Political philosopher David Owen (at the University of Southampton in the UK) posted about this topic on FB, and then kindly offered to draft something for the blog, since it seemed to me this is important information to get into circulation for UK academics.  Professor Owen's informative post is below the fold:

When academics employed at UK universities are invited to examine a PhD at another UK university, they are typically asked to provide their passport so that this other UK university can run a check on their right to work in the UK. This is, you might think, just pointless additional bureaucracy since the employing UK university has already run such a check as part of employing them. Confronted with this point, the other UK university will respond thus:

Why do we need to check eligibility of External Examiners right to work in the UK? The immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 requires all employers to make basic document checks on every person. Employers who employ illegal workers are liable to significant penalties. By making these checks the University can be sure that it will not break the law and only employs people who are legally permitted to work in the UK. We therefore have a statutory obligation to ensure that all our External Examiners have a legal right to work in the UK and undertake this type of work. These checks are now routine for all employers within the UK and apply to all those we engage irrespective of their nationality.

There are three things to note about this response.

The first is that employers aren’t legally required to make such checks if by this one means that they will be subject to penalties simply for failing to make them; rather the position is that if they don’t make such checks, they lose their legal defence should it turn out that they employed someone without the right to work (i.e., they would have no defence against application of penalties to them). University Human Resources department typically attempt to obscure and mislead on this point. If one pushes back hard enough – for example, by pointing out that one has been employed in the UK for thirty years – many universities will back down but some don’t – they would rather lose a well-qualified examiner.

The second is that although this policy was introduced under Labour in 2006, the push towards a policy of rigorous and inflexible application was part of the ‘hostile environment’ framework designed to integrate immigration law into every aspect of ordinary social and economic life. It turned every employer, landlord, healthcare provider, university, etc., into a branch of the border and immigration service. Apart from its invasive surveillance of social life, it is also responsible for the kind of injustice exemplified in the Windrush Scandal in which people who have a right to reside and work in the UK but were unable to prove this, were immediately treated as lacking this right and dismissed from their jobs and in some cases deported. What is shocking about UK universities – many of whom are, ironically enough, Universities of Sanctuary – is how eager they are to comply with this policy.

This is particularly shocking when we consider the third, and final, point. This imposition of the hostile environment policy is an artifact of UK universities choosing to treat external PhD examiners as their employees, rather than as self-employed consultants who are paid a fee for a defined piece of consultancy. This alternative policy is represented by the University of Cambridge:

External Examiners for all postgraduate level degrees fall under the 'self-employed' category, which does not require right to work checks to be conducted. Right to work checks are not required for internal examiners and assessors for postgraduate level courses.

How, then, should UK academics respond?

My own policy – made easy for me by being the privileged position of having UK citizenship in a way that it would not be for those who aren’t – is to refuse to comply with the demand to supply my passport for a ‘right to work’ inspection. If the university backs down (as many have), then I happily act as examiner. If they don’t, then I don’t. I do wish more people who share this privileged position would refuse to comply with this policy both because it is politically objectionable and because, if more did so, it would push more universities to take the Cambridge route and, in turn, put pressure on a Labour government that ought to be abolishing this policy.