Clause 107 - Notice
Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill
3:45 pm
Ms Rosie Winterton (Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department; Doncaster Central, Labour)
The hon. Member for Woking asked for more information about the mechanisms. The clause provides the Secretary of State with a legal mechanism to require employers and financial institutions to supply information using the powers in clauses 105 and 106. The clause also provides that requests for information will be made in the form of a written notice, and sets out the manner and minimum period in which recipients of a notice must respond.
Subsection (1) provides that a request for information under clauses 105 or 106 must be imposed by written notice. Subsection (1)(a) provides that the notice must specify the information required; subsection (1)(b) that it must specify the manner in which the information is to be provided; and subsection (1)(c) that it must state the period of time within which the information is to be provided.
Subsection (2) defines the period of time specified in the notice within which the recipient must respond. Subsection (2)(a) states that the period must begin with the date of receipt of the notice, and subsection (2)(b) states that it must be not less than 10 working days. Subsection (3) specifies the duties placed on the recipient of a notice. The recipient must provide the Secretary of State with the information specified in the notice, or a declaration that he does not have any of the information specified, or that he does not have the remainder if he can provide only part of it. Other parts of the clause relate to matters such as the definition of the ''working day''. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will not want me to go into the details of that.
We will consult publicly on the application of the powers in clauses 105 and 106 before they are implemented. We will certainly try to encourage voluntary compliance by employees and financial institutions wherever possible. The purpose of the proposed new information powers in clauses 105, 106 and 107 is to assist the Secretary of State to locate immigration offenders at large within the community, and to detect and prevent fraud of the national asylum support arrangements, which costs the UK taxpayer an estimated £60 million per annum. All hon. Members would recognise that it is important for us to do that. That fraud is not only a cost to the taxpayer, it undermines the position of people who are genuinely trying to seek asylum and become refugees.
Amendment No. 305 would require an employer or financial institution served with a notice requiring disclosure to provide the persons affected by the notice with a copy of any information supplied to the Secretary of State. That would alert the person concerned to the fact that they were under investigation, which the hon. Gentleman touched on, and would increase the risk of that person absconding or destroying evidence of offending. It would completely undermine the proposed policy. There is no point catching only the individual offender: we need to be able to find out how things have been organised so that we can take matters further. Whenever the protection of information applies, it is difficult to give that information immediately to the offender. Again, the data protection legislation applies.
Amendment No. 323 is very similar in intent to the lead amendment. They would both inhibit the Government's efforts to tackle illegal working and fraud of the NASS scheme. I hope that that explains more clearly why the information is necessary, and why it would not be helpful to pass it on to the person to whom it applies. I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his amendment.