Clause 38 - Persons subject to immigration control
Tax Credits Bill
4:30 pm
Ms Dawn Primarolo (Paymaster General, HM Treasury; Bristol South, Labour)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for tabling the amendments, which seek to amend the Home Office legislation on the immigration status of certain people in this country. The Bill follows current practice with regard to Home Office requirements. Some people have a status whereby they are subject to immigration controls in the sense that they have
secured agreement to enter the UK for employment purposes, but on the condition that they do not have recourse to public funds. They are therefore excluded from working families tax credit. Clearly people who are here illegally are not subject to immigration controls. Bearing in mind that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is undertaking a review of asylum, instead of writing the current position into the Bill I have allowed that it should go into regulations. Consequently, if the review produces changes to the requirements placed on those who are subject to immigration and asylum rules we will be able to react strongly.
I shall give an example of an area of concern that I hope to address in the regulations. A mother and her children are UK residents, hold UK passports and could by no stretch of the imagination be subject to immigration controls. They may be in receipt of working families tax credit or the new tax credit. A partner who is subject to immigration controls joins the household. What then happens to the family? Why should they come within immigration controls? The solution that I am considering—although I shall have to take further advice from colleagues in the Home Office—is to protect the position of the mother and children because had she remained as a single parent household her claim would have proceeded. However, that is a matter for regulations.
I hope that my hon. Friend accepts that I am trying to be as sensitive as I can to the issues without venturing into policy that is not within my remit. I think that there have been some bad experiences around the type of scenario that I have described, which I hope that I will be able to address in regulations. I hope that my hon. Friend can accept my assurances and withdraw her amendment. Unfortunately, if she does not, I shall have to ask her to vote against it with the rest of our hon. Friends.