Clause 107 - Notice
Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill
3:39 pm
Mr Humfrey Malins (Woking, Conservative)
Clauses 105 and 106 give the Secretary of State the power to require certain people, including employers and banks, to provide financial information about a person who may be working for them. I understand the obvious need for such a power, but it raises the usual issues, because we do not want the requests to become a fishing expedition.
I appreciate the need for confidentiality. This is a probing amendment to ask the Government to give a fuller explanation of what will happen in practice when a notice is served on a bank, for example. My amendment provides that the person on whom the notice is served—it is likely to be a bank—must provide the Secretary of State and the person affected with the information specified. That is another way of saying, ''Is there an argument or not?'' When the bank or employer responds, they should be saying to the employee who is the subject of the inquiry, ''Look, I have had this request from the Secretary of State about your financial position. This is the information I am going to provide. We'd better check whether it's accurate, because I don't want there to be a mistake''. Normally, natural justice would require the person affected by the notice to see it, as well as the response to it.
If it is the Government's view that drawing the notice to the attention of the affected person would result in that person doing a bunk and not being accountable, I can see the purpose of the provision. I tabled the amendment as a peg on which to draw a little more information from the Government. They will know that the debate on whether the clause should stand part of the Bill needs to be approached sensitively rather than heavy-handedly.