Immigration Control

Absolutely right. I am in roughly the same position: I guess that half—it might even be more—of the casework coming to my office is about immigration and asylum. Frequently, it is solicitors and advisers who have told people to come to us. They also tell people, and people get the idea, that we can short-cut the processes and jump people up the queue. We cannot, and it would be wrong if we could. Somebody coming to us should not be a reason for pulling them out of the queue. We ought to deal with cases that are going fundamentally wrong, rather than with cases that sit at the end of a queue, taking months to receive any answers, as we so often do. The Government’s response to the report suggests better systems for dealing with correspondence and for replying to letters from Members. That is fine, but we need much more than better correspondence systems. We need better and faster decision making. That is the root of the problem. It is not that I do not receive a letter for a few weeks, but that a case has been sitting around for six months and nothing has been done about it. I agree with the report’s point that one effect of IND targets is that the easy cases are dealt with and the more complicated cases—exactly the sort that people are likely to come to us about—end up sitting at the bottom of the pile. People seem almost frightened to take a decision about a complicated case, and all that does is generate more work for us, because claimants and their representatives keep coming to us again and again. The problem must be dealt with. I suspect that I am in a minority on the subject of illegal working and over-stayers. If we go for a points scheme and do nothing about illegal working, we are heading for trouble. I have no problem whatever with taking action against employers who knowingly and deliberately employ people who are in this country illegally. I remember saying in Committee on an asylum and immigration Bill several years ago that we ought to consider those employers’ payment of tax and VAT, because I bet my life that some do not file proper VAT returns, or pay national insurance or tax as they should. I recall reminding one of the Minister’s predecessors that Al Capone went to jail for tax evasion. There are always different ways of getting people who play the system. I am concerned about what happens to the individuals who work in this country illegally. The point has been made that many entered this country legally through various routes, and that their numbers are large. Obviously, we do not know exactly how many people are here, but the estimates go up to 500,000. Many have effectively settled here, they have families and they engage in family and community life, and some sections of the economy, particularly London, would be in serious trouble if they were to disappear overnight. However, their working here illegally leaves them wide open to exploitation, and it is impossible for them to enforce the normal rights of anybody at work. They dare not do so, because they would make themselves an easy target and lose their job. Further, if working conditions can be depressed, it has an effect on other people working in the same area, sector or company. The question is what do we do about the situation? If we are honest about the situation and about the number of people involved, we are not going to remove up to 500,000 people. But if that is not going to happen, what are we going to do? Are we going to address individual cases in a piecemeal fashion, or are we going to develop a systematic means of dealing with the situation? We ought to have the latter. We are heading for trouble if we introduce a points scheme that leaves an unskilled person who comes to this country with no route to stay here permanently, but do not deal with the people who are already here and working illegally. We must seriously consider a regularisation scheme. I do not suggest a blanket amnesty for everybody working here, because I am conscious of the argument that we do not want to create a pull factor.