Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

The implication of that is that I have any control whatever over the Home Office budget. However, I shall feed in that request because I understand the reasons behind it. I recognise fully that noble Lords opposite carry out much of their work without the benefit of being paid to do so and I pay full tribute to that. I acknowledge also that their work includes the purchase of materials. I am keen to ensure that employers know exactly what we are asking them to do. If they then do not do it, it will be plain that it is because their practices are not as good as they should be. It should not be because we have not made it clear what we are asking for. Our policy should be straightforward, easy to comply with and simple to understand. We do not expect employers to become experts in forged documents; that would be ridiculous and completely inappropriate. I would be very interested in Committee Members’ views on the draft code of practice, which we have sought to make simple. My argument against the amendment is that it in fact asks employers to take reasonable steps in order to take reasonable steps. We believe that through the code of practice we will provide enough detail to enable employers to comply easily without the bureaucracy that the noble Lord rightly raises as an issue, and without any sense of uncertainty, which would be equally damaging. We shall be working with employers to ensure that we can effectively fulfil our ambition in that respect. I have talked about criminality. There may even be circumstances where an employer knew that a person did not have the right permission to work but where, we believe, a civil penalty would be a better way of disposing of the issue. The Clause 21 offence is meant to deal with the most serious cases—those involving the deliberate trade in and use of illegal workers. We hope that with the civil and criminal offences we have described, we can capture and recognise the particular circumstances of employers and deal with them effectively.