idea of numbers, which is becoming important. Immigration is now so high that it is very important to know what it is, how tight the labour market is and what to do about interest rates, as the Governor of the Bank of England has said repeatedly.
Even if we go down that road, and I sincerely hope that we will, I should like to draw your attention to a potential weakness that could blow the whole system out of the water. I hope that the Government are conscious of it. The pressure on visa-issuing posts is so great that they get their brownie points for dealing with the queue. I noticed that when the Minister gave evidence he referred to Pakistan and the speed at which it had dealt with its queues. That may be brilliant or it may not. It may be that they were just dishing out visas. As you know, on average issuers have something like11 minutes to decide.
Related to that is an important second point, which is that decisions whether to issue bright new issues are not legal decisions. They are matters of judgment by the entry clearance officer as to whether the person standing in front of him will go home at the end of it. If that goes wrong, the whole system is futile. People simply come in with visas that they should never have had in the first place. We will be helped by the fact that this system will tell us that they have overstayed. At the moment there is absolutely no effective feedback. We will know that they have overstayed, but how are you going to find them and remove them? We have half a million whom we cannot remove now and we are making no impression on that half a million.
We issue 2 million visas a year and refuse half a million. You do not have to be very far wrong with those issues to build up a very large illegal community in Britain, so what I come back to is the care with which those visas are issued in the first place. In my view, it is going wrong. The balance is going wrong. The pressures are too great and we are moving towards a kind of computerised tick-the-box system that is extremely easy to fool. If applicants stand in front of a visa officer he will know, for example, if a person comes from a good family, if his father has a big business or whatever. Any of you who have stood in a visa section—I have stood in a lot of them—will know what the pressures are and how you rely on the instincts of the entry clearance officer and the support of his local staff. We are moving away from that. We have these systems whereby you apply to some agency somewhere downtown. That is a serious weakness and actually also extremely inconvenient to the applicant, because they cannot get at the man who is taking the decision. I will not go on about it, Mr. Illsley, but I want to underline the fact that your entire effort will be wasted if the Government do not re-examine the matter.
One delicate issue that I wish to mention is that we should not send immigration officers or ECOs of dual heritage to the country of their other heritage. That leaves them much too vulnerable to pressures offamily, friends and so on. I am not saying that they would—well, I am saying what I am saying. They are just too vulnerable. By all means send them to a different country, but not to their own other country. That is foolishness, and it is happening on a significant scale.
I have read the evidence that you submitted by way of a research paper that the Library prepared. Do you think that the judiciary are letting us down with regard to the deportation of foreign criminals, or would you put the blame for that at the door of the Home Office as we stand now in the post-May 2006 situation?
Sir Andrew Green: There are two issues here. There was clearly a serious administrative failure in even considering these people for deportation, and that was obviously a Home Office problem, but I think that the essential problem comes back to the state of the law. That in turn comes back to the ECHR, which I mentioned, and article 3. We must find a way around that. At the moment, the Government are supporting a Dutch case before the ECHR that they hope will ease it up. I think that it is to be considered in the summer. Maybe that is the way forward. Of course, it would be the convenient way forward, if there is enough progress on that case, but if there is not, we have to think again. We cannot be in the situation that I described.
Sir Andrew, I am interested in your analysis of the link between illegal entry and organised crime. I am sure that you are aware that estimates suggest strongly that around75 per cent. of illegal entrances are facilitated. Our approach to tackling that involves strengthening the borders, introducing measures to count in and out and to know who individuals are through biometric ID and so on and extending the scope of our powers regarding facilitation, particularly in relation to territoriality. What is your analysis of the link between organised crime and illegal entry? What do you think would be an effective means of tackling it?
Sir Andrew Green: First, we strongly support your measures. We think that they are useful. Secondly, the people doing such things are highly sophisticated, as you well know. As soon as one measure is taken, they will seek to find a way around it. One has to stay on the case. The introduction of the Serious Organised Crime Agency was a major and helpful step, as was the tightening of the law that you described. I think that heavy penalties on employers will also help as we tighten up the situation generally. I am sure you know that there were only eight successful prosecutions of employers in the past five years. That is bound to encourage illegal arrivals. As all that is tightened up, there will be much less incentive.
If I may be heretical, we ought eventually to move to the point where people found to be entering illegally are detained until they are removed. At the moment, the detention estate just will not permit that, but it should be the position. In the long term, we should be aiming for that.
On a different topic, we have seen a drop in other categories of asylum seeker, but the number of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children seems to remain reasonably steady. I am concerned about the numbers, and those who are found not to have a founded case but who cannot be returned because of problems of reception arrangements in their country of origin. Do you think that unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are being used to get a foothold to assist the entry of others? How big do you think that problem is?
Sir Andrew Green: I think that there is little question about it, and I would be surprised if your own papers did not demonstrate that. There are serious problems in relation to those children. We do not say much about it, because we think that with net foreign immigration at 300,000, that is where the focus of attention should be, but in terms of justice, we should take firmer measures to discourage the use of children for that purpose. The firmest measure would be to send them home, but you could do that only if you could make satisfactory arrangements in their home countries. At present, it would almost be cheaper to send them all to Eton—not quite, but very nearly. They are costing £20,000 a throw.
Such children are being deliberately put into Britain to live on the British taxpayer and so that eventually they might bring their parents with them. That is unacceptable, but the problem is that we are the only people who will say that in public. A huge number of organisations take a different view.
May I return to the judgment of entry clearance officers and the granting of visas? What you have told us today about the granting of visas certainly fits in with what I have been told on visits to posts overseas with the Home Affairs Committee about the importance of the judgment of the person on the spot who is making the decision about granting the visa—their local knowledge, their experience, all the things we rely on them for. Clause 19 appears to be allowing evidence to be given to challenge the exercise of that judgment in front of a tribunal in this country as opposed to at post. That is my understanding of it—it will allow evidence to be given to an appeal tribunal against the exercise of the discretion at the post overseas. How importantly do you think we should value the exercise of that discretion, using as it does the judgment of individual immigration officers, based upon their experience, their knowledge and their work?
Sir Andrew Green: That judgment is absolutely essential. I think appeals against that judgment should not be allowed. It is turning into a legal nightmare. A foreigner applying to come to Britain does not have any particular right to come here and if they get refused, they get refused. I am sure that there is no other country that bends over quite so far backwards in order to provide rights of appeal to those who are refused. I think we should minimise the scale of appeals and not provide any more access for it. The wretched Home Office is overwhelmed by numbers as it is. The number of appeals for family visitors has doubled every year since the costs were removed; it is now possible to appeal for free. We now have a thousand appeals a week. It is costing the taxpayer£1 million a week. What is more—I’m afraid you have got me started—it is not just mum and dad. For families of the size we are talking about, the number who qualify is of the order of somewhere between60 and 100, and they can all appeal. What is more, they can appeal even if the main purpose of their visit is not to visit their relatives. This whole business of appeals against refusal of visas is getting out of hand and I hope that when the Government have time, and courage, they will take an axe to it.
What you have just told us was not contradicted by the evidence that the Home Affairs Committee received about the relationship between appeals tribunals in this country and decisions that were taken in post. We are dealing with the points-based system—
On the points-based system generally, this will govern applications for work permits for people from outside the EU. How significant a source of migration, and of economic migration, do you think work permits have been in the past few years? That is, work permits from outside the EU carrying a right of settlement in this country.
Sir Andrew Green: They have been quite significant. The number of work permits issued has, depending on how you define them, trebled or quadrupled. Of course, those people can—and do—bring their families. They can apply after four years, now five years, for settlement. Ninety-five per cent. of thosewho have applied for settlement have been granted it. So it has been a major source of immigration and unfortunately it has coincided with the weakening, not to say collapse, of our border controls. So, at the same time as our border controls were becoming extremely ineffective, we were actually encouraging immigration on a significant scale. Then of course we had the miscalculation over east Europe, and the net result has been therefore the crisis that we now face.
Whilst the contribution of economic migration to economic growth may be a matter for debate, do you think that in looking at these proposals we should bear in mind that there can be little doubt that people who do come to this country will want, for example, a roof over their heads, that they will want housing, that they will need to use the infrastructure in this country and that this will have other economic effects?
Sir Andrew Green: There is no question about that. In fact, at present one in three new households is a result of immigration. That is on the Government’s forecast of immigration, of 145,000. The actual rate is already much higher than that. So, yes, to the extent that someone comes here on a work permit and benefits the employer, that is one thing. But there is also a sense in which the taxpayer is picking up the cost of everything else—schools, roads, hospitals and transport—and to an extent the convenience of the indigenous population is being affected in the years that it would take to put in that extra infrastructure. So, it would be quite wrong to have an immigration policy driven by employers, and that is what we have been moving towards.
Until 1995, roughly, we issued 40,000 work permits a year. That was deemed to be enough. Now, suddenly, there is this huge demand for more, and the reason, of course, is that it is very convenient for the employers. You take a skilled man off the shelf and you do not have to train a Brit. Furthermore, a Brit might move to another company, whereas a foreigner is less likely to. So, to the extent that you bring in skills from overseas, you are reducing the incentive for employers to train their own British employees and that is clearly what is happening.
We would say two things about the points system. The first is that it does not change very much, if you look at it in detail. The other is that, if you set out the number of points required and how many points you get for x, y and z, it is not terribly difficult to construct the application in order to get the points that you need, if necessary by forging documents—and in most countries you can forge whatever document you like. Then, if you add to that a whole right of appeal, which I think may be envisaged—it is not clear from the Bill, but the implication of the Bill is that it is envisaged—you are making another rod for the Home Office’s back. The bottom line is that if someone does not get a work permit, they do not get a work permit. It seems to me that to have a whole range of appeals is something that needs to be closely examined.
I remind Members that we finish at11.30 am and I have four Members who wish to ask questions.
You talk about the need for an annual limit on immigration. How do asylum seekers fit into that system?
Okay. Is there not a danger that people would use the asylum-seeking process as another route into the country, rather than coming via the migrant worker route?
Sir Andrew Green: They do now, on a substantial scale. Roughly three out of four applicants are found to have a case that is unfounded, either for asylum or for what is now humanitarian protection. So, yes, they will try to use the asylum system.
I should also add that the number of applications for asylum has gone down to fewer than 30,000 a year. So, it is only one in 10 of net foreign migration. That is, in part, why we are not talking about asylum at present. We think that the real issues are about immigration. I also think that the Government deserve some credit; they have got those asylum numbers down. It would be nice if the numbers went even further down—in terms of false claims, that is.
May I follow up on what you said about the staffing of the entry clearance posts? Am I right in thinking that you are saying that if there is a British national of Indian origin, for example, they should not be allowed to work at the entry clearance posts in India?
Because you think—basically, you are saying that they are liable to engage in corrupt behaviour.
But that, in effect, means that they would not be trusted to do their job properly, if the effect is of their being corrupt in the way that they do their job.
Sir Andrew Green: In a society in which family and tribe are extremely important, to a measure that most of us do not really understand, I think that it is unwise to submit someone to those possible pressures, and it is unnecessary to do so. They are probably perfectly good entry clearance officers—
You are saying that they cannot be trusted. You are not saying that it is for their own benefit, really; you are saying that they cannot be trusted.
I was at the deputy high commission in Mumbai recently, which employs a number of local staff. Presumably, you are saying that it should not employ local people either.
Sir Andrew Green: No; you have not understood the point. There is a difference between local staff and entry control officers. The local staff are invaluable. They often provide the interpretation, the local knowledge and so on, but the decision is taken by the entry control officer, who is UK-based. Actually, we always have some problems with local staff in terms of corruption, and in both the posts that I headed I hadto sack people. It is very hard to detect corruption by local staff, but when you do you have to sack them—and I did, without hesitation. So what I am saying is in reference to the entry control officers, not the local staff.
We have touched on the role of employers in this policy area. Do you believe that unscrupulous—and, some would say, parasitic—employers can somehow be excused for employing illegal workers? I think that the answer would not be yes, from the evidence so far.
Sir Andrew Green: I think that there is no excuse for employers to employ illegal workers, undercuttingthe wages of British workers and, equally seriously, undercutting honest employers. It is absolutely unacceptable. I am in touch with a number of employers who are having real difficulty. I am thinking of a cleaning firm in particular, which, as a matterof principle, operates cleanly and is having difficulty surviving, because it knows damn well that its competitors are paying a couple of quid less.
For the purposes of the debate, it is clear, then, is it not, that the persons undercutting the minimum wage in this country are those employers, not those employees, whether legal or illegal?
Thank you for that.
One of the hallmarks of this debate is that it is coloured, informed and inflamed by a lot of false assumptions. You clearly believe that this whole debate should be based on a factual analysis and empirical data that are beyond question.
Sir Andrew Green: Absolutely so. That is what we have been doing for the past five years. I was engaged in a debate the other day and was criticised for stating the facts. I was told that the facts offended people. Thatis unfortunate. I think that we are now moving, Iam glad to say—steadily, slowly—towards a situation where these issues can be debated on the basis of their facts. There will always be people who try to introduce other elements, but we let that wash over us.
On that point, you talked earlier about the cost to the Treasury of illegal immigration being, perhaps, £500 million a year.
You instantly revised that to£1 billion. Which is the correct figure?
Finally, I am a little confused about the point about the dual heritage of entry officers. How far do we take this? Does this apply, perhaps, to people of dual US and UK nationality, to those with an Australian and British heritage or to people with a Canadian and British heritage? How far do we go?
I want to return to the enforcement clauses, because you have made the point already that, at the moment, the system has more or less collapsed—I think you used that word—and that you thought that the provisions in the Bill were excellent. Indeed, Conservative Members do not oppose the extra powers. Given the work that you have done internationally, looking at how other countries control their borders more effectively, what extra powers would be useful? As you know, we have proposed an integrated border force, bringing together the various fragmented bodies currently responsible for such matters. We have proposed that because it is what countries with better control over their borders seem to have. From your experience around the world, where have you seen the best practice that this country should adopt?
Sir Andrew Green: I will bring in a slightly different aspect of my experience, which is that the Administrations of different countries are very different from each other. On the particular point that you raise, I would say two things. The Home Office is now engaged in a massive and, I think, courageous exercise to try to get a grip on our borders. The last thing that it should do at this juncture is have a reorganisation of that kind. Bureaucracies are not Meccano—they are plants and you cannot pick them up, cut them to pieces and put them together again. They depend heavily on each person knowing what other people are responsible for and, no less importantly, knowing who is any good. If you want to get something done, you have to know the ground.
At some time in the future, there might be some benefit from a reorganisation, but British organisations are quite good at informally working with each other. Personally, I would leave it at that at this administrative juncture, without ruling out, at some future date, once we have got a hold on it, some changes in the direction that you suggest. I certainly would not do it now.
My question was about other countries, and those that seem to have an effective system, even though they are very attractive countries. Whose immigration system do you think works best?
Sir Andrew Green: Australia, probably. The effectiveness lies in two things: first, actual knowledge of who is coming and going, which is now being put in place, and secondly, the ability and resources to remove. If you have both of those, the administrative arrangements, between this body and that, are important, but not as important. We need knowledge of who is still here—and we might get a nasty shock when this comes into play—and the ability to remove those who should not be here. Already we think that there are 500,000, but we could find far more. In terms of priorities, that is where we should go next.
I was very interested in your comments on the single border agency. It reflects things that I have said about retaining an open mind, but questioning whether now is the time to undertake such a reorganisation. From your comments, can I deduce that you are advocating an overhaul of the visa system, if not the family visitor system in particular?
Sir Andrew Green: I will focus on just one issue, which I have already mentioned. We need to look very carefully at the resources that we are putting into that initial check. It is going entirely in the opposite direction, and if we do not get that right, we can all go home. I think that frankly it is going wrong for the reasons that I have described: the box-ticking of, “We’ve got all these people through and we’ve got rid of this queue—wonderful”. Actually, that is not the point. The point is to have an effective judgment on each of the many cases and you cannot do it unless you have the people on the ground and you put the resources into it.
You have personal experience of this next question. In some of the evidence that we heard in the early evidence sessions, we heard about quite wide variations in rates of abuse between different posts. It almost sounds as if you are advocating post-specific variations, if you like, in the kind of resources that are applied and the sort of metrics set and used to manage.
So, measures to lock down successful applicants to a single identity would, presumably, help us to count people in and out; you mentioned that the Sir Andrew who was counted in to America was the same who was counted out.
So, might it actually be a step backwards to shut down that identification system?
Yes. My final question comes back to the point made by Mr. Reed about the range of powers that this Bill puts in place to tackle illegal working. What has been attempted is quite a wide range of powers, such as the power to access Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs information, or to search personnel records, or to arrest employers who are knowingly employing people illegally, or to seize cash and to dispose of assets that are seized. Are there any obvious gaps in the strengthening of powers to tackle the principal culprits, as I think you have put it—that is, the employers who are undercutting their competitors?
I thank Sir Andrew, Mr. Dennis and Mr. Norman for their attendance here this morning. The Committee will now have a short pause until the witnesses have left, before we resume deliberation on the Bill.