Asylum and Immigration Act: Employers' Responsibilities (Hansard, 10 April 2001)

§ Lord Bassam of Brighton

Section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 (the 1996 Act) allows for the prosecution of employers who knowingly employ individuals without permission to work in the United Kingdom. A statutory defence against prosecution is available which requires that the employer obtains a copy of a document showing that the individual is entitled to take work.

There were concerns that, in seeking to avail themselves of this defence, employers were unlawfully discriminating by making more checks on job applicants than the defence in Section 8 requires or by targeting checks on racial grounds. That is why we undertook, in the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, to issue a code of practice to employers on how to avoid racial discrimination when seeking to apply the defence.

In the light of that commitment, the Government have prepared a code of practice that sets out the responsibilities of employers under the Race Relations Act 1976 and the 1996 Act and describes how employers can use the statutory defence in a way that avoids racial discrimination. In preparing the draft code of practice and summary, we consulted the Commission for Racial Equality, the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland and a number of other organisations.

We propose that this code of practice should come into force on 2 May. We plan to distribute copies to interested organisations, together with a summary, which should ensure that all employers can easily understand their responsibilities in avoiding racial discrimination. A copy of the code of practice has been placed in the Library.