Clause 112 - Assisting Unlawful Immigration, &c.
Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill
4:00 pm
Ms Rosie Winterton (Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department; Doncaster Central, Labour)
This is obviously an important clause, which replaces section 25 of the 1971 Act with four new sections. The current section 25 makes it an offence knowingly to assist illegal entry to the UK or to help someone to obtain leave to remain in the UK illegally by means including deception. The first major change is that the first new section extends the offence
to encompass assisting someone to enter, travel within or remain in any European Union member state in breach of the laws of that state.
The facilitation of illegal entry—the hon. Gentleman has used that phrase—is increasingly the work of organised criminal gangs. Those gangs do not respect international boundaries, and new section 25 will enable the UK to participate in a joint approach to combating the crime on a European, rather than simply a national, basis. That is extremely important if we want to combat the problem effectively.
As the hon. Gentleman said, the second major change is that the maximum penalty for the reformulated and expanded offences is increased from 10 years' imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine to 14 years and/or an unlimited fine. Although the current maximum meets our European obligations, we made it clear that we consider such crimes particularly abhorrent and therefore want a higher maximum penalty. We believe that 14 years is appropriate.
The third change relates to harbouring an immigration offender. That is a separate offence under section 25(2) of the 1971 Act, but it will be subsumed in the new offence because it constitutes assisting someone to breach immigration laws by being in the UK when they have no right to be here.
Amendment No. 324 would limit the offence of facilitating illegal entry to cases where that is done ''for gain''. An exemption to protect people who facilitate such entry for motives other than gain is appropriate in the case of asylum claimants, but we do not believe that there is justification for assisting someone to enter the UK illegally. Such a breach of immigration law should be an offence, whether or not the motivation is profit. The amendment is not only undesirable in principle, but unworkable in practice.
Amendments Nos. 329 and 330 offer a choice of maximum penalty for facilitating illegal entry—two years or five. Only two years ago, the penalty for that offence was increased from seven years to 10 in response to comments from the judiciary that the former maximum was insufficient to deal with the most serious facilitations. Having taken those points into account and to show how seriously we take such activity, we propose 14 years as appropriate rather than 10. I hope that the hon. Gentleman withdraws his amendment.