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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 775-viii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
Tuesday 16 May 2006 MR MARK BOLEAT and MR CHRIS KAUFMAN MR JONATHAN PORTES and MR JAMES QUINAULT Evidence heard in Public Questions 741 - 865
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Home Affairs Committee on Tuesday 16 May 2006 Members present Mr John Denham, in the Chair Mr Richard Benyon Mr Jeremy Browne Mrs Janet Dean Gwyn Prosser Bob Russell Mr Richard Spring Mr David Winnick ________________ Memoranda submitted by Transport and General Workers' Union and Association of Labour Providers
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Mark Boleat, Association of Labour Providers, and Mr Chris Kaufman, Transport and General Workers' Union, gave evidence. Q741 Chairman: Good morning, and thank you very much indeed to both of our first two witnesses for joining us. Perhaps we could start by you introducing yourselves briefly, and your organisation, for the Members and the record. Mr Boleat: I am Chairman of the Association of Labour Providers. The Association represents employment, businesses and supply workers to agriculture and food industries. Mr Kaufman: I am the National Secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union, a member of the Gangmasters' Licensing Authority ‑ as is Mark ‑‑ Mr Boleat: No, I am not! Mr Kaufman: We will not fall out to start with - an observer on the Gangmasters' Licensing Authority, and also on the Agricultural Wages Board, and a Migrant Workers' Committee of the European Trade Unions. Q742 Chairman: Good. Thank you very much. As you know, we have made substantial progress into our inquiry into the work of the Immigration and Nationality Department and the focus today at the beginning is on illegal working, its implications, its regulation and so on. If I start with you, Mr Boleat, in your evidence you recognise and say that there are a large number of people living and working in Britain who are not entitled to be here. In terms of the industries that you know well, which I think is generally low-skilled work in the agriculture and food industries, how large a proportion of the work force would you sense is working here without legal permission? Mr Boleat: I would be very reluctant to give an estimate except to say that it is sufficiently large when combined with tax evasion, and I think the two do go together to a large extent, to have a significant distorting effect on the market. The biggest concern that my members have, those that are trying to operate legally, is they are undercut very substantially by businesses who are not paying tax, and almost no enforcement action is taken. Often those businesses are employing illegal workers but they might not be, so there is an overlap but it is not total. I cannot give you a number; I have seen other estimates of around the 300-500,000 mark, but I have no basis for giving you any figure myself. Q743 Chairman: But it is significant enough, in your view, to say there is a discernible effect on wages and on government revenues and therefore it is something we should be concerned about? Mr Boleat: I am not certain there is a discernible effect on wages. Where there is tax evasion the worker is often benefiting. The minimum wage law, I think, is reasonably upheld; my members will certainly pay it. There is certainly an effect on Government Revenue. Q744 Chairman: Which parts of the country and which industries would you say are most affected by it? Mr Boleat: The Association I represent is mainly concerned with the food industry. That is heavily concentrated in East Anglia so that is where I see the biggest problems, and clearly where there is a concentration of people who are operating not entirely in accordance with the law then the market is affected much more than if it is only one or two, but I suspect there are similar problems - perhaps to a lesser extent - in other parts of the country, and I have no doubt the same issues apply in office cleaning and hospitality. Q745 Chairman: In those sectors there obviously is a large legitimate migrant workforce. In your experience, or to the extent you can tell, would you say the patterns of migration coming in illegally are coming from the same places or from some other countries? Mr Boleat: The entry into the European Union of the accession states changed matters dramatically. Before then we had many workers from Eastern Europe working illegally; most of my members are now bringing in workers from the accession states and are doing so legally. It is still all too easy for people to acquire forged or in some cases real documents they are not entitled to, and I think that is happening from further east in Europe, from the Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and so on, but most of my members are workers are coming from Poland, Lithuania and the other accession states. Q746 Chairman: Mr Kaufman, does that chime with your knowledge or sense of irregular working, or do you want to add anything to that? Mr Kaufman: Again, it is almost impossible to have accurate figures because of the nature of the problem; it is a twilight world and for us to be able to measure in a scientific way is very difficult. But we just have an impression from our organisers across the country that it is a huge issue, and if you take agriculture and the food industry most employers will now say they cannot operate without migrant workers. In terms of legal or illegal, we do not make a distinction. We think the issue is about protecting workers and on the Gangmasters' Licensing Authority there is no distinction made. It is a question of how you look after vulnerable groups of workers and if they see themselves portrayed as illegal they feel even more vulnerable and less likely to contest what is happening to them. But in terms of the scale and the spread we are talking far outside the agriculture and the food industry. Right across industry now the T&G is divided into 14 different trade groups and practically every one has a large number of migrant workers. The building industry, lorry drivers, bus drivers, the car industry - practically anyone you care to name. Q747 Chairman: Obviously the Committee will understand entirely the point you make about not drawing a distinction from the point of view of exploitation of people at work, and with our inquiry centred very much around immigration control we inevitably do draw a distinction, but one of the questions I would like to ask is whether from a trade union point of view the presence of a large numbers of people who are not legally present makes it more difficult for a trade union to organise in order to protect the interests of those who are legitimately here? Mr Kaufman: Yes, it does, but then we tackle that in quite an adult way, I hope. We bring together the stewards and we say: "What are the problems with in your sector?" If I take, for example, the poultry industry we said to them: "Name the top three issues", and one of those is always migrant workers, often agency workers, so what would the problem be, and they would say it was the possibility of undercutting the existing wage levels. But then the discussion leads on to what we do about it, and the answer is referring to the Migrant Workers' Charter that we are signed up to, no migrant workers, whatever their status, should be treated any differently from those who are employed here. That is inherently right, for one, and for two, it means that they are not a threat to the existing terms and conditions. Q748 Bob Russell: Gentlemen, you referred to the illegal workforce. How widely known is it within the food processing distribution and retail sector that illegal workers are engaged, bearing in mind that 80%, I believe, of all food stuffs are now sold through four major supermarkets? Would it be known to the boardrooms of those companies that perhaps their produce is coming through a system where there are illegal workers engaged? Mr Boleat: The 80% I think applies to the grocery trade because a lot of food does not pass through the grocery trade; it goes into catering and other sources, but the supermarkets have worked closely with the unions and ourselves on this matter, and indeed sometimes they are very zealous in their auditing requirements. However, it is clearly not wholly effective. The supermarkets are very competitive organisations; they do compete strongly with each other; and although there are people within the supermarkets charged with complying with ethical guidance and so on there are also people charged with buying carrots at the cheapest possible price, and there is that inevitable conflict. However hard they try I suspect the supermarkets cannot alone be the police of this but on the whole we have worked very closely with them. We had our annual meeting at Marks & Spencer last week and we are talking with them about how we can further develop the work to make sure there is this not sort of abuse. Mr Kaufman: I think you have to distinguish between the legitimate and ethical employers and those who are not always quite so clean, and then there is another delineation, those who use agency workers. When you have subcontracted the work you have even less control over what is going on, and that is a big issue for us because agency workers often, where they are not themselves complying with the rules or turning a blind eye, can be exacerbating the problem. Mr Boleat: If I can explain how it can happen at times, the supermarkets will monitor their suppliers far more rigorously than anybody else. If I am running a food factory supplying a supermarket I will make sure I have immaculate records in respect of the vast majority of my workers, but I might have a proportion of my workforce for whom there are no records, and you cannot expect the supermarkets to be there every day monitoring everything. Typically, if somebody is seeking to evade tax, to employ illegal workers they will be very clever to have immaculate records as part of their business. Bob Russell: Perhaps we should have the supermarkets in here, Chairman. Q749 Mr Spring: I read your submission and you talk about the 3D jobs, the "dangerous, dehumanising and degrading" and you list some of the real problems that are faced by individuals who find themselves in this position, and I would like to ask you a very simple question - and I do so because I am an East Anglian MP and I am aware of the fact that you have very migratory labour which is seasonal and there are very specific problems about this - which is really a qualitative question. You have given these examples of what is effectively exploitation of migrant workers. Are they substantially more serious from a qualitative point of view, I suppose that is the right word, than any kind of exploitation of resident workers, and I am particularly thinking of those who come here temporarily at different times of the year. Has there been a distinction in treatment, in your experience? Mr Kaufman: It is wrong to run away with the idea that migrant workers are the only people exploited, and when the Gangmasters' Bill was going through Parliament and became an act that led to the authority we stressed very carefully it was not just about migrant workers. This system that has been exploiting people, and that is the rogue element of the gangmasters, was exploiting indigenous workers just as much as much as migrant workers even before the last flood of migrant workers, but I think we are talking about migrant workers being more vulnerable because of their feeling that they are on the edge and, first of all, they do not understand our culture, they do not understand the employment laws necessarily, and are vulnerable to more exploitation than would be people who live in this country. Q750 Mr Spring: I understand it would be very difficult to quantify something like this, as you have accepted, but I thank you for your answer. Just moving on to Mr Boleat, I notice that in your submission you have talked about immigration controls being ineffective, and that is a very widely held view, and you talked about the negative impact of the informal economy, or the repercussions of that being negative. You also cite the example of the food factories East Anglia where you say that, for example, illegal workers will run out of the factory if people thought to be tax or immigration inspectors arrive. Believe me, it is an interesting sight when a Member of Parliament arrives as well -- Mr Boleat: That could be for different reasons! Q751 Mr Spring: I just want to ask you a basic question about this. Where do you think the essential problem of irregular working lies? We have touched on this through Mr Russell's question. Workers will go to the most extraordinary lengths to come to the UK, despite all the difficulties and the exploitation we have heard about. We know about the use of agencies, employers and supermarkets; they either do not know or cannot know or do not want to know about whether irregular workers are used. Now, is that where this whole issue should be concentrated on if there is going to be any resolution, or is it simply a matter of the Government's immigration policy, or both? Mr Boleat: My Association represents the agencies, so I do not think all the blame should go there, and I am not just saying that because I am Chairman. Agencies are the way that many of the workers are supplied and most of it is perfectly legitimate, and businesses outsource the whole of their labour supply to agencies. In my view the problem is entirely one of tax evasion; that is the economic motive for people, for those gangmasters who are operating illegally. By evading tax you save 40% of your costs, and that is the issue. Now, there are some workers who are here illegally who are paid tax but many people who think they are here illegally might be reluctant to pay tax in the belief - I suspect unfounded - that the Revenue and the Home Office communicate with each other on such matters. But the people who clearly believe they are here illegally are not likely to wish to be in the formal economy. If we did not have an informal economy, then I suspect the problem would be much less. We have a thriving informal economy; it is probably the fastest sector of the economy. My car gets the benefit of it every month being washed on a high street by people who I very much doubt are legally entitled to be in this country and I suspect have never heard of the taxman, so that is a very visible manifestation of it. It seems to me that the tax authorities are at their very best going through detailed records and not at their best dealing with businesses who have no records, and that people causing the biggest problems have no tax records; they have a lot of cash. If we could deal with the informal economy issues I think we would go a long way to dealing with the illegal migration issues. The two very much go together and cannot be separated. Q752 Mr Spring: That is accepted, absolutely, but we are trying to find a way forward as to exactly how you deal with this problem. Are we talking about government immigration policy, access to this country? You talk about the tax implications of this but how you actually achieve this is really something we need to try to understand. Mr Boleat: I have made a suggestion to the Revenue about how I think they should approach it. Going after individual labour providers is not likely to be effective; it is far better to go after their customers, and I have given names and addresses to the tax authorities of large food plants that I know are evading tax because the rates they are paying to my members or offering to my members are not enough to enable the legal minimum wage to be paid. I think if the Revenue went into these organisations with a big van saying "Revenue Investigations Department" they would disrupt those businesses, first of all, because many of the workers would be out the door, and they should then go through the records very carefully and pursue the labour providers who are breaking the law, but at present there is little evidence of that activity and as long as somebody running a food factory believes he can get away with it they will continue to do so because they are under such cost pressures from the supermarkets that they have to try and make a living. Indeed, I had one of my own members yesterday - or not a member but somebody thinking of joining - saying: "Look, I have started paying tax and national insurance in the last year but I am about to go bust", and that is the position that some of them find themselves in. Do they wish to be in business or not? We would all love to be in a position whereby a labour provider can pay the minimum wage at least and all the legal add-ons and get business, but in some parts of the country it is difficult and if the tax authorities could concentrate on that part of the business then I think we may be making some progress. Q753 Mr Spring: Next, arising out of this, and to some extent you have answered the question, although you prefaced your comments about the role of government in this from a broad point of view as far as regulating immigration control is concerned, what you are really talking about are new civil penalties which are there and available to be used rather than favouring criminal penalties, but what you seem to be saying is that it is really a question of will and enforcement to do this at that level and that is not happening. Is that what you are saying? Mr Boleat: Yes, I think this applies across the board. Parliament is very concerned about passing laws, as, indeed, is government and sometimes the media: "Here is a problem, we will pass a law and the problem will go away", and indeed that applies to the Gangmasters' Licensing Act introducing the legislation. It was argued that these gangmasters are breaking five laws; what we need to do is license them. A possible solution is to start enforcing the five laws. So I do not think we need any more laws; tax evasion is a crime; it is illegal for employers to employ workers who are not entitled to be here, if we enforce some of those laws in a way to set an example to others. At the moment, and I have said this to the tax authorities, the belief is that you are not going to be pursued, and if that belief is changed by some well-judged action, possibly with a bit of publicity, that would help, but it has to be real. I have been asked in the past to do TV interviews about raids by the immigration authorities that will take place, and they are great for TV. There was one in Scotland that was on TV and my member phoned up from Scotland laughing in the afternoon saying "The workers are all back at work having been arrested and on the news". So it has to be real. People have to understand if they are breaking the law, they are going to be prosecuted. Q754 Mr Spring: You have made this the central part of your argument, which is enforcement by the Revenue on this tax front. When you have made this argument to the Revenue, and presumably the Revenue has an interest in acquiring revenue, what is the answer, and why has there not been this particular enforcement - if you believe this is the way it can be most successfully dealt with? Mr Boleat: I have found the people I have spoken to at the Revenue very co-operative and helpful in principle. However, they have targets, and I think their targets are probably more geared to recovering tax that has been assessed and is due and has not been paid than it is to dealing with this problem. The people we are concerned about are not known to the tax authorities. Also, the traditional tools they have at their disposal and their approach is not as well-equipped for dealing with this. As a self-employed person I was investigated by the Revenue fully three years ago. They went through my immaculate file with a fine tooth comb, and disallowed £200 of expenses. Well, they have to disallow something. Had I wished to evade tax, of course, it would be on income, not expenditure, and I found the whole process baffling, but they loved going through my immaculate records and checking the spreadsheets against the receipts and the invoices. As I said, the people I am concerned about do not have records. Q755 Mr Spring: We have to try and find a solution to this. You have raised the argument that they should investigate this, but then you are saying they have no records but we have to find some way of dealing with it. Mr Boleat: You go after the people they are supplying, and we know who those people are. I have given details. We have a very simple calculation. The minimum wage is £5.05. If you take the essential add-ons, you are looking at something like £6.50 an hour to cover it, you can argue about whether it is £6.30 or £6.70, yet there are labour users paying £6 an hour and when my members say: "I cannot do it for £6", they say "There are plenty of others who can" and as long as that continues -- Q756 Chairman: The Committee in the last few weeks has travelled all over the world, to India, Pakistan, and even to Calais, talking to hundreds of staff whose job is to prevent illegal immigrants coming into this country. What you are essentially saying to us is we have been looking in the wrong place for where we need the staff to deal with illegal labour; that we need people here doing enforcement here of the existing laws and tackling exploitation that is the centre of Mr Kaufman's concerns too. Is that right? Mr Boleat: I think there are different issues in respect of Asia and Eastern Europe, Russia and so on. There are there is still a big issue of forged documents. Q757 Chairman: But in terms of where you would say, if you had 100 extra staff, it sounds to me as though you would put them in the UK and not -- Mr Boleat: Entirely on tax. My understanding from research I have seen and maybe in the IPPR study, most of the people here illegally do not come in illegally. They can come in on a student visa or a tourist visa, and then it is very easy to operate in the informal economy. Mr Kaufman: Where we are coming from is we think that the best protection against the whole background of this is trade union organisation. The committee that I sit on in Europe goes to the countries of origin of the migrant workers and tries to tell them what the terms and conditions should be in the country. So that when people come over here they do not feel, for example, if they come from Poland, "Oh, well, we are doing pretty well if we are earning £2 an hour because that is pretty good compared with what we are getting in Poland." We point out "No, the minimum wage here is £5.30 and therefore you need to know what your rights are." So there is a big job to be done, again in this country, letting people know what their employment rights are, and as a union what we try to do is we have a migrant workers helpline that helps people about how, for example, they want to send money back home, how they do that, and which tries to lay on language courses, makes agreements with employers about induction courses for migrant workers - so there is a lot going on, but that will always be undermined the bigger becomes the twilight world. So we try to get a hold of it as much as we can but the ultimate protection is for organisation on the ground. Q758 Mr Winnick: I think some of us at least would take the view that the work your union does in trying to avoid one group of people being demonised by others is highly commendable and opposing racism wherever it can be found, but can I put this point to you? In your paper you say: "Public policy must turn its attentions away from vilifying irregular workers and towards measures that tackle both the conditions for exploitation and those who exploit." Then you go on and say such measures should also include giving amnesty to those who are here on a regular basis and, going on, establishing a process whereby future migrants can regularise their status. What I would put to you, Mr Kaufman, is simply this. Is this not a direct encouragement for people to come here illegally, work illegally, and moreover encourage at the same time the criminal gang to use every opportunity for very obvious reasons to bring people to this country? Mr Kaufman: No. I think it is a complex question, there is no absolute right and wrong on this, but, for example, on the question of amnesty you are tacitly saying that they have been "criminal" in the past and you are not also looking at what happens in the future. Nonetheless, on balance that is our view. But in terms of how you tackle the larger question you raise, it is better to have some form of control than being constantly in the thrall of a situation that expands the black/grey economy where you have less and less hold or grasp on what can be done. Q759 Mr Winnick: But you are not saying - perhaps you are and if so you will tell us - that there should not be any form of immigration controls on people coming into this country? Mr Kaufman: No, I am not saying that, but we are not as a union in a position where we are taking a particular line on it. We see ourselves simply as protecting the workforce however they get here. Q760 Mr Winnick: And would you deny that there are criminal gangs, certainly in China and certainly not exclusive to China, who get people to this country for a sum of money, and if that sum is not repaid, either by the people here, their relatives back home or those here, then various forms of punishment will take place? Mr Kaufman: What we do not want to see is the migrant workers here impoverished or feeling more vulnerable to the conditions I have already described. I went to the memorial of the Chinese cockle pickers and I well understand the terrible effects of what we are talking about here and the need to deal with criminal elements, and that is exactly why we take such a strong line on it. Q761 Mrs Dean: Can I ask you both whether you believe the enlargement of the EU has led to reduction in the number of people working unlawfully in the UK or whether the reverse is true? Mr Boleat: Initially it led to a sharp reduction on the grounds that many people here illegally overnight became legal, and I think on the Home Office figures about a third of those were initially registered under the Workers' Registration Scheme. To that extent, therefore, the quickest way to reduce illegality is to make things that were previously illegal legal, and I would have thought in the short-term there is a plentiful supply of workers from the accession states to do low paid jobs and, indeed, that is government policy, and I suspect that will last for some time but over time, certainly with many of the Poles coming into the country, they are not going to be satisfied with doing the low paid work; they are going to be taking on many different positions. Beyond that I rather suspect that the amount of illegal immigration from further east than the accession states has increased, partly because all the languages sound very much the same to us. I think there is some concern about security of passport issuing in some countries, and remember our controls on passport are as effective as those of the weakest in the European Union, so I suspect we have a fair amount of illegal immigration from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus that we did not have before but the overall effect probably has been a reduction, simply because workers who previously were illegal are now legal. Q762 Mrs Dean: Have you got evidence of people coming from further east? Mr Boleat: Every day on the tube, by the language I listen to! Other than that, it is very difficult to get evidence. It is widely believed that it is very easy to obtain passports from some countries, and it is not just the accession states. Greek identity cards and Portuguese identity cards equally have been forged in the past. Q763 Mrs Dean: Mr Kaufman, do you want to respond to the question as to whether you think there are more people working unlawfully or less now? Mr Kaufman: We now produce recruitment literature in about 20 different languages so there is every shape and size of people coming into the country, and when our organisers go into plants or the local community, quite often we work with the migrant workers' community in wherever they collect, in canteens and so on, and in some organisations such as in Ireland, the STEP campaign, where people are welcomed and taught the language or given the opportunity to learn the language, we see a widening number of different sorts of people coming in. Q764 Mrs Dean: Mr Boleat, on what basis do you assert that many of those required to register under the Workers' Registration Scheme have not done so, and what is your evidence that the scheme encourages workers from the accession states to work in the informal economy? Mr Boleat: It is very difficult to produce evidence on these sort of matters. There have been a number of studies suggesting that many more workers from the accession states are here than have registered with numbers being given. As is clear from our evidence, we strongly oppose the registration scheme which we regard as being quite different from the free right to work in the UK which we strongly support, but I think it would stand to reason that if you are a worker coming from Poland where you have not been earning much money and you are coming into Britain and the first thing you are asked to do is (a) to send your passport to the Home Office and (b) to send £70, and it is quite difficult writing a cheque for £70 the first week you are in the UK. You will not have a bank account; the Post Office think it is great because they can sell their £70 postal orders for, I believe, £77; that does not sound very attractive incentive to me. The disincentive for not registering - well, the official Home Office literature says that workers should register because if they register then after a year they do not need to register. That is actually stated in the documentation. Now, to be fair, there is entitlement to means-tested benefit after one year, I believe. I am not certain in my own mind, because I cannot understand it all, whether that entitlement stems from paying National Insurance contributions from a year or whether it is having registered under the scheme, but if workers choose not to register - and many remember here are not immigrants, they are migrants, they are going home for a weekend drinking or to watch football. Look at the Ryanair flights to bits of Poland. Some will be here for three months in the summer, they are students, they are here for three months. Are they going to spend £70 registering? The worry is because they say "No, I am not going to" - and no one, not a single employer has been prosecuted for not complying with the regulations, not a single worker has been prosecuted because I gather it is not an offence, so they are saying, "We are not registering", and because they feel they are not supposed to be here perhaps it is an incentive to be in the informal economy. I have no evidence; I cannot say mathematically "This is what it looks like", but to me that is a common sense position that it must have some disincentive effect. Mr Kaufman: I think the T&G would agree with that. Similar to Miles and David, that by trying - and probably failing - to get a hold on the situation you then create a far bigger problem than those people who are not involved. Mr Boleat: Can I add that huge numbers of people do not need to register - the self-employed, people who are here legally - and the scheme only measures people coming in, not going out, so there will be people who have registered who have never worked, and the figure may well be right now because the number going out clearly increases quarter by quarter as the stock goes up, so we do not get a very good feel for the number of workers from the accession states here through that scheme, and as a scheme there has never been any consultation on it; there is no regulatory impact assessment, the announcements on it invariably come after decisions have been taken, the Home Office posted on the website the announcement it would continue after 1 May on 13 May, and I think it is unacceptable for the government to produce a scheme without any consultation. There is no reason why they should not have consulted on the continuation of the scheme, and I understand the poker playing with the other states at the end of the period but we could have had that proper consultation before, and I think even now there is scope to simplify the scheme very considerably that would remove most of the adverse features. Even now the application forms have got questions in that the Home Office has no authority to ask under the regulations. They are nice to have questions about what people are paid and the work they are doing and so on. If the government wants to count numbers let's have a scheme that counts numbers. It is not a registration scheme; it is a counting numbers scheme, and I think it is very damaging in its impact. Q765 Mrs Dean: Can I turn to non-EU migrant workers and ask whether you believe there is a need for low-skilled work permits allowing persons from outside the enlarged EU to come to the UK, such as was previously piloted with the sector-based schemes? Mr Kaufman: Yes, I think there there is scope all round. It does need obviously some sort of tab kept on it. It is always wise to go back to the examples of what is happening on the ground. We have an employer - a rather disreputable employer but an honest one - saying that foreign workers are cheap but illegal workers are cheaper, and that is the code by which those who do not play by the rules operate. We have also an example of agency workers being used in a food processing plant who were asked to pay ten pounds a week for having their carpets cleaned. Now, that is quite a lot of money but it is even more when you consider they did not have carpets! So we have instances all the time of illegal deductions being made which takes them far below the minimum wage. In other words, this is the world in which they brought in the Union and then were told: "You must name the person who brought the T&G in otherwise we are going to sack five people, and if you do not do that we will sack another five people." So that is the reality on the ground of what we are dealing with. So a lot of this laudable attempt to take a kind of general, legal approach to doing something about it flies in the face of what we need to do in terms of enforcement and rigorously putting the frighteners on the people exploiting the system. Mr Boleat: I would broadly agree with that. I think I would also make a general point that the more difficult it is to get into the country illegally the higher the price that people will pay to do so. This is not quite true but remember that it is far easier to exploit workers who are here illegally, and that is why the Chinese are particularly exploited. You cannot do that to the Poles, or you can try it but it will not last long; you may come off second best in an argument. So the bigger the hurdles we impose on people coming into the country, given it is still very attractive to be here, the higher the price people will pay. But I agree with Chris, this is entirely about enforcement of existing laws, and I forget how many laws the Home Office gets through Parliament every year but it really is about enforcing what we have, and I suspect that the existing legal framework is quite adequate. Q766 Mrs Dean: If we were to have payment for low-skilled workers from outside the EU, how would we structure such a scheme and which areas of work would it focus on? Mr Boleat: The Government would say: "Well, if it can be demonstrated that there is a shortage of workers then we will look at a scheme." The market determines whether there is a shortage of workers; I am not certain the Government can do this very well. My own view is that the accession states will provide the vast majority of the workers needed in the short term. There have been longstanding arrangements with some other countries in particular sectors. Whenever you try and produce a scheme like this it does have downsides. SAWS has worked reasonably well over the years but somebody coming in on SAWS can only work for the particular place they are supposed to work at and this can create some problems as well. Generally, therefore, I would support the Government's overall approach of moving towards general rules that apply to everybody with a very strong case having to be made before there are going to be specific schemes. Q767 Mrs Dean: Do you agree with that, Mr Kaufman? Mr Kaufman: I think I would like to keep my powder dry and send you a note after this. Chairman: Could I thank you very much? You are the first witness I have ever heard say directly to the Committee "I have no evidence of what I have just said", and in a curious way, for me at least, that has increased your credibility rather than decreased it! Thank you. Memoranda submitted by Department for Work and Pensions and IND Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Jonathan Portes, Chief Economist, Department for Work and Pensions, and Mr James Quinault, Director, Managed Migration Strategy and Review, IND, gave evidence. Q768 Chairman: Good morning. Thank you for joining us. You have been listening to the previous session so you have some idea of the Committee's interest. Could you introduce yourselves, please? Mr Portes: I am the Chief Economist for Work and the Director for Children In Poverty at the Department for Work and Pensions. Mr Quinault: I am the new Director of Management Migration Strategy in the Home Office. Q769 Mr Benyon: Would you both agree with the assertion that if there are no legal channels for low-skilled migration the number of illegal low-skilled workers will increase because there are vacancies there, and therefore someone will have to fill them and, if you agree, how do you feel that sits with those who say the Government can close down the low-skilled migrant route because the slack will be taken up by those coming from accession states? Mr Portes: I think I would broadly agree that if there were no channels at all for low-skilled migration that will increase the pressure for illegal irregular migration and that will increase the pressure on the system, and there will be as a consequence irregular migration but what we have seen, of course, is actually a pretty significant increase in both the width, as it were, of the channels for low-skilled migration and the number of people who flow through them because of the opening of the British labour market to workers from the accession country states, and I would agree with what the previous witnesses said which is that in the short to medium term that is likely to meet most of the demand in the British labour market for low-skilled and unskilled workers. It is not, I think, sensible to make predictions about how the labour market might develop over the longer term, but that is why there is provision in the system to allow for further channels for low-skilled migration, if that is justified by conditions at the time. Mr Quinault: I would agree. Obviously if there are no routes for low-skilled migration that will increase the demand to come here illegally, but whether that translates into more illegal working here depends on the pool factors; whether there are the vacancies for those people to fill, and on the enforcement response. Q770 Mr Benyon: To what extent does irregular working come into your calculation of labour market trends in the work you do? Mr Portes: As you know, the available data on irregular working is not what, in an ideal world, it would be so it is very difficult to incorporate it. Most of our analysis in the DWP of what is happening in the labour market is based on the Labour Force Survey which, perhaps surprisingly, does actually pick up a certain proportion of the illegal population, we think. It is quite surprising that people give honest answers to government surveys, and even when giving honest answers to government surveys, were we to use the information - and of course we do not, the surveys are anonymous - it would reveal they are doing illegal things. You can see in the Labour Force Survey there are people clearly working and claiming benefits, for example. So it is our view that the Labour Force Survey does pick up some, clearly not all, of illegal working and that is factored into our analysis of trends. Clearly the overall aggregate output measures of what the economy may produce also includes to some extent the output produced by illegal workers, so it is taken into account to some extent but I would not claim that we have a detailed micro level knowledge of how many illegal workers there are in what sectors and what precisely that does to labour demand. Q771 Mr Benyon: On the basis of the evidence we have had before can you take a view on the trends? Can you feel a trend in the amount of illegal working? Mr Portes: I think, for the reasons the previous witnesses described, that the level of illegal working has almost certainly gone down over the last couple of years because there is a significant demand for unskilled labour. Clearly, equally, a significant portion of that demand is now being filled by legal workers from the accession country states. To that extent it seems highly probable. First, two things have happened. One there was a pure regularisation effect. That is, there were people here, we could see them in the WRS data, there were people here clearly working illegally, now they are working legally, so that reduces the legal working population. So that is the sort of transition effect. But then there is a wider displacement effect in that as new jobs come up it is now more likely that new unskilled jobs will be filled by a legal worker rather than an illegal worker because employers have the option of filling them with accession country nationals rather than filling them with illegal workers if that was what they might, in other circumstances, have done, so our view is that the trend is probably down but I would not want to quantify it to any great extent. Q772 Mr Benyon: In the policy work that you do, Mr Quinault, would you assert that immigration control issues are more important for low-skilled migrant workers than they are for higher skilled workers? Mr Quinault: Yes, I think I would, and that is why, in looking at the redesign of legal migration routes for work and study, the focus has been more on opening up and making easier the routes for highly skilled migrants. Control is more of an issue at the lower skilled end. Q773 Mr Benyon: What direction is your work taking you in terms of the lower skills? How can you format it? Mr Quinault: Do you mean why do I think control is a bigger issue at the lower end? Q774 Mr Benyon: Yes. Mr Quinault: Because I think those people will generally, because of their range of skills, find it harder to float in the UK labour market without recourse to public funds, which is obviously an issue for us. I think that is the principal reason why we think it is more of an issue. To the extent there is displacement of the domestic labour force that is more likely to be so at the lower end. It is for reasons like that. Mr Portes: Clearly the economic damage done by irregular migration at the lower end is significantly greater than at the higher end for all sorts of reasons. It is both bad, worse for British workers, worse for the economy as a whole, more likely to lead to exploitation. In the control field, it is worth noting that it is also going to be more difficult for a higher skilled worker who has succeeded in getting through immigration control in an irregular fashion to continue to work in the British labour market making a salary that is commensurate with his or her earning power. It is not easy to be a university professor or senior civil servant if your immigration status is not regular, whereas it is likely to be easier at the lower end, so that places a higher premium on having proper control mechanisms at the lower end. Q775 Mr Browne: You were one of the authors of a report which concluded that: "The economic impact of migration from the new EU Member States has been modest but broadly positive", but like, as I understand it, most of the Government's responses on the impact of EU accession it was based entirely on data from the Workers' Registration Scheme when it is clear, as you and others have been saying, that thousands of workers from those EU countries are self-employed and therefore outside the scheme. What is being done to assess the impact of these people and others outside the Workers' Registration Scheme? Mr Portes: Relatively little has been done to assess the direct impact of people outside the Workers' Registration Scheme although they will be picked up in data sources like the Labour Force Survey, for example, which we take into account in broader assessment of labour market trends. But I would point out that the main focus of our paper was determining whether the migrants from the accession countries had had a negative impact on the labour market prospects of British natives - broadly, did they take jobs from Brits, hence pushing up unemployment. In that respect the people you are talking about are of less concern, firstly because it is less plausible to suggest that self-employed people would take away jobs from British natives than, say, people doing low-skilled or elementary occupations. We do not know that but I think intuitively that is probably the case. It seems to me that certainly, if you do not see any impact from the people who have come in to do elementary occupations and have registered, it is not terribly plausible to suggest that somehow a rather smaller number of self-employed people have had a particularly damaging impact on the British labour market. Secondly, just a methodological point, the approach in our paper is simply to look at the geographical concentrations of migrants and it demonstrates that there really is no association between changes in employment, unemployment, labour market conditions for natives and the geographic concentrations of where people have registered on the WRS. So in order to believe that there was an impact which we had not picked up, you would have to not only believe that there were a rather large number of people not registered on the WRS but also that they were going to completely different places and doing completely different things from the people who had registered and, again, we have no reason to believe that is the case. So I am reasonably confident -- Q776 Chairman: Just before you continue, Mr Portes, I am regularly told that in certain occupations like construction the rates being paid to self-employed construction workers has fallen dramatically since the Polish accession, for people work on building sites across the south east. Are you saying that that has not happened, or that your study was not looking at whether there was a significant impact on wage rates? Mr Portes: We were not looking at wage rates in our study. I understand that separate work that the Treasury has done has concluded they have not been able to pick up any significant impact on wage rates. That said, I do not think we would exclude that there would be an impact on wage rates in certain sectors and certain radiants. That is possible. Q777 Chairman: Are you aware if the Treasury work has been published? Mr Portes: I do not believe it has. Q778 Chairman: Perhaps we should ask about that. Mr Quinault: Perhaps this is a moment to correct something which Mr Boleat said in his evidence. He said that the Workers' Registration Scheme was a head count scheme and not a very good one. Actually, that was not the purpose of the scheme. It was to give us the information with which to monitor the labour market impact of accession and that is the "nice-to-have" questions, as he called them before, and I think was the basis of Jonathan's study, just so that is on the record. Q779 Mr Browne: And you are confident that the distinction you draw between self-employed and non self-employed is as stark as you just said in your evidence? We talked about the construction industry but, for instance, if you have a market, there are only so many people who want to buy fruit and vegetables. It is not that hard to set yourself up as a fruit and vegetable seller and sell them, and then the market saturates with people selling fruit and vegetables, many of whom may be self-employed. Mr Portes: There clearly is plenty of fluidity in both the definitions and in the people themselves who can, as you say, move back and forth between these categories. Certainly I have no doubt that there are significant numbers of people who have not registered on the Worker Registration Scheme. I do not believe there is any evidence that they are as huge as Mr Boleat suggests and in general we think that the level of compliance overall is relatively high. Q780 Chairman: Pursuing this a little bit, the figure from the Workers' Registration Scheme has been given headline prominence by the Government, by the European Commission, as the measure of how many people from the accession states have come to this country. Two things seem to have come out of the exchanges on this. One is that it does not measure the number of people who have come from Poland and there is an unknown number of people who have come, legitimately as self-employed students or whatever and, secondly, the headline story about the impact has not actually included a study of the impact on wage rates which you have accepted may have been real in some sectors, though we do not know. It was anecdotal. Would you agree that up until now the weight that has been put on the analysis of the Workers' Registration Scheme has been too great, and it does not give us a complete picture of what has been going on, or the extent of the impact? Mr Portes: It clearly does not give a complete picture. I would point out that the paper also uses data from the Labour Force Survey which has rather lower numbers. It also is important to make the point which Mark made which is that the WRS measures gross inflows only and not people going out, and since we certainly know that a large proportion of the people who have registered are working at occupations you might expect to be seasonal, particularly agriculture obviously but to a lesser extent food processing and possibly catering and hospitality, taking that together with the numbers from the Labour Force Survey our best guess is probably that 350,000 or so is an overestimate of the number of the net inflows. That is the first point I would make. On wages, as I said, we did not include the analysis in our paper because at that point we did not think the data was sufficiently reliable; it did not show any particular impact. As I say, I do not want to speak for the Treasury as to whether what they have is suitably rigorous for it to be published but my understanding is that the at least preliminary analysis they have done internally shows results that are consistent with those that are reported in my paper. In other words, no particular impact in any region or geography that is associated with inflows from the WRS. Chairman: Unfortunately the Treasury declined to send a civil servant to our inquiry, so we cannot pursue that with them. Mr Brown? Q781 Mr Browne: I have one other slightly extended question to Mr Quinault, which is that on 1 May COMPAS, which is the Centre at Oxford University, as you are probably aware published research on the employment of migrants from East and Central Europe in low-wage occupations, and it found that most of the employers who admitted to "bending the rules" by employing irregular migrants were not paying any particular attention and were fairly indifferent about the Government's enforcement measures. Does this not render worthless, or at least put great doubt on, the value of Government policy of continuing to rely on employers to help prevent abuse of the immigration system? Mr Quinault: No, I do not think it does, but it does underline that that has to be backed by something; that if you are expecting employers to shoulder part of the responsibility for seeing that immigration control is observed they need to be helped to play their part in that, both supported and, if necessary, enforced if they are not, and that will be a key part of the new arrangements we bring in with the Points Based System. The sponsorship relationship will be at the heart of that and will be backed by some significant account management and compliance activity to see that people do what they are supposed to. Q782 Mr Browne: Is the most effective route likely to be tougher sanctions, so that you do not have the kind of situation in a restaurant where the person who does some sort of depressing menial task, like the dishwashing, is an illegal migrant who gets caught every three or four weeks and just gets replaced by another illegal migrant and it is an ever continuing circle? Mr Quinault: If there is a problem, the results of that problem will depend what the reason for the problem is. If the employer is observing best practice but has had a run of bad luck, the response will be different from if they are not or if it could be shown that the problems arise from wilful disregard for the rules. In the first instance, it will be a supportive relationship explaining what needs to be done, a voluntary intimation that that happens; in the second case, the response may be to down-grade their sponsor rating, in which case they will find it harder to bring migrants in, though not impossible if the people meet the rest of the points test; but in the last case, if this is wilful disregard or a criminal complicity in the bending of the rules, that sponsor will lose their right to bring in migrants altogether, they will be delisted from the sponsor list and their rights will end there. Q783 Chairman: You have sat here and listened to Mark Boleat and Chris Kaufman both say that there is not any serious enforcement by the Revenue of tax evasion. I know you do not answer for the Treasury or for the Revenue but you are in charge of managed migration, but I think the Committee is struggling to understand what the point is of introducing a complex system or even a simple system of points-based managed migration if, in practice, there is no enforcement in the labour market to deal with illegal labour and exploitation. When can we expect to see the serious effort to make employers comply with the rules that this House has passed on the protection that people at work should have and the taxes that employers should pay? Mr Quinault: What I heard Mr Boleat say was that he thought the right way to tackle irregular migration and irregular working was to concentrate the effort in the UK, to go after the people using illegal workers here to see that people bringing in migrants played their part in ensuring that people complied with the terms of their immigration status, and that is going to be a core part of the new points based system. The sponsorship relationship is at the heart of this, and I guarantee that that will be backed by the appropriate level of compliance activity. Q784 Chairman: Why do we not do it now? Mr Quinault: We do. There is targeted activity. Q785 Chairman: Are you telling the Committee you are happy with the level of enforcement of people employing illegal labour that we have at the moment? Mr Quinault: We do lots on illegal working. Q786 Chairman: This is important for the Committee. Are you telling the Committee that the Home Office is content with the level of enforcement that is currently taking place? Mr Quinault: If you will allow me to develop my answer, more could always be done, and I think a key part of the points based systems is setting up the sponsors' responsibility so that we have something to ensure that they are working towards. Take students for example, at the moment there is nothing to tie the leave of a student coming into this country to the institution in which they are placed and supposed to study. Mr Winnick: Why do you not answer yes or no to the Chairman's question? Q787 Chairman: People are working illegally now and you are telling us that in 2008 the rules will have changed. It is the same question. The Committee has attempted to go round the world to talk people from the Home Office who are employed trying to stop people coming into this country illegally. The evidence that comes to us is that, if they are here illegally and they are working illegally, nothing happens to them or to the people who employ them or the people who profit from their exploitation. I have asked you a direct question: is the Home Office happy with the level of enforcement and, if not, why do we have to wait for 2008 for the laws to be changed for a new system to come in? Mr Quinault: More is going on all the time. We have just recently introduced new penalties for employers. It is all part of a continuing step-change. Q788 Chairman: How many people have been prosecuted under the new penalties? Mr Quinault: I would need to send you a note on that. Chairman: We had better move on. Q789 Bob Russell: Leading on from that, it strikes me that there is clearly a lack of joined up government between the Home Office and the Inland Revenue here: because we have been told that the potential extra revenue from income tax that irregular migrant workers could be paying is at least £485 million per annum and could be as much as a billion pounds. That is obviously a lot of lost money and taxes. You will have heard me put questions to the two previous witnesses where I suggested that those at the highest levels of the food retail in this country must be aware that, somewhere down the process, they are purchasing food stuffs which have been processed by people who are illegal immigrants and at wage levels below the minimum wage; so there is the aiding and abetting. What is the Home Office doing to bring this to the attention of the Revenue and other arms of government so that this is tackled? We are talking possibly here of tax evasion of up to a billion pounds a year. Mr Quinault: I believe you are taking evidence from my colleague, Dave Roberts, immediately after this session and he will be able to tell you more about how they work together with the Revenue and other authorities. Q790 Bob Russell: Has your department undertaken any work on the economic costs and benefits of regularising the status of those currently working in the UK illegally, bearing in mind that the total catch could be up to billion pounds in lost revenue? Mr Portes: If what you are suggesting is should we simply regularise the people who are here already currently working illegally, clearly that would lead to a one-off gain in revenue. The disadvantages of it clearly do not relate to that, but the other factor, which previous witnesses have mentioned and which a couple of the honourable members have mentioned, is the encouragement it would provide to future irregular migrants by the example of a regularisation programme. The down side of an amnesty is not the impact it has on tax revenues now, which is clearly positive, but the longer term impact it has on the future stream of irregular migration. Q791 Bob Russell: Is it your policy to turn a blind eye? Mr Portes: No, absolutely not. As James was saying, there is enforcement activity going on all the time, but it is necessary to strike a balance. Clearly there is lost tax revenue from illegal working; there is also lost tax revenue that follows from tax evasion conducted by British subjects, of which all the estimates, I would suggest, are considerably higher than anything in the IPR's estimate of the tax revenue from illegal working. Q792 Bob Russell: Is it fair on firms that are playing by the rules, who are paying the minimum rates, and hopefully more, to be undercut by companies and by whatever employer measures there are, and thus not only discriminates against law-abiding firms but also cheats the public purse? Mr Portes: The simple answer to that is, "No", clearly, but I think it is necessary to disseminate between the different sorts of things that you might be talking about which are having those damaging effects. There is paying wages below the minimum wage, which is illegal, and I will not speak for my colleagues from HMRC or the Treasury, but which, all the evidence suggests, runs at a pretty low level; there is not paying tax or national insurance contributions on wage income, which is a crime that can be and is committed both by British people, by migrants who are here legally and by migrants who are here illegally. Although migrants who are here illegally are most probably more likely than either of the other two groups to commit that sort of crime, in terms of the volume of money that is lost to the Exchequer, it is actually almost certainly British nationals who account for the majority of it. Q793 Bob Russell: I will move on to my final question, but I will preface that with an observation that I detect a casualness over the whole approach and what I can only term, Chairman, as the acquiescence of the major supermarket chains in knowing that they are engaging in food purchases which have come from sources which have engaged illegal migrant labour. There is some evidence that immigration from EU accession countries to the UK appears to have eased inflation pressure points on the economy by increasing the flexibility of the labour force and easing bottlenecks in the labour market. However, the Governor of the Bank of England has recently commented that the long-term effect of migrant labour might not be quite as beneficial to the economy. How, therefore, does that affect your strategies on migration? Mr Portes: I am not entirely sure of the context in which the Governor made that comment. Q794 Bob Russell: To the Treasury Select Committee. Mr Portes: Or what else he was saying at the time. Why did he think the long-term effects would be---- There are two questions. One is why he thought that, but the second is was he speaking specifically about migration from the accession country states or migration more generally? I think that we, the Bank, the Treasury and the Home Office all share the view that in the medium to long run migration is large and difficult to quantify but there is a reasonable consensus amongst economists and the labour market that migration has a significant, positive impact on the economy. It increases the dynamism of the economy, it increases the flexibility of the economy, it increases the skills on which British employers and businesses can draw, and would be very surprised if anybody from the Bank, the Treasury or the Home Office disagreed with any of that. Q795 Bob Russell: It is not a line I have read in the Daily Mail? Mr Portes: I would not claim to speak for the Daily Mail. There is a specific question about whether in five years we will see the same benefits from the accession countries that we have seen in the last two, and there it is quite possible that we will not see the same sort of benefit in five years that we have from now because flows will be less, people may be going back, labour market conditions there may change and, indeed, we would hope that, as the country develops economically, just as happened with Ireland - we benefited for a long time from migrant workers from Ireland and all those migrants went back when Ireland's economy developed - it is quite possible that the situation with respect to those countries will be quite different in five years. We would not want to predict that, but in regards to the general question: will migration still be of great benefit overall to the UK economy and society in five years, ten years? I think the clear answer is almost certainly, "Yes." Q796 Gwyn Prosser: I want to ask you both about joined up working, or lack of it, between departments. The Government comes under a lot of criticism in this direction. I wonder if each of you would give us a couple of specific examples of measures that your departments have taken to avoid the lack of joined up government, given the obvious conflicts which sometimes are created between two different policy objectives? Mr Portes: Taken on the development of the development points based system over the last year, year and a half, I and people working for me on the analysis of the labour market and the economic indications have worked very, very closely with James and his colleagues and their predecessors at the Home Office and, similarly, with our counterparts in the Treasury. Obviously there have been differences around the edges, but, both around the basic analysis of the economic impact of migration and the basic policy objectives, I think there has been quite a remarkable degree of consensus, certainly more so than in some other policy areas I have had to work in. Mr Quinault: I would agree with that, and I would say also that in developing the policy we have worked closely with other government departments as well. I give as one example the very close work that we have done with the Department for Education and Skills over the role of colleges and universities in the new system. We have worked closely with DfES and, through them, with the sector itself. We have had a joint education taskforce on which university representatives and colleges have sat and helped us formulate the details of the policies as we have gone along. It has been a very positive way of working. Q797 Gwyn Prosser: One area where there is a possibility of conflict is that, although we have heard a lot this morning about the positive effects of managed migration on the economy, there is also an impact on public services, on health, on education, on the infrastructure, etcetera. What measures and what efforts do you put into resolving those would-be conflicts? Mr Quinault: Is it worth saying, first of all, that the impact is not all one way? One of the sectors which has had the biggest demand for migrant labour over the past few years has been the public sector and specifically the health sector. I think 30% of work permits go to people going to work in the health service. It is just worth noting that before we go on. Q798 Mr Benyon: Thirty? Mr Quinault: Yes, 30%. Mr Portes: The figure I was just looking at suggested even more. In any case, the bottom line is that the expansion of the NHS over the last five years would simply have been impossible if the work permit system had not adapted flexibly to enable the NHS to get those workers. Mr Quinault: The reason for the change in numbers is not just the work permits; there are also permit-free routes, or have been, into the NHS, and those would account for more. Mr Portes: In terms of the impact, the impact on public services in general is something that we do take very seriously and we do discuss at some length with colleagues in both education, health and obviously it is not ODPM any more, it is DTLG, where people are responsible for the provision of housing. Yes, there are impacts and it is important to recognise those, but, as James said, I think, on the whole, the impact on the public services goes both ways. Q799 Gwyn Prosser: The organisation Migration Watch, and I am a supporter of that group, continually put out reports on their statistics which try to undermine the argument for managed migration and the positive effects it has on the economy. Between your two departments have you got any plans to research these matters and put forward a really positive and properly researched rebuttal? Mr Portes: I think we try and do that. For example, the circulation of this paper was an attempt to put into the public domain the internal analysis that we have done that was an attempt to be an objective assessment of the impact on the labour market. More broadly, there is clearly a responsibility for the department to go out there and make the case on the basis of the analysis that we do for the policies that we believe are well found from that analysis. I was going to comment on the Migration Watch fiscal impact procedures. Mr Quinault: I think you should. Mr Portes: I am glad you asked me that question. I think it is a good illustration of the way that sometimes you can really get some quite absurd introductions into the debate. In the most recent paper that Migration Watch produced on the fiscal impact of migrants, which attempted to rebut the research originally done by the Home Office and then subsequently further research done by the IPPR, Migration Watch managed to come to a calculation that migrants were roughly neutral or possibly slightly negative by the simple expedient of saying that the children of migrants born in this country should be counted as a cost as long as they were children, but, once they became adults, they would then be counted as British and then, of course, they are part of the labour force and counted as a benefit. Somebody like me - I was born in this country of foreign parents - they would count the cost of the state paying for my education and health up to the age of 16 as a cost and, therefore, a net negative from the migrant side, but all the time I have worked and paid taxes since the age of 21 they would count as a benefit accruing to the British side. If you want to calculate the figures that way, then, clearly, you can come to any result you want. Mr Quinault: We can let you have a note setting that out in exhaustive detail if you want. Chairman: In sufficient detail for us to follow the argument. Q800 Gwyn Prosser: I will take the exhaustive version! Mr Portes, we have been told that although your department carries out a number of checks before issuing national insurance numbers you do not, as a matter of course, check immigration status, the right to work or the right to claim benefits. Is that right and, if so, why? Mr Portes: I should preface my answer by saying that national insurance numbers are, thankfully, quite a way away from my responsibility at the department. Q801 Chairman: Do you want to write to us on the issue or get us a letter? Mr Portes: I do have some notes here. I will try and make an attempt at an answer and then, if you want further details, I think we should provide you with a note. The important point for us is that NINos (national insurance numbers) are an internal reference number that lets us link an individual with their social security, or their child support, or their tax or their contribution record. It is not proof of identity, and it is not supposed to be proof that you are entitled to work. The interviewing process that we go through is basically about identity fraud. It is to ensure you are who you say you are. It is not supposed to provide a rigorous check on immigration status. There can be quite legitimate reasons why you might require a NINo even if you are not entitled to work in this country. If we do become, or if Jobcentre Plus, who do the NINo allocation process, do become of right to work or immigration irregularities - if it becomes obvious that somebody is not entitled to work where there is good grounds for them believing they are not entitled to work and it is pretty clear that the purpose of their applying for NINo is because they are going to work - then we do report that to the appropriate authorities; but it is important to recognise that NINos are not just about the right to work and that is not what they are there for. Q802 Gwyn Prosser: I take the point that it is not your direct department, but I would think most people would think it would be a pretty basic question to ask (immigration status and the right to work) even if it is just for information rather than a debar? Mr Portes: It would be a major change in the purpose of NINos and in the way the process went. If you were to say that issuing a NINo is a certification, in some sense, that Jobcentre Plus and the Government has checked this person for not only their identity but their immigration status and their right to work and that that maybe confers on them the right to work, that would be a pretty major change in the process that we do. I am not saying that it would be impossible, but it would be a significant policy change. Q803 Chairman: Without pretending that it gives someone the right to work, it surely must be the case that some employers would assume that, if somebody turns up having got a national insurance number, it is a pretty clear indication that they were entitled to work? Mr Quinault: My understanding is that they are not able to rely simply on the fact that they have a NINo. Chairman: Given that we know there is very little enforcement, it might be sensible not to issue national insurance numbers to people who are not legally in the country, just by checking against the records. Q804 Mr Winnick: Has that thought never occurred to you? Mr Portes: As a proposal, it certainly is something that has occurred to us. As I say, it would be a significant policy change and a significant change to the process as we currently have it. Mr Winnick: Millions of people in this country would think it the most sensible thing. Q805 Gwyn Prosser: Just listening to this discussion here, my feeling is that this would be something that will go into our report. Have you got anything to tell us now to detract us from that? Mr Portes: You have to recognise what you would be asking Jobcentre Plus. At the moment the job of the Jobcentre Plus person interviewing somebody for a NINo is primarily about me assuring myself that this person is James Quinault, that he has some proof and there are a number of different documents he could show as proof that he is the person he claim to be. It is not about me ascertaining whether he is legally in the country and, if so, whether he has the right order. Our staff are not trained in Home Office procedures; they would not be able to simply look at a passport and say, "Oh well, you have overstayed your visa. Surely I cannot issue you with a NINo." Q806 Chairman: They would be able to check on a computer, would they not? They would be able to put the name into a computer which Mr Quinault runs and be able to say, "This person has overstayed their visitor's visa." That is all we are suggesting Mr Winnick: It is called joined up government. Bob Russell: I think this question should be addressed to government ministers in the relevant departments. Q807 Chairman: That is on the list. Mr Quinault: The down side, I would point out, is that if you are relying solely on the NINo and the checks carried out by the DWP, the right to work is only as good as those checks, and, as Jonathan has said, at the moment Jobcentre Plus staff are not trained to carry out immigration controls. Chairman: We will follow this up with ministers, but I think we are struggling to understand that if somebody turns up with a passport with their name on it, probably the one that they applied for their student's visa with, it is impossible for DWP staff to check with the immigration nationality computer to see whether that person is an overstayer before issuing them with a national insurance number. We may misunderstand the technical complexities of doing that, but I think that is something we will want to pursue further on in the inquiry. Q808 Mr Browne: What proportion of people are we looking at? The overwhelming majority will just be standard cases where this will not apply. If it is only 3-4% they could be put into a separate pool for closer inspection while you plough on with the 96-97% of cases that do not need to be looked at so closely. Mr Portes: In terms of numbers, I think we issue in the order of two to three hundred thousand NINos a year to foreign nationals; so that sort of number we would be talking about. Chairman: According to the PQ I had answered recently, you run immigration checks on less than 2,000 of those. I believe you will find that is correct. We are going to have to move on. Can I thank you both very much indeed. Witnesses: Mr Dave Roberts, Director, Enforcement and Removals, IND, gave evidence. Q809 Chairman: Good morning Mr Roberts. Thank you very much for joining us. Before I ask Mr Winnick to start the questioning, perhaps you could formally introduce yourselves for the Committee. Mr Roberts: Good morning, Chairman. I am Dave Roberts, I am the Director in the Enforcement and Removals Directorate within IND. Chairman: I might say to members at the outset that the officials who will be dealing with the foreign prisoners issue are in front of the Committee next week; so for clarification for the press as well we will concentrate this morning on other aspects of Mr Roberts' responsibilities and duties. Q810 Mr Winnick: Mr Roberts, are you and your colleagues in the section satisfied over the removal of those who have no right to be in the United Kingdom? Mr Roberts: I was listening to the evidence and the comments from members of the Committee about an acceptance, that there is a complete lack of enforcement activity, and I would like to challenge that with a few facts really. In the last 12 months we have operated around three and a half thousand targeted visits to employers, we are working really closely with a number of partners, both within the joint workforce pilot that we are running in the West Midlands, we are also working closely with the Gang Masters Licensing Authority set out to control gang master activity in agriculture and in the shell-fish industry, we are able to share data and have signed protocols with organisations like Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs and in the last year we removed from the UK over 1,000 individuals - these are not failed asylum seekers, these are immigration offenders - which was in excess of the number that we had in our business plan to target; so, yes, I think that is a significant enforcement effort. Q811 Mr Winnick: In the last point you have made you are saying, "Yes", to my question, are you? Mr Roberts: The question was am I satisfied. Q812 Mr Winnick: Can I remind you what my question was? I asked you whether you and your colleagues in the section are satisfied that action is being taken regarding those people who have no right to be here being removed. Mr Roberts: Yes, I am satisfied, Mr Winnick, that the target that was set for us last year to remove immigration offenders who are not failed asylum seekers was not only met but was exceeded; so to that extent I am satisfied. Q813 Mr Winnick: The answer is, "Yes", then. Of course, we will again be pursuing such matters with ministers; that goes without saying. We understand, as we would have understood from day one, the difference between you in your position and other senior civil servants with ministerial responsibility, but you are here to give evidence and I ask you the questions accordingly. Mr Roberts, when we had evidence from Mr Justice Hodge, the Chief Adjudicator. He was very critical about the failure to remove those who had no right to be in the United Kingdom, and he said an official removal system would be great. I quote what he said as well directly. Mr Justice Hodge said: "It must be right that if you are likely to be sent home, if you are wrongly here and you are discovered to be here wrongly, then the incentive to come here in anything other than a rightful way is reduced." Throughout this inquiry we have heard, time and again, that efforts being made to apply immigration control do not really work it and have become somewhat of a mockery because people are staying here when they should be removed. What is the greatest difficulty in ensuring that those who have gone through the system of lodging an appeal being refused, all that has been exhausted, yet continue to stay in the United Kingdom? Why are they not being removed? Mr Roberts: Can I say, there is a real perception issue here and an issue of public confidence, which I recognise only too well. Clearly, if we are to target individuals whose leave may have expired, for example, then we would need a very different system of internal immigration control than we have at the moment, and targeting individuals in order to ensure that they are removed is not, I believe, an effective enforcement strategy. What we need to have is a very clear set of priorities which are ranked, if you like, in terms of an understanding of the harm that people who are here unlawfully cause the UK and target our resources accordingly. What I would argue is that, in terms of our targeted resources, we have a number of competing priorities which the Committee are very familiar with. We have a priority to remove failed asylum seekers. That is given us quite properly by ministers as a requirement. It would be quite wrong to say that was our only focus, which was why I explained in my opening remarks how we were doing in relation to non-asylum removals. I do not think the answer is to create an expectation that an adequate enforcement strategy is to pursue individuals at individual level. We need targeted operations, perhaps high profile, we need targeted prosecutions, and, as I think the Committee were recognising in the last session, our ability to prosecute under existing legislation has been very limited, which is why we are taking powers in the new Immigration Asylum and Nationality Act to come up with a civil penalty which requires employers who are not criminally inclined but just rather complacent in terms of the arrangements they have to take more care about who they take on board. Q814 Mr Winnick: With the greatest of respect, and I am sorry to interrupt you, what I am asking you is relatively simple and, if it is not, I will have to put it in some other way. It is not necessarily the rogue employers but people staying in this country whose appeals have been dismissed where there is no further right of appeal to say here, and yet they continue to stay in the United Kingdom. I am asking you why are not greater efforts made to remove them according to law? Mr Roberts: I think I have just explained, Mr Winnick, that we are making huge efforts to remove them but not on the basis of tracing individuals. We do remove people who are here unlawfully, and we do so successfully. If you are asking me to list the difficulties around securing removals, they are, I think, quite well understood in terms removing failed asylum seekers, for example, and there are issues around documentation and there are issues about governments receiving back nationals without the proper documentation, and these are at least two reasons why removing people from the UK is not as straightforward as colleagues might think. Q815 Mr Winnick: How many people would you estimate at the moment to be here illegally in the United Kingdom? Mr Roberts: I have not the faintest idea, although I am aware of the research that suggests around 400,000. Q816 Mr Winnick: A Home Office study gave a figure of 430,000 people here illegally in 2001. Would you say that has increased or decreased? Mr Roberts: My personal and professional judgment is that that figure will have included nationalities who are now part of the EU. In other words, the accession states. In my judgment, if we look at how people come here illegally, they come either clandestinely, by which I mean they conceal themselves in order to by-pass our border controls. I know from personal experience the effort that has gone into securing our borders in relation to Calais. Mr Prosser knows, as well as I do, if not better, the efforts that have gone into securing that particular link. In terms of the way that people are issued with visas, I think you have heard evidence from UK Visas about the way they are now risk assessing the visas that they issue, and if that risk assessment is effective, then visas will be issued to people who are entitled to them, who will comply with them. My final point is that every visitor to the country who does not require a visa is examined on arrival by an immigration officer and satisfies that officer that he or she is intending to stay for a visit. If you are asking my personal view, I think, for those reasons, the numbers here unlawfully are likely to be less. If I am wrong, then those numbers represent, I understand, 0.7% of our population, set against an illegal cohort in the US, which I believe to be closer to 7% or 8%, as just some kind of comparison of the risks that we are carrying. Q817 Mr Winnick: Would you accept, Mr Roberts, that it is important that there should be public confidence in the ability of the Home Office to deal effectively with people who have no right to be here but continue to be here? Mr Roberts: I think that is the biggest challenge. Not having public confidence and allowing perceptions of a lack of enforcement, I think, is a huge challenge for us that we need to address. Q818 Mr Winnick: Though, of course, you are not a politician, do you accept, nevertheless, that there are serious political risks if there is a lack of confidence, a serious lack of confidence, in the ability of the authorities, namely, the Home Office, to deal with the matter that we are now dealing with? Mr Roberts: I think the lack of confidence represents to me as a civil servant a serious risk, and I am sure ministers would agree it represents for them a political risk as well. Q819 Mr Winnick: Can I ask you one or two detailed questions, which I understand you have been given notice of. Can you give any figure of the number of people coming to the United Kingdom released after questioning at ports without any reporting requirements? Mr Roberts: I cannot give you those details. I do apologise. I was given notice, but in the time available I was not able to find the answer. If I could let the Committee have a note I would be grateful. Q820 Mr Winnick: Will you be in a position to write to us within a very short period? Mr Roberts: Of course. If that information is available, I will make sure the Committee gets it. Q821 Mr Winnick: Are you in a position to tell us today the number of people who do not comply with reporting requirements who are obviously asked to do so but simply ignore instructions? Mr Roberts: Compliance issues around reporting is an interesting question for us. Q822 Mr Winnick: It is an interesting question for us as well. Mr Roberts: Can I give you a few headline figures? We have over 900,000 reporting events - that is not people reporting, that is reporting events - and that applies to, I believe, just under 50,000 individuals. We do watch compliance rates and we do so specifically, as we have applied a different reporting regime to those who are reporting. These are primarily asylum seekers, Mr Winnick, who are reporting, rather than non-asylum seekers. I need to make that point. We have a technological fix to reporting, which is the swiping of the asylum registration card which then records the event and, if a person does not report, there is an automatic link to the payment of benefits that the National Asylum Support Service give. In relation to that pilot, compliance rates, although the pilot is a small one, are around about 90%. I would not want to suggest to the Committee that that level of compliance will continue as the numbers who are subject to this reporting regime grow, but that is our current experience. Q823 Chairman: Are we right to conclude by your lack of an answer to Mr Winnick's questions, that if you take the generality of those subject to reporting requirements, which, as I understand it, may include some people who are not receiving benefit because they have exhausted their appeal procedures, you do not know how many of those are not complying with reporting requirements? Mr Roberts: No. Those that are part of the technological pilot---- Q824 Chairman: No, I am talking about the rest. The technological requirement is a pilot. There have for a number of years been a number of people, we do not know how many, but you are going to tell us, are subject to reporting requirements. What the Committee would like to know is how many of those people do not comply? Mr Roberts: I cannot answer that question in the direct way you ask it. I can only answer it in relation to the technological pilot that I referred to. Q825 Chairman: Can you shed any light as to why IND, which issues the reporting requirement, has not previously thought it was worth monitoring the number of people who do not comply? Mr Roberts: I did not say that we did not, I just said I could not answer today. Q826 Chairman: We may get the figures? Mr Roberts: If I could again ask to give you a note on that. Compliance rates are obviously dependent hugely on expectations about what is going to happen, and the way that we monitor contact with people who are not in detention is through a range of actions, the physical reporting, and we are also using electronic monitoring, which includes tagging and phone recognition. What we need to do is manage the risk as people go through a process, so at the point where they may feel obliged to drop out of contract, i.e. when a decision has gone against them, and we have got the most effective contact management regime in place. Q827 Mr Winnick: What about the number of people sent letters from the Home Office saying they must leave compared with the number of those who are actually removed? That is a simple question, is it not? Mr Roberts: I was a simple question. We simply do not keep that information. Q828 Mr Winnick: You do not keep such information? Mr Roberts: In terms of the number of letters sent to people who have been refused permission to stay here. I simply was not able to get that information. Q829 Chairman: You must know how many people have been told they should leave the country. Mr Roberts: I do not have that information, Chairman. Q830 Mr Winnick: This seems a mockery of the immigration control system. You are saying, in effect, that people are sent letters saying they must leave, you have no knowledge of the numbers and certainly no information you can give us today compared to those who received such letters and those who actually leave the country? Mr Roberts: I can understand the Committee's frustration here, but monitoring---- Q831 Mr Winnick: There is public frustration? Mr Roberts: And the public's frustration. I understand that. In terms of monitoring people, whether they are in the country or out, we do not, as the Committee knows, record people leaving the country and have not done so for a considerable period of time. If the Committee is looking to a system by which we monitor people's arrival and whether or not they then comply with the terms of their arrival, which I think is in part the issue, then I would refer the Committee to the developments around our electronic borders where the intention, as I understand it, is to have an electronic means by which we can match this kind of data. We do not have that in a global sense today, although increasingly e-borders does give us access to embarkation data of that considerable magnitude. Already there are, I think, between seven to nine million records available to us for that data matching, although I might want to check my figures before I put those forward formally. Q832 Mr Winnick: Are you in a position to tell us about the number of people who are not removed when all their appeal mechanism processes are exhausted? Mr Roberts: I have not got that figure. I think it goes to the question around how many people are here illegally. I do not know how many of those people may have left the country quite voluntarily, and we do not, as I said, track individual cases. I do not think that tracking individual cases at the level that you suggest by your question is an effective enforcement strategy in relation (1) to the resources we currently have available and (2) frankly in the internal controls that the UK operates. We have powers, quite properly, to deal with people who are here unlawfully, and I do not think it is an effective strategy to be pursuing individuals. I think we need something more sophisticated. Q833 Mr Winnick: You have got me there, I must confess. I am a simple person and it seems to me if X has no right to be in the United Kingdom then, inevitably, the question is asked why is not X removed? That is an individual case to my simple mind. Mr Roberts: Yes, and there was a time quite a few years ago when I was an immigration officer where we knocked on lots of doors following up lots of individual cases, and it came as no surprise that none of those individuals were at the addresses we had for them. What we need is a far more sophisticated intelligence-led approach to this. If you have overstayed and you are here unlawfully and you are working illegally, then we have quite specific strategies in relation to illegal working operations to find you in that environment. I simply cannot accept tracing people as individuals, unless, of course, the risks they present are so huge that you need to do that, individuals, for example, who might present a threat to national security would reach that level of threshold, and, yes, of course it would be right to use whatever capability you had to trace them at an individual level, but for somebody who has overstayed tracing them at individual level I do not think is an effective strategy. Q834 Mr Winnick: Perhaps that explains the position we are in at the moment. Presumably the last detailed question is you will not be able to tell us the number of people who are refused bail but then walk free from the tribunal, because no-one is there to take them back to detention? Mr Roberts: The question is clear enough. A person who applies for adjudicator's bail who is refused bail and that individual, it is implied from the question, is physically at the hearing to have that bail application heard. Q835 Mr Winnick: Precisely. Mr Roberts: Although I am not sure that is the norm, but I may be wrong on that. I think the norm is to hear a bail application on paper. Q836 Mr Winnick: Where that application is refused, the question I am asking you is, what number of people in such circumstances just walk free and are not taken into detention? Mr Roberts: I am not aware of cases, but you would assume, and may be the assumption is wrong, that somebody who had been refused bail is taken back into detention, and we would have a contractor there to do exactly that if they had been escorted to the bail hearing in person. Q837 Mr Winnick: You were given notice of that question. Some of your colleagues behind you seem surprised by it. I think you are being given a note. Can I finally ask you, do you feel that, as a result of the lack of public confidence in the immigration control system and the questions which have been asked of you today, in the next 12 months there is going to be a greater effort to try and deal effectively with what is clearly of much concern to the general public? Mr Roberts: We have set out quite clearly in enforcement and in removal terms what we are going to do over the next 12 mounts. There is a business and delivery plan which sets that out clearly, and we still have to maintain our removals in relation to failed asylum seekers. We have set ourselves a target in relation to non-failed asylum seekers and removals and we are working towards, something I mentioned earlier, a strategy to deal with the amount of harm that people who remain illegally cause us, whether that is an economic harm, a reputational harm or, indeed, a criminal harm. Over the next 12 months I would be very confident that that harm reduction agenda takes more prominence. Q838 Mr Winnick: You will be writing to us on the questions that you could not answer today? Mr Roberts: Yes. Those behind me have said that a person is escorted to and from a court hearing, if that answers the question about people simply walking away from bail hearings. That should not happen. Q839 Mr Winnick: It should not happen but it probably does happen? Mr Roberts: I am not aware of it, Mr Winnick. Q840 Chairman: You have raised the issue in that previous conversation about people who are no longer where they said they were when you were last in touch with them. What access do you have to other departments' records, national insurance, child benefit and so on, in order to track down people who have not told you where they have moved but may have told other authorities? Mr Roberts: We have protocols recently agreed with HM Revenue and Customs and we have statutory gateways with other government departments, including the Department for Work and Pensions, so we have access to other government department records. Q841 Chairman: Are those now in active use? Mr Roberts: Yes, we have an intelligence capability with enforcement and removals that enables us to track individuals in the way that you would describe by checking with these other government departments if, as a tactical priority, tracking that individual makes sense. Q842 Chairman: How often do you use it? Mr Roberts: I do not know. Q843 Chairman: Extensively? Mr Roberts: Yes, it is in regular use. Can I perhaps give a bit of context? Obviously, if we are going to mount an operation, which means we have to make an arrest, for example, in the community, that has to be intelligence-led. Part of that intelligence-led work is to look at the impact on the community of that activity as well as the risks around any such operation. Each operation visit has a number of checks made in order to build up an intelligence profile, and that would include the kind of checks that you have just described; so it would happen almost before every operational visit and we did over three and a half thousand operational visits to employers last year. Q844 Chairman: That is employers, but I am actually talking about tracking individuals. Somebody has come in, they are a failed asylum seeker, because that is where you are concentrating your efforts, they have been through the procedures, they have lost their appeal, they have been refused the right to take the case legally any further, they have been sent a letter saying they have to leave the country, you now have to report them. Are you regularly using other government department information to track those individuals that you then lose track of? Mr Roberts: I have already said that tracking individuals at the level of individuals is not a strategy that I favour. Q845 Chairman: Including with asylum seekers. Mr Roberts: Yes, including with asylum seekers. Q846 Chairman: The problem I have got, Mr Roberts, is that some time, if not this week, next week will contact my constituency office saying, "I have lost my appeal, I have got a letter from the Home Office saying I have to leave the country. What will happen now?" I get the impression that the correct answer for me to give is, "Not very much. They do not track individuals. I would not worry about it." Mr Roberts: We do a lot of operations that are targeted at where people might be working. We do follow up individual cases, particularly as part of a reporting regime. I do not know about your particular case, Chairman, but if this person---- I know it is hypothetical. Chairman: In certain areas it is not an uncommon occurrence to have people coming genuinely for advice and often feeling they have had a wrong decision, or whatever, so I am not criticising the individuals, but they are coming for advice, but it does sound as though the advice I should give them is that no-one is tracking them. Q847 Mr Winnick: People are made up of individuals, so it is individual cases. Mr Roberts: I understand that, and if the Committee concludes that we should be tracking individuals as part of its inquiry, then that presents a series of challenges for us to act on that recommendation in relation to the internal controls that we have in the UK. Can I go back to contact management? You give the impression, Chairman, that there is no contact with this constituency member at all. He or she may be reporting. Q848 Chairman: Of course, I am only talking about the ones you lose track of. Mr Roberts: That is the contact. If they then drop out of the contact management structure, your question is could we access other government departments to trace them, and when we are looking for individuals we do. Q849 Chairman: Can I move us on. In fairness, we understand that for a number of countries there are difficulties in sending people back, issues around documentation, and we know there are readmission agreements with a number of countries, and we were told a little bit about them on the visit that I took part in with some members to India. The impression we got was that the readmission agreement with India was being used exclusively in relation to returning failed asylum seekers and not in relation to substantial numbers of other illegal immigrants of Indian origin. Is that the case and, if so, why is it being applied to asylum seekers only and not to other illegal migrants? Mr Roberts: I think it is probably the case that in terms of removing failed asylum seekers, the lack of documentation, be they a citizen of India or other countries, is a real barrier, as I think I gave in evidence to Mr Winnick's question. There is nothing to stop us using that access for returning people who are here unlawfully, who do not have documents, who have not claimed asylum. If I may so, the partnership that we have with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office now, developed over the last 12 or 18 months, really has given us an opportunity to leverage some of the most difficult countries that we are experiencing difficulties in returns to. I know the Public Accounts Committee took specific evidence on that and took it in writing because those civil servants then giving evidence did not want to name countries because that would cause problems in that bilateral relationship, but a huge amount of cross-government effort goes into securing agreements to return people to difficult countries. My job is to maximise those returns. Q850 Mr Benyon: A quick question so we understand our statistics. My information is that passenger arrivals, say, a group of five individuals, four dependents and one adult, will count as one, and asylum applications and decisions are counted by principal applicants and so exclude dependents, but removals all count as individuals. What I am concerned about is that we are going to get one story in terms of the number of people coming into the country and a different---. It is comparing apples with pears in terms of who you are actually deporting. Mr Roberts: It would be if we were counting dependents in terms of the intake figure and not counting them in terms of a removal figure or vice versa. If we are removing more people a month than are unfounded, which is the tipping target that has been commented on so frequently in the past few weeks, that would have to be validated and would have to come from statisticians rather than civil servants or ministers; so, yes, we must compare like with like. Q851 Mr Benyon: My concern is that we are not. The information this Committee has received is that the way people are calculated when they come into the country is an entirely different concept. Mr Roberts: Can I reassure you that you are wrong, that we are comparing like with like in relation to asylum intake and asylum removals. Q852 Mr Benyon: And the immigration intake? Mr Roberts: Outside of the asylum context? Q853 Mr Benyon: Yes? Mr Roberts: I believe so. It is a statistical question really. Q854 Chairman: Perhaps you could let us have a note for the record setting out clearly how the calculations are made. Mr Roberts: Certainly. Can I clarify, not in relation to asylum intake and removals but outside of the asylum context? Q855 Mr Benyon: I just want us to be absolutely clear that when somebody has gone through the whole process and they and anyone else are removed from the country that that counts the same number of heads as came in in the first place. Otherwise we are getting a completely distorted picture. You could be producing very good figures and the tipping point is actually reached a lot earlier because of the difference in the way people coming and going is calculated? Mr Roberts: I understand the Chairman wants to move me on, but I am absolutely clear that in relation the tipping point and the asylum unfounded intake and removals, we are comparing figures which are absolutely consistent. I will let you have a note if your question is about broader immigration and statistics. Chairman: Thank you. Mr Roberts, we were going to ask you about the encouragement to voluntary return, which is an important issue, but perhaps, because of the time, we can write to you and ask you to send us some more detail on that. I know the Government has done a number of things. Can we move on now to Mr Prosser to follow up on the tipping the balance. Q856 Gwyn Prosser: We have been talking about the tipping point and we understand that you were involved with the introduction of those targets. Although the targets themselves are being met and that can be looked upon as a success, critics say that it is detracting from non-asylum work. There has been a lot of publicity lately and, as the Chairman has said, we will be looking at those specific matters about foreign prisoners in the future, but is it right, in your view, that there has been a serious detraction from non-asylum work on illegal immigrants and overstayers, etcetera due to that policy? Mr Roberts: Again, I understand the point of view; I do not agree with it. Having said that, the tipping point has been a priority and we have been quite specific in tasking our operational capability that the priority has to be around tipping, but that is not to the exclusion of all other immigration offences. I have already referred to the removal of over a thousand immigration offenders a month. The target that we had for the last financial year of removing 10,000 was, I think, met in January, and I think the final figure for the financial year is 12,500 immigration offenders removed on top of the numbers who have been removed who are failed asylum seekers. A lot of illegal working activity that I have mentioned, a lot of co-operation with the police. I can name, for example, teams of immigration officers supporting the counter-terrorist agenda, the back-on-back gun crime agenda, Operation Trident and supporting the Metropolitan Police in terms of its criminal investigations into organised crime committed around immigration agenda and serious organised crime, which, of course, is now the responsibility of the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, but we support an operation in London, which is known as Maxim, where the immigration service supports police officers in criminally investigating and charging those who are dealing in organised crime. Q857 Gwyn Prosser: You have provided the Committee with lots of facts and figures about illegal working and enforcements. For instance, you have said that 2,850 operations against illegal work took place last year in 2005, but there were only 293 successful prosecutions, 10% or so. Why is there such a gap between the number of enforcements and the number of prosecutions? Mr Roberts: Prosecutions is a very resource-intensive response to a threat, is not it? In order to prosecute an individual it requires a huge investment in the investigation and taking that case to court. I think that, frankly, our ability to prosecute for section 8 offences, offences in relation to illegal working, is a sledge hammer to crack a walnut, because not every employer, for example, is committing a crime, and, if you recall the civil penalties that went onto lorry drivers in order to enable us to incentivise a compliance with the security that had to apply to transport operators so they were not bringing in people in backs of lorries because they had not taken the time to check, for example, that the seal was intact or that they had parked in a safe environment, I do believe that the civil penalties in relation to employers will be an effective sanction, although there are regulations on which we must be consulting, and the fine of up to £2,000 for every illegal employer strikes me as being an alternative sanction to the prosecution sanction. Q858 Gwyn Prosser: Can you tell us what happened to all of those people who were investigated but not prosecuted? Mr Roberts: I do have some figures. They may well be the figures that I put in front of you. Q859 Gwyn Prosser: Not just the figures, but what happened to them? Were they just allowed to continue their operations? Mr Roberts: Sorry, who were not prosecuted? Q860 Gwyn Prosser: Yes. Mr Roberts: In terms of investigations that we mounted but chose not to prosecute, and by "operations" you mean restaurants stay open, factories still operate. There is no power in legislation for the Immigration Department to close down factories or restaurants; so, yes, they will operate, assuming they have got the staff to operate. If we have taken people who are working illegally from a restaurant, it may be that they are not able to operate, but we would not be closing them down and we do not have the powers in law to do that. Q861 Chairman: You have given us figures saying that 259 people went to jail last year as a result of these enforcement actions. Those are all employers, are they? Mr Roberts: Not necessarily. It may be prosecutions for other offences. We have mounted prosecutions, for example, in terms of people who have been abusing our marriage rules. I would not be able to say how many of those 259 were employers, but, again, if you want that information, Chairman, I will get it for you. Q862 Chairman: It would be very helpful for the Committee to be clear whether we are talking about enforcement action against employers or whether it is enforcement action against individual illegal workers or people who have breached the immigration laws in other ways. Mr Roberts: Of course, I will give you that information. They will be prosecutions against organised criminals rather than individuals, I am sure. For example, a person who may have set up an organised racket in relation to marriage, but I will get you those. Chairman: If you could give us a breakdown of the offences, that would be very helpful. Q863 Bob Russell: Can I come in on the successful prosecutions. Was there ever an audit made, and I am talking about the food processing chain here, as to where the products of the companies - where there were successful prosecutions carried out - ended up? Mr Roberts: I do not know the answer to that. Is implied in that question the co-operation from, say, supermarkets? You touched on that in your earlier session. Q864 Bob Russell: I did, indeed, because I cannot believe that board rooms of the major supermarket chains in this country are oblivious as to where their food stocks are coming from, the routes they are taking and the possibility that illegal labour is being used to process that food chain. I just wondered whether you had done any audits on those 293 successful prosecutions to see where the food product ended up? Mr Roberts: I do not think we have, but on the point about co-operation from major supermarkets, I am very confident that in relation certainly to the Gang Masters Licensing Authority there are huge levels of co-operation, and also in Forum generally to discuss illegal working they are participating effectively. Q865 Gwyn Prosser: Are you in a position to give us your assessments of the success or otherwise of the joint workforce enforcement pilot? You will have heard Mark Boleat's criticism of the Treasury, of tax officials failing to enforce any sort of actions. What is your view on that? Mr Roberts: I do not have a personal or professional view on the issue of tax evasion, very much an issue for Her Majesty's Customs and Revenue. I can, however, advise the Committee that the joint workplace enforcement pilot has been operated since September and it has drawn together the Immigration Service and HM Revenue and Customs, DWP, DTI, the Health and Safety Executive and the Gang Masters Licensing Authority - that it is a pilot - that it is looking to disrupt business, businesses that are exploiting the illegal migrant labour market. We are in the process of evaluating progress, not in a formal evaluation. We have achieved protocol agreements. I mentioned the one earlier with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, intelligence sharing and handling, and it goes on, and I think about four days ago was the first prosecution from this unit where an employer was fined, I think, some £8,000 for illegal activity. I would be more than happy to share with the Committee more details of the progress in a note, if that would be helpful. Chairman: Good. Mr Roberts, thank you very much indeed. |