Clause 101 - Inland Revenue
Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill
3:00 pm
Ms Angela Eagle (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Wallasey, Labour)
I hope that by referring to the Government amendments, I shall be able to satisfy the hon. Gentleman that they provide the clarification he seeks. His amendment would, unintentionally, widen the gateway to the Inland Revenue to include people who we would not want to include, which given the tenor of our recent debate I suspect is not his intention.
The hon. Gentleman's amendment would enable the Inland Revenue to disclose information about people who had committed an immigration offence but had subsequently been granted leave to remain and were working legally. We do not want to capture those people. The Government amendments rectify a technical defect in the clause, which is designed to enable the Inland Revenue to disclose information from its records to the Secretary of State to establish the whereabouts of suspected immigration offenders. That is the same as the previous clause, but applies to the Inland Revenue rather than local authorities.
The gateway will operate when the Secretary of State reasonably suspects that a person is in the United Kingdom without leave and does not have permission to work, or that a person who has leave to enter or remain under temporary admission has undertaken employment in breach of their conditions. As with other immigration offences, the usual sanction for illegal working is removal from the United Kingdom rather than prosecution. That means that the Inland Revenue would not be able to disclose information to the Secretary of State using other provisions, such as the information gateway in section 19 of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001.
Amendment No. 294 replaces subsection (1)(b) to make it clear that the Inland Revenue may disclose information in respect of persons whom the Secretary of State reasonably suspects do not have leave to enter or remain and who do not have permission to work. If the amendment were not made, we could not ensure that the Inland Revenue could disclose information about illegal entrants working in the UK who have yet to be subject to a restriction prohibiting them from taking employment. That would be at odds with the purpose of the clause. The hon. Gentleman has tried to put right the defect in the clause, but his proposal would turn the information gateway into a sort of M6, which is much wider than we require for the purposes that I have set out.