Immigration Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-01
Topic: Immigration
Brian Paddick (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, Amendment 184, in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hamwee, concerns the power of immigration officers to examine the immigration status of those entering the UK. Clause 20(2) inserts the ability of the immigration officer to curtail existing leave to enter the UK. The amendment would replace the consideration of whether the leave "should be" curtailed, which implies an inappropriate degree of discretion, and substitute "is required to" be Also in this group is our opposition to Clause 21 standing part of the Bill. It seems disproportionate that immigration officers should have the power to search premises simply to establish whether an employer should be given a civil penalty for employing an illegal worker, or to establish whether a landlord should be given a civil penalty for leasing a property to a disqualified person. Immigration officers already have powers to search for evidence in relation to criminal offences related to these two activities. Surely it is only in the most serious cases, where a criminal prosecution would at least be being considered, that it would be appropriate for immigration officers to search premises in this way. It is rare for powers of search to be granted in connection with civil penalties in British law, and Clause 21 should not undermine such a principle We also oppose Clause 22 standing part of the Bill. This clause allows an immigration officer who is lawfully on premises to seize anything that he thinks may be evidence of any offence, under any legislation, if he thinks it necessary to prevent the evidence being concealed, lost, altered or destroyed. Initially, this appears a sensible approach, to obviate the need to call for police assistance when something is discovered that is not related to an immigration offence—for example, discovering what appear to be class A drugs Police officers receive extensive training in securing and preserving evidence, and in the questioning of suspects in relation to the discovery of evidence during searches. In addition to the need to carefully question the subject about the ownership of the items in question, since usually the owner of the premises denies that the item belongs to them, there is the question of whether photographic or forensic evidence is required in situ. I have been involved in searches of premises, and there have been many cases of police being involved in searches of premises where the very facts that the substance in question was on the premises and who it belonged to have been questioned subsequently in court. It is something of which the police have now had extensive experience, and they know how to handle these situations. I suggest that it would take a lot of training and experience for immigration officers to reach the level of expertise necessary to ensure that convictions subsequently take place. Either immigration officers will require extensive, and necessarily expensive, training in evidence preservation and the questioning of those suspected of non-immigration offences, or there is a real danger that valuable evidence will be lost in such cases There is also the question of what I might call false positives, when immigration officers seize items that they wrongly believe to be evidence of an offence and then pass them on to the police, placing a significant administrative burden on the police to process, secure and subsequently return the items to the owners. With significant cuts to police resources, the last thing the police need is for immigration officers to dump innocent items on them that they then have to deal with. We therefore believe that Clause 22 should not be part of the Bill. I beg to move.