House of Commons Hansard Debates for 27 Jan 1993

Mr. Bernie Grant : Is my hon. Friend aware of the debates that took place in the Committee considering the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Bill on the removal of visitors' right of appeal? When we did a trawl of practice in European countries, we found that Britain was the only country that had the right of visitors to appeal enshrined in law. In other countries, that right was on an ad hoc basis and in some did not exist at all. The Trevi group brought British standards down to the level of Belgium and other similar countries. That is an example of the lowest common denominator being applied, and if it can happen here, it can happen with other aspects of the Bill.

9 pm

Mr. Cohen : That is a good example. I pay tribute to the work done by my hon. Friend and others on the Committee in drawing out those matters. He is right to point out that the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Bill will get rid of the right of appeal, thereby bringing us down to the level of other European countries and introducing the principles of article 100c.

Tied up with the lowest common denominator argument is the point about immigration and asylum policy being conducted in secret. That is abhorrent. Already, officials in Ministers' private offices can interpret rules as they like, and Members of Parliament do not have

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much influence on that process. How much worse will that be if the decisions are taken by bureaucrats in Europe in secret?

Ministers will also make secret deals. Every now and then, when there are negotiations, perhaps over a subject that has nothing to do with immigration or asylum, deals will be struck in secret. One Minister will say to another, "You support us over an agricultural tariff and we will support you over the countries to go on visa lists." There is a grave risk that that will happen, although it would be scandalous if it did, because people's lives and rights--for example, to visits from their families, fiancees, husbands or wives--are at stake.

The argument of my Front-Bench spokesman and those in favour of Maastricht is that immigration and asylum procedures are so bad that we must get some change, and the change that is on offer comes from Europe. That is not the right approach. The procedures may be bad now, but I do not see why we should have to accept them as bad for ever, and enshrined in article 100c. Faceless European bureaucrats would have control over many of the principles in our asylum and immigration policy.

The treaty moves on from one clause to another--from article 100c, which refers to article K.9, which in turn refers to articles K.1(1) to (6). Let us look at those latter articles. What do they say that the bureaucrats will have control over? It is said that :

"Member states shall regard the following areas as matters of common interests :

asylum policy ;

rules governing the crossing by persons of the external borders of the Member States and the exercise of controls thereon ;

immigration policy and policy regarding nationals of third countries".

The whole list will come under European control. The linking of article 100c with articles K.1 to K.6 and K.9 will give the Community the power to take responsibility for asylum and immigration policy, which I regard as offensive and highly dangerous.

The deliberations by the ad hoc Trevi group on immigration were secret. My hon. Friends and I asked detailed questions, seeking to establish the decisions that were made, but Ministers repeatedly refused to answer.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Charles Wardle) : No, we did not

Mr. Cohen : Yes, they did. Ministers answered only sanitised questions tabled by Conservative Back Benchers, which allowed them to paint in broad-brush strokes a picture of the Trevi talks. We have never received detailed information on the decisions of that group. That abhorrent secrecy will continue, and the kind of procedure established by Trevi will be institutionalised by article 100c. The Minister said that the House might be able to debate a statutory instrument if there was a legislative change- -but if the interpretation or reinterpretation is that no legislative change will occur but only an administrative change, there will be no such debate. Some so-called administrative changes would be deemed by my right hon. and hon. Friends and me as fundamental--but no debate would be permitted in those circumstances.

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It may be that certain powers are lying dormant in that provision--particularly in article 100c(2), which states that a visa requirement may be introduced

"in the event of an emergency situation in a third country posing a threat of a sudden inflow of nationals".

Who is to interpret that--a bureaucrat, as an administrative matter? He could make all the changes he liked without a debate in the House, which would be quite wrong.

If there were a debate on a statutory instrument, it is likely that it would last only one and a half hours, and would take place early in the morning, when most right hon. and hon. Members would have gone home.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) would oppose the measure--as he has many others, with great honesty--because people would be thrown to the lions and be denied a proper asylum policy, and families would not be allowed to visit their relatives. The Minister would stand at the Dispatch Box and say, "We're not in the same situation as before. All the members of the EC have approved this policy--so even if we agreed with you, we could not go along with you." It would be goodbye to any realistic opposition to such measures.

Mr. Derek Enright (Hemsworth) : Can my hon. Friend explain why I heard an equally impassioned speech against articles 100c and K.9 during the French referendum, given by Jean-Marie Le Pen?

Mr. Cohen : I reject my hon. Friend's implication. I have no association with Le Pen and do not agree with him at all. I am totally opposed to his views.

Mr. Enright rose --

Mr. Cohen : No. I must tell my hon. Friend that many right-wing movements are building up in Europe, and they could end up having an important voice in the European Parliament. They might even take over some European Governments and have a say in British asylum and immigration policy. More dangerous than Le Pen's speeches now would be for him to be in a position to act because of the institutional changes that the treaty will make.

Mr. Spearing : We occasionally hear such questions during these debates and outside. Le Pen is anathema to me, as he is to my hon. Friend, both as a person and in his politics. But is it not conceivable that his reading of the treaty on this matter might coincide with that of the European Court?

Mr. Cohen : Everything that Le Pen stands for is anathema to me. I do not want to go into what he reads into the treaty. I need not go as far as France to find such people. There are people in this House who may vote in the same way, but for different reasons. Le Pen's racism is abhorrent to me.

We have heard some strange things about the European Court of Justice. Both Front-Bench spokesmen have been keen to say that it will not have a role in implementing human rights and giving rights to individuals. What an amazing thing for them to say.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield said that it may be involved in injustices. That was crushed by the Secretary of State, who said that it would not. He said that there would have to be unanimity before even member states could refer matters to the European Court. Certainly individuals will not be able to use the court if

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their families have been denied visits. That is disgraceful. For both Front-Bench spokesmen to suggest that that is an asset is appalling.

Article 100c introduces majority voting from 1 January 1996. The United Kingdom's present asylum and immigration policy is appalling. I have tabled an early-day motion on that. It is anti-human rights. But at least that policy could be changed by a future Labour Government. That would not be possible under article 100c. A future Labour Government could be out-voted by the other European Governments, and we would not be able to change the policy that is set in stone by this treaty.

A Labour Government with good humanitarian intentions could well be shackled by article 100c, unable to adopt a humane asylum policy. That is an amazing situation. I would have great sympathy for my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield as Home Secretary in those circumstances. He would have to apologise to the House for being unable to implement the policy he wanted in order to save lives, because he was prevented by article 100c. I would not want to see my hon. Friend or any Labour Home Secretary in that position. We have talked about a Bosnia-type situation. My hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield said that any one country could pull up the drawbridge. That is right, but under article 100c the whole of the EC could pull up the drawbridge. That could be done without any debate in the House. It could be done by the bureaucrats in the European Commission. None of the EC countries would let people in despite the life-threatening situations that they might face.

We would be stuck with institutions and procedures, shifting power to the EC, which have been set up by the Tories for their own narrow interests and view of immigration and asylum policy. I consider many of the Government's policies openly racist : some of the cases with which I have had to deal are clear examples of that. I do not want a future Labour Government to be stuck with quasi-racist policies with which they could not dispense because those policies had become a European institution.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) made a good point about majority voting. He said that, although policy could be adopted under article 100c, it would be immensely difficult to change it if it proved to be wrong. He is entirely right. It might be impossible, or almost impossible, to alter a decision that had been made for the wrong reason--perhaps in panic.

9.15 pm

Our nation has certain long-standing commitments to other countries in the Commonwealth. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) mentioned Jamaica ; others have referred to Hong Kong citizens. Those commitments could be cast aside by a majority vote. Certainly the Home Secretary gave no assurances about people's rights to enter this country, and to travel to other countries. The Commission could wipe out those commitments. Surely we should not allow that to happen without even a statement in the House. Article 100c is obnoxious, and it should be opposed. It shifts immigration and asylum policy to faceless bureaucrats in the EC. Its ratification would make it doubly difficult--indeed, virtually impossible--for my constituents to be visited by members of their families who

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live abroad. The Secretary of State made that clear. Relatives will have to meet all the visa requirements set up by the Commission ; even if they manage that, they will still have to face the problems of an immigration policy that--if the Government are given the free hand to which the Secretary of State referred--is likely to become even worse.

Especially obnoxious is the way in which asylum policy may put lives at risk. If the EC adopts the policy that we are discussing, along with a set of principles that cannot easily be challenged in Parliament, people will be forced to return to their own countries and face torture or death. They will be kept out of safe havens.

Mr. Bill Walker : The hon. Gentleman speaks regularly about human rights, and no one doubts his integrity. I have often wondered what would happen if South Africa were suddenly to find itself in economic chaos, and to experience the problems that can arise at times of change. Many people might want to come to the United Kingdom, where their roots lie because of the origins of their parents and grandparents. What would happen to them if the Community decided that they could not come here?

Mr. Livingstone : Does my hon. Friend agree that the hon. Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) who has just asked that question systematically voted for the Asylum Bill, which strikes out the right to be an economic migrant? As there is economic chaos in South Africa, the hon. Gentleman has provided a legal basis for keeping those people out of this country. We congratulate him.

Mr. Cohen : I shall not respond to that last intervention, except to say that many of those powers will be taken away from the British Parliament and given to the Community.

I believe that lives will be put at risk by such a shift in asylum policy.

Mr. Roger Knapman (Stroud) : I do not propose to delay the Committee for more than 10 or 15 minutes. I thought that the last exchange was particularly interesting. Until now it has been this sovereign Parliament that has been able to make decisions about immigration and nationality. While the Opposition may not agree with current policies, nevertheless they must hope that the time will come when they are more to their liking. One thing, however, is certain. When the Maastricht Bill goes through, there is nothing that the House of Commons will be able to do about it. It will be unable to determine policy.

Until now it has been very much, with respect to my right hon. and learned Friend, a lawyers' debate.

Mr. Kenneth Clarke : I declined to intervene in the speech of the hon. Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen), who waxed ever more lyrical about all this, but at some stage we should bring back the debate a little nearer to reality. My hon. Friend's opening proposition was startling. There is absolutely nothing either in the Maastricht treaty or in the Bill that takes away from this Government and this Parliament the right to determine our immigration policy and our immigration rules, except regarding certain vital matters that a few people get very excited about--the list of countries in respect of which we require visas and what the visa looks like. Otherwise, we are being treated to ever-wilder flights of fancy. I hope that during his 10 or 15 minutes my hon. Friend will not sail out on the same folly as that upon which the hon. Member for Leyton waxed lyrical.

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Mr. Knapman : If we soon reach the position where there will no longer be internal barriers or boundaries, I do not see how our future policies will be anything like what they have been in the past. It is very much our fear that this Parliament will be unable directly to influence future policy. No doubt my right hon. and learned Friend will be able to exercise some influence from time to time, but the House of Commons will be a very ineffective check on any future Executive.

If a nation state cannot decide who its peoples are, it cannot, by definition, be a nation state. We know, from the make-up of the treaty, that the combination of Euro-citizenship and a European union without boundaries comes very close to what many of us believe to be a federal state. It may be that somebody can tell me the difference between an ever- closer union and a single institutional framework and how that is different from federalism, but I have not yet heard anyone do so. All that I know, having a 21-year-old daughter, is that if she told me that she had met a young man and that she was in ever-closer union within a single institutional framework, I should have to tell her that in all conscience I doubted whether that was a particularly decentralising remark.

If anybody in this country believes that the Bill is decentralising, I shall have to disagree. They certainly do not believe that on the continent. They certainly do not believe it in the continental press. Occasionally we have the benefit of the advice of Chancellor Kohl. In the Financial Times of 4 January, Chancellor Kohl was certainly under no illusions about what the Bill means.

This is potentially the most lethal part of the Bill. We are talking about the mass movement of people. I agree that the debate is all about article 3(c), article 8a, article 100c, article K.1 and article K.9. One needs, I believe, to say K.9 rather carefully. The mass movement of people, however, is the precursor to turmoil. It is ironic that we should be proceeding with the Maastricht treaty just as the newspapers are telling us what really happens to those countries when they suddenly decide that they want free movement of peoples, capital and all the rest. Are we learning nothing from Yugoslavia? Have we learnt nothing from the USSR? What is the difference between what we are doing here and what they did there? It does not take too many decades to reap the harvest of that.

When the United States of America, Mexico and Canada were considering how to proceed, they were wise to study what we were doing ; they took one look and said, "No, not for us, thank you very much."

Sir Teddy Taylor : Their unemployment is going down, too.

Mr. Knapman : This is almost a takeover bid.

The root cause of the problem with the Maastricht treaty is that it is for a small group of rich nations--it does not go wider, only deeper. Adjoining the rich nations are untold millions and tens of millions of very poor and often destitute people.

If anything brought down the evil empire in the east, it was the arrival of television. Years ago, the communist system could easily tell people that they were well off because it could jam the airwaves. Suddenly, it could no longer jam the airwaves--television arrived and the news travelled that the people were not well off. One cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

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We are talking not only of Russia and other Commonwealth states adjoining it, although all are in desperate trouble-- Romania, Albania, the Czech republic to a certain extent, or Slovak republic as it is now, Bulgaria and many more. The problem will not be restricted to the eastern boundary. Around the Mediterranean, Spain, Portugal and Italy will have problems of mass immigration--legal and illegal, although probably illegal--from north Africa and other small countries in Africa which have been racked by famine, disease and war. There are so many thousands of miles of boundaries to the east and so many thousands of miles of coastline--do we really think that articles 3(c) or 8a and the rest will somehow control the mass migration of tens of millions of people? That may be our intention--I fear that it is--but it is doomed to failure.

Mr. Garnier : Could not the problem that my hon. Friend is apparently attempting to outline apply to any legislation? It is not special to the treaty or to the laws that follow. The problems of illegal immigration flow from the problems pertaining to population movements. It does not matter what the law is ; illegal immigration will occur.

Mr. Knapman : I have already said that my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State, and, no doubt, all lawyers, look at it that way. My concern and, I believe, that of a number of my right hon. and hon. Friends is still that as long as our sovereign Parliament can decide what policies are for the benefit of the British people, we can at least be free to make our own mistakes. As an island, we have certain advantages in that respect.

Mr. Marlow : Is not the basic point that if we agree article 100c, article K or whatever, a Government--with whom we might or might not agree- -can, through a short process and what is called unanimity, agree an immigration policy in Europe, put it to the House between 10 pm and 11.30 pm and have a vote, and that will be it? Instead of having a United Kingdom immigration policy, we shall have a European immigration policy. I might take a view different from that of the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Grant). He might want an open door, or at least more of an open door than I might want--and that is his privilege. I might want a restrictive policy.

None the less, after that fateful vote with the pressure of the Whips upon us, there would no longer be a United Kingdom immigration policy but a European immigration policy. Thenceforth this House would be powerless to do anything about it.

9.30 pm

Mr. Knapman : My hon. Friend puts the problem well. There we shall be, under pressure from our hon. Friend the Whip, being told to vote in a certain way. Those of us who do not do that will suddenly be revealed as men with no particularly secret sex lives--as overweight, with double chins, mousy brown hair and spectacles. We shall have nothing to hide ; we shall no longer be the objects of our constituents' admiration. My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) is right in all that he says.

Problems, such as the mass movement of peoples, are already happening. One million immigrants entered Germany this year. It is all very well for us to say, "It is shocking. Some of them are rioting and killing immigrants." But before we get on our high horse, let us

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ask ourselves what the reaction of the people of this country would be if we were asked to take in 1 million immigrants? Under the Bill, that is what we could face before long, whether those people came here legally or illegally.

Of course, Germany will be the magnet, because Germany has the economic power. People in general will look for prosperity. Germany has huge wealth ; no doubt that has been much increased by the flirtation with the exchange rate mechanism. If people are looking for wealth they will go to Germany. A recent article about the Bundesbank said :

" the Bank that rules Europe' almost doubled its currency reserves between August and December (from DM98.2 billion to approx DM170 billion). Several nations in Europe are now having to beg for their repayment deadlines to be extended."

We know where the economic power lies and from economic power other power is derived. We should not be surprised at that. The centre of Europe will be parts of France and Germany and the Benelux countries. Power and wealth tend to move towards the centre. People are beginning to talk about all that. The other day I was surprised to read an article which reported General Carlos Coll, a commander in the Spanish air force, as saying that there were "clear indications of German intentions to become the leader of Europe' Germany is whipping up a situation, he says, which could almost be described as the prelude to war'."

There is much more of that. The general is entitled to his opinion--but if that is what the Spanish air force is up to, we should examine his future pronouncements carefully.

Not all the immigrants are escaping from persecution. A large proportion of them are, but a large proportion merely want to better themselves. Some of the countries will be our partners in the EC. Others may hope to become partners. I wonder if we thought seriously about the effects on immigration implied by the present rate of wages in the Skoda factory. I believe that Skoda manages its body plant in the Czech republic and its engine plant in Slovakia--and that is just one of its problems.

Another problem is that for performing a 42-hour week a qualified Skoda worker earns about £120 a month. For somone earning that amount, what a temptation it must be to hear on one's television set that one could do the same work in Germany, probably much more easily and with more modern machinery and other equipment, and earn many times more. Of course, Volkswagen does not have plants only in Germany. It has plants in Spain where wages are considerably lower. The free movement of people will enable workers to go from the Spanish car plants to the German car plants where they can earn a great deal more. What is wrong with that? At a time of mass unemployment, the local people in Germany will not tolerate that.

We can pass laws here thinking that we shall somehow control the mass migration of tens of millions of people. We shall find out that we are no cleverer than our forefathers were. We are selling our birthright for a mess of pottage and for future troubles which are difficult to describe.

Mr. Shore : The contributions by Front-Bench speakers have not entirely allayed the anxieties about article 100c. The argument boils down to this. The Government say that there is a double lock on the door before responsibility for immigration policy, for asylum policy and for all

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associated questions is moved from the national Parliaments and Governments to the institutions of the European Community. It is said that two locks stand in the way. The first is the trigger of the unanimity vote, which we have identified already in article K. The second is the further agreement within the ambit of article 100c to devise the rules for the future control of immigration and of asylum policy.

The Home Secretary, who unfortunately is not here, said that there was not a snowball's chance in hell of any Home Secretary or Minister agreeing to give up the fundamental and important rights that now belong to the British Government and the British Parliament. I am not impressed by that reassurance. It is simply an assurance by a Minister that he will not give up those powers. In the whole history of the EC, we see the progressive surrender of the powers of national Governments to the EC, for one reason or another. I assure the House that we shall not have long to wait before 1996 brings the Commission, the Europeans and all the enthusiasts banging on the door and kicking down the pillars that have been established under articles K and J which separate, for the time being, these major areas of policy from the normal procedures of the treaty of Rome and the European legislative process, including the Court of Justice. I am not impressed and I point to the dangers. If there had been real concern that we should not face those dangers in the future, the connections between articles 100c and K would never have been made. The Home Secretary and the British Government, if they had been determined to safeguard our rights in this area, would never have conceded that these matters should have been brought into article K of the Maastricht treaty.

I now focus on a matter that has not been discussed in the Committee today. There is not just one movement of people coming from third countries--about which I shall say a good deal later, because there is the danger of all that being brought under a new regime and new controls ; there is a different movement within Europe itself. If we are concerned about fortress Europe with regard to the rest of the world, what do we make of the total freedom of movement of 300 million Europeans within the fortress?

Under the treaty we are saying, "You are free to come in any time. Bring your families with you. There is no constraint on the movement of people provided that you are European nationals. Provided that you are a national of one of the 12 European states, you can come in and enjoy the great privilege and advantage of going out if you wish to do so." The treaty of Rome did not give anything like that freedom. I shall remind hon. Members of the provisions in articles 48 and 49 of that treaty, but I will not go into detail :

"Freedom of movement for workers shall be secured within the Community Such freedom of movement shall entail the abolition of any discrimination based on nationality ... It shall entail the right, subject to limitations justified on grounds of public policy, public security or public health : (a) to accept offers of employment actually made ;"

That is a reasonable provision.

If there are job shortages in a Community country and a shortage of labour services in another part of the Community, it makes sense to allow people to come and take those jobs. Indeed, if there is a shortage of specific skills, countries may wish to bring in people with those valued skills. That makes good sense. The freedom of movement is related to jobs.

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A sensible immigration policy, for us at any rate, is based on three major considerations : first, to allow people in to deal with identified labour shortages. In the 1950s and 1960s, many people came to Britain from Commonwealth countries and from the colonies, as they were at that time, to deal with identified labour shortages. Secondly, we have a right, a duty and a great tradition of keeping our doors open for people who need asylum. That should be maintained. The next source of a continuing immigration policy relates to the first one. It relates to the dependants, the people who have a family connection. Thirdly, there is the right of families to come together, to join their menfolk if they are the first to arrive in the United Kingdom. Those are the three clear principles that have activated all post-war immigration and asylum policies in Britain.

We are now covered by the Single European Act, which says that we will have a Europe without frontiers. Article 8a, which relates to citizens of the union, says :

"Every citizen of the Union shall have the right to move freely and reside freely within the territory of the Member States, subject to the limitations and conditions laid down in this Treaty and by the measures adopted to give it effect."

I do not know what those limitations and conditions are and I would certainly like a response from the Government about them. Article 8f provides that, because we have all become citizens of the union, we have the right not merely to look for work in other member states but to reside in those states, regardless of almost every other consideration. The right of citizens to reside is an important and fundamental shift and change. A nation and a state is defined by its right to decide who shall come to its land, who shall dwell there and under what conditions. As has been rightly said, there are differences between hon. Members in each political party and on both sides of the House about how generous or restrictive we are in allowing people to enter Britain.

It is a power of the British state to make such decisions. As long as we are a state, we must retain that power. We cannot possibly accept the transfer of that power to the European Community.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton (Macclesfield) : The right hon. Gentleman is developing an important, interesting and fundamental point. He has talked about the right of a nation. I shall bring the matter down to the local government level. I shall deal with some of the fundamental issues that might result from the treaty and the opportunity for people to be able to move freely to any country in the Community. Where would the opportunity for people to move freely put local authorities with regard to their function in allocating housing in a local government area? Would a citizen of an EC country merit equal treatment in the allocation of points, or in whatever system a local authority used to allocate its housing fairly?

9.45 pm

Mr. Shore : I do not know the answer to that. I should like to know what restrictions are placed on people exercising their right of free entry to Britain. Will they have that right regardless of whether they would be a burden on the state? Would the same requirement be placed on them as on so many of our constituents when they seek to bring their relatives into Britain--that they should have

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adequate accommodation? Will all those requirements be dropped for European citizens? If so, we are erecting two entirely different frameworks of law and systems of entry control which clearly discriminate in favour of the citizens of the nation states of the European Community who are now to become citizens of the European union.

Mr. Cash : Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in Dover there is already a channel through which people are expected to drive or walk which specifically states in bold letters that it is for European citizens, even before we have completed the proceedings on the Bill?

Mr. Shore : It is disgraceful that officials in Dover should anticipate what the House of Commons will do.

My amendment deals precisely with the needs of public security and law and order. Clearly, we cannot accept arrangements under which anyone has the right to enter Britain without proper checks and reside here. The major check, especially on people who bring drugs with them or are planning outrages or terrorist activities, is the check at the border of Britain. The only effective check at the border is the passport. I want some additional assurance from the Home Secretary about passports.

The Home Secretary is well aware that it is the view of Mr. Bangemann, the Commissioner who deals with these matters, that we have a legal obligation enforceable in the European Court of Justice to allow European citizens to come into our country without showing their passport. That is the contention of Mr. Bangemann and the European Commission.

The Home Secretary has tried to hold Mr. Bangemann at bay and has not allowed the matter to go to the European Court of Justice, although he could still do so. Shall we continue to inspect the passports of people from the European Community countries? If we accept the Commission fudge that all that people need to do is wave a piece of magnetic cardboard and say that they are citizens of the European Community, we shall reduce passport control to a farce. In any case, how can one tell without looking at the passport whether the person is a citizen of a European member state? As the Home Secretary knows, there are at least 8 million residents in Europe who are not citizens of European states. Will there be a differential between citizens and residents? How can the one be detected from the other without passport checks? I suggest that we are in grave danger of going much too far in our treatment of our fellow members of the European Community. By allowing European citizens to enter Britain with so little control, we are making tough and severe the discrimination between that category and other United Kingdom immigrants and their families as well as people resident in Europe who are not citizens of another European country.

Mr. Clarke : The right hon. Gentleman is fishing for me to intervene. First, his question about the free movement of European Community citizens arises, as he well knows, from article 8a of the treaty of Rome, as amended, and is not affected in any way by the Maastricht treaty or by the Bill. Commissioner Bangemann asserts that under article 8a we are obliged to abandon what the Community would call internal frontier controls, which means checks at our ports and airports into European movements, but that is not a position that has ever been accepted by the British Government. It remains our view that the obligations that we entered into under the Single European Act, which was

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approved by the House, commit us to free movement of persons within the Community as far as EC citizens are concerned. It is relevant to the Bill that there are certain rights of residence for EC citizens who choose to come here, but that does not mean that we have in any way abandoned our right to retain frontier controls on third country nationals who wish to come here.

I have had discussions with Commissioner Bangemann on ways in which EC citizens can be distinguished from third country citizens so that we can just let them pass through and concentrate on the immigration controls on third country nationals which it is, in our opinion, our undoubted right to continue to exercise. But that is not remotely affected by the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman's amendment rightly probes this area, but it is not necessary ; it is not an amendment which has any consequential effect on this important problem.

Mr. Shore : The Secretary of State has not said how one can distinguish those immigrants or those people moving across our frontiers who have no right to come in from those who are European Community citizens. How, without inspecting passports, can one category be distinguished from the other?

Mr. Clarke : It is an administrative question whether we exercise sufficient control to identify EC nationals. For some time we have been loosening, so far as is practicable, controls on EC nationals crossing our frontiers and it is in our interest to do so. British people are as irritated by inconvenience in passing through frontiers as other EC nationals are. But we must ensure that our entry clearance officers have sufficient evidence of identification of EC nationals to be able to sift them out from the rest and to run the full immigration check on the rest.

I have had some discussion with the Commission on whether production of documents will be sufficient. I will not agree to anything proposed by the Commission or by anyone else unless, having consulted my own immigration and nationality division, I am satisfied that those officials whose duty it is to exercise immigration control into this country believe that whatever is being shown is sufficient for the purpose.

If one goes to Dover now, one will see coachloads of people going through. If the immigration officer has no reason to doubt that the coaches are full of British nationals or EC nationals, we do not insist that the officer holds everyone up for half an hour, clambering about the coach and opening everyone's passports. It is a question of common sense and practicality in each case.

Mr. Shore : All that I can say to the Home Secretary is that I do not see how any passport control officer can have sufficient evidence unless he is able to look at the passport, see whose it is and pass on. We have all done this many times. It is not particularly hazardous or difficult.

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