TUESDAY 7 NOVEMBER 2000
_________
Members present:
Mr Robin Corbett, in the Chair
Mr Ian Cawsey
Mrs Janet Dean
Mr Gerald Howarth
Mr Martin Linton
Mr Humfrey Malins
Mr Bob Russell
_________
RT HON JACK STRAW, a Member of the House, (Home Secretary), and MR
STEPHEN BOYS SMITH, Director General, Immigration and Nationality
Directorate, examined.
Chairman
392. Home Secretary, thank you very much for coming to see us. We
aim to make this the last of our evidence sessions on an inquiry which we are
doing into border controls. We are grateful for your willingness to come and
give us evidence, not least in this extremely important inquiry. It has
probably taken longer than we meant it to but I think the more we went on, the
more questions we asked and answers we got, the more the boundaries
disappeared. May I just start by asking you to comment on the speech which
your Minister of State, Barbara Roche, made in September to the Institute for
Public Policy Research raising the prospect of the need of our economy for
more migration to provide the hands and the heads which we need to do the jobs
which need doing in the economy. Is this likely at some stage to lead to a
White Paper on the subject to try and get an informed public debate and, if
that is the case, can you say when that is likely to be?
(Mr Straw) Yes. Chairman, first of all, thank you for the invitation.
I am, in turn, very grateful to the Committee for conducting this inquiry
because I am looking forward to the insights which I am sure you will have.
If I may, I would like to introduce Stephen Boys Smith.
393. Sorry, I should have welcomed Mr Boys Smith.
(Mr Straw) He is the Director-General of the Immigration and Nationality
Directorate. As far as Barbara's speech is concerned, the one she made in
September, this was an attempt, which I think was very successful, to open up
the debate and to begin a more positive focus on the benefits which
immigration, migration have brought to the United Kingdom, not only in recent
decades but over the centuries. Barbara, as you will know from her speech,
provided a good deal of historical background about movements into this
country and outside and the criteria under which those changes in migration
patterns have taken place. There is not any plan at the moment to produce a
White Paper on this. We see this more as a progressive approach. We have
opened up a debate through Barbara's speech and it led to a lot of interesting
comments by experts and also by the newspapers. I think it has helped to shape
the terms of the debate with a lot of people saying "Well, yes, let us hang
on a second, it is true that this country has been well served in the past by
migration into the country" and it may also be the case that Barbara's thesis
that we have strong economic needs for further migration of particular kinds
of people, that is a well founded thesis on top of it. Can I just say, we
have made already some changes in the immigration rules to make it easier for
people to come here for work and that included the Entrepreneurs Scheme, the
shape of which was announced on 4 September, and some of the changes in the
Work Permit Rules.
394. Can you say, briefly, what are the implications for that
debate she was opening for the Government's policy on asylum and border
controls? How does that fit into that?
(Mr Straw) One of the things we were anxious to do, not least by
Barbara's speech, was to try and get a separation between debates about
immigration policy and the question of asylum and asylum seekers. Certainly
it is the case for sure that a lot of people in the past who have sought
asylum here and who have been recognised as refugees have gone on to make a
very important contribution to our economy and our society. That is without
question and that remains the case. Also, it is a truth that the debate about
immigration, its pros and cons, has been sullied and overshadowed by the
debate about asylum seekers which was unfounded. We were trying to seek a
separation in those two debates. Of course the point about many, not all, but
many, of the unfounded asylum seekers is that they are seeking to evade
immigration control. As Barbara made clear, virtually every country in the
world operates immigration controls of some kind. Certainly we can foresee
no circumstances where there will not be immigration controls. The question
is how those rules should operate and what the criteria are.
395. Given the interests of other Government Departments in a
policy which acknowledges the need to enable more people to come and settle
here with the skills the economy needs - the Department of Trade and Industry,
the Department for Employment and Education and so on - I am trying to avoid
the use of the words joined-up government but that is what I mean ---
(Mr Straw) We are very joined-up. Please use the word.
396. Thank you. Just tell me, how joined-up is it then?
(Mr Straw) It is reasonably joined-up I think is the answer, but we can
always do better. Barbara's speech, as I think people will have spotted, was
not written on the back of an envelope, it was her speech. I might say this
anyway but I think she did extremely well with the speech. As you might
imagine, it was circulated widely within Government in draft and a lot of
other Departments contributed to it. Plainly the Foreign & Commonwealth
Office have an interest in the matter and the Department for Education and
Employment do because they run the Work Permit Scheme but so do DTI, DETR and
many other Government Departments. There are arrangements made when there are
changes in immigration rules for those to be discussed, usually but not always
by correspondence either within the HS Committee or within the Economic
Affairs Committee. We had a meeting of the EA Committee earlier in the summer.
397. The EA Committee?
(Mr Straw) Economic Affairs, which is chaired by the Chancellor, on
migration.
Mr Howarth
398. Home Secretary, can you give us a bit more detail about how
this plan of your Minster of State is going to work in practice? The House
was not sitting on 14 September when these new regulations she announced were
made. Can you tell us what kinds of numbers we are talking about, what sorts
of skills people are expected to have and on what terms they will be admitted?
Will they be given work permits? Is it intended they should stay for five
years and then leave?
(Mr Straw) There were two sets of changes that occurred, indeed, while
the House was not meeting. One which came into force on 4 September was the
Entrepreneurs Scheme, and I will have to ask somebody to pass me the details,
but from recollection --- The Director-General will give you the information.
(Mr Boys Smith) The Entrepreneurs Scheme, which is not one limited to
specific numbers, is an arrangement for people, in addition to the existing
arrangements for people to come in and set up businesses with their own cash,
who will be able to come in if they have ideas which will run in the market
for which they will be able to raise the money.
399. Who determines whether they have commercially viable ideas?
(Mr Boys Smith) They will have to present that information, that is
to say their capacity to raise the funds to start a business going.
Chairman
400. To IND?
(Mr Boys Smith) To IND, on which we will, as appropriate, consult if
need be with other Departments. In the context of people coming in to set up
their own businesses, we are well used to looking at applications of that
kind.
Mr Howarth
401. I am sorry, I did not understand that this was a trawl for
entrepreneurs, I thought this was to meet an alleged skill shortage.
(Mr Boys Smith) One aspect of the changes already made is the
Entrepreneurs Scheme to which the Home Secretary referred.
(Mr Straw) There were changes made in the Work Permit Scheme. Do you
want to explain those?
(Mr Boys Smith) The work permit changes were to facilitate, for
example, people who wanted to stay on after a period of study, to remain in
the country, without having to leave the country and reapply. In a number of
administrative ways to ease up the present work permit system. Again, all
subject, therefore, to control and vetting.
402. How long after their studying in the United Kingdom would it
be anticipated they would stay? Is there a finite period or is it just
indefinite?
(Mr Boys Smith) If they establish themselves in employment and then
are here for the requisite period, then they will be able to stay indefinitely
as somebody already under the Work Permit Scheme will be able to do. In that
sense, there is no fundamental change. It is to facilitate movement into the
economy of those able to operate effectively.
(Mr Straw) Under the Work Permit Scheme people are physically given a
period which is time limited.
403. It is a limited period?
(Mr Straw) Yes.
404. What is the average, any idea?
(Mr Straw) I think it is up to five years but I would have to send you
a letter about that.
405. Home Secretary, forgive me pressing you but I do think it is
quite material we try and establish exactly what it is in a major area of
Government policy that is being sought and what problem is being addressed.
Personally I find it difficult to reconcile this apparent shortage of skills,
particularly in the IT world, with the fact that something like 3,000
independent IT consultants have been driven out by the Chancellor's IR35
policy. Rather than having joined-up government, as the Chairman was inviting
you to suggest there was, it does seem to some people that the Chancellor is
driving people out and the Minister of State at the Home Office is inviting
those same skills back in again but not from British nationals, from
foreigners?
(Mr Straw) I note what you say about IR35. I do not agree with what you
say about it.
406. Do you not agree people have been driven out by it?
(Mr Straw) I have seen no evidence of that but that is not directly my
area. What is unquestionably the case is that there is a very high demand for
people with IT skills in this country and we are competing with other
countries for these skills. When I was in India on an official trip with Mr
Boys Smith in September I met a number of very substantial business people in
Mumbi and they were talking about the way in which the skills of their
employees were being sought after by firms in the United Kingdom, but also in
Germany and the United States. I am pleased to say that one of these chaps
volunteered to me that it was a lot easier and more straight forward to get
work permits for people to the United Kingdom than it was for the USA or
Germany. I said we hope to make it easier for those who are genuine and who
have got the skills because this is, as it were, a mutual trade in skills
which we wish to open up. Mr Howarth, you ask me what is it we are doing.
Well, Mr Boys Smith has explained the change announced on 4 September which
is to encourage entrepreneurs, which I hope Members of your party will agree
with, and the other changes in the Work Permit Regulations. We cannot say for
certain what the numbers will be but they will be fairly limited. To go back
to the question the Chairman put to me about the next stage following
Barbara's speech, I see this very much, as I say, as an iterative process
where we get the debate going, we make changes which appear to carry wide
support for which there is a good case. We then take stock and we make more
changes if that is necessary. Of course at any one stage, because it is the
immigration rules, if we find something is not working then we can withdraw
that change.
407. Quite clearly there are consequences which flow from a
further wave of immigration in order to meet what we all perceive to be a
skills shortage, but, as I say, not only are people concerned that one part
of Government is making it difficult for those skills to remain in the United
Kingdom, but also people would say we still have just under 1 million people
unemployed, so should we not be doing something to encourage our own people
to develop those skills so that we do not have need of this policy?
(Mr Straw) First of alI, I entirely refute your suggestion that the
introduction of the IR35 has driven people out. That is simply not the case.
If you want to swap statistics about the vibrancy of our economy compared with
other EU countries, I am happy to do so.
408. I do not think I am.
(Mr Straw) We have got the best performing economy in Europe at the
moment, and the fact that we have now overtaken Italy and France and become
the world's forth largest economy is proof of that. Nor is there a
contradiction between getting people with IT skills into this country and
providing more job opportunities for those 1 million people who are still on
the unemployment register. By expanding businesses here we open job
opportunities for other people, and almost by definition a significant
proportion of the million or so who are left on the unemployment register are
the people with lower skills rather than higher skills. There are still jobs
with lower skills in any organisation, including high-tech IT organisations,
and it needs entrepreneurs and software engineers to get that going.
Mr Linton
409. You have talked a lot about the pull factors which attract
potential immigrants to this country. I think it would be fair to say that
there are some that one can do nothing about, such as language or family ties,
and some that the Government can do something about, such as speed of decision
making, cash benefits and access to public services. I think it would be very
useful to the Committee as we get to the end of this inquiry to have your
opinion on the extent to which you think the relative importance of these pull
factors is, firstly on genuine refugees and, secondly, and maybe more
importantly, on economic migrants.
(Mr Straw) There are some that we can do nothing about, namely the fact
that we speak English and that is now the lingua framework of the world, and
I think one of the huge privileges of being English is that this language is
shared by so many people in the rest of the world, but we cannot do anything
about that. We should not do anything about the fact that we have had a
record of very considerable tolerance of people coming into this country. It
has not been good enough, but it has certainly been better than most European
countries, and I am very proud of that and certainly do not want to do
anything adverse about that record. There are other pull factors, as you
suggest, which have played a part, not so much, I believe, in the decision of
people who are well-founded applicants for asylum to settle here, but
certainly played a part in the decisions on application that are unfounded.
Those factors have included availability of cash benefits, which the previous
Government carried on for port applicants and would have carried on by their
voting for the Bishop of Southwark's amendment in the Lords for port
applicants for a considerable period in the future. That was one pull factor.
A second has been the tardiness of decision making. It has taken about 20
months to make decisions. That has now speeded up considerably. We are
already meeting the two plus four month time frame for family cases, which is
what I said we would do and have a track record for doing so before we brought
the NASS scheme into effect for families and children, and make that available
for that group for a year. So we are speeding up the process. The other pull
factor has been the issue of removals, and a lot of effort and investment is
now going into improving removals.
(Mr Boys Smith) Just on the timing of two months. We are now on
target to deliver the two months from the start of the next financial year for
the majority, not just for the family, but for all cases.
410. That is very encouraging. My colleagues had the opportunity
of talking to some of the people in Sangatte who were hoping to come into this
country and they obviously asked them what the main pull factor was for them
given that they were already in a safe country, which was France. One answer
that came up quite frequently was access to public services in this country.
We are coming back to that later in the questions. Since the Immigration
Asylum Act has been in force have you had any reason to revise your assessment
of the relative effect of the different pull factors and, specifically, do you
think cash benefits was as big a pull factor as you feared it might be?
(Mr Straw) When cash benefits were generally available there was always
that 100 per cent take-up. Originally the brief by the previous Government
was to end entitlement of in-country applicants to any kind of benefit from
the state at all, and you will recall, Mr Linton, that it was pointed out by
us when the 1996 Act was going through the House that this was A) inhumane and
B) unsustainable, because you cannot have people starving. In the event the
courts decided since ministers would now be willing, specifically, to exclude
the operation of the National Assistance Act and Insurance Act from benefit
to asylum seekers and their families, that obligation on the local authorities
continued to apply. The effect of that was that they moved from cash benefit
entitlement to entitlement in kind. The local authorities provided that and
there was a very substantial reduction in the take-up of that benefit. That
was very important evidence in my decision and was absolutely endorsed by the
House to move away from cash benefits for port applicants to the National
Asylum Support System where you can provide accommodation in kind and provide
a mixture of vouchers and cash for day-to-day support. Of course these
factors are difficult to pin down mathematically. What I can say is that
since some, but not all, of these changes began to come into force, the level
of applications has stabilised for asylum in this country, whilst in other
European countries - and there are some key ones, the Netherlands, Germany and
Belgium - it appears to be rising. There is no doubt too that the
introduction of the civil penalty has had a number of very important benefits
in terms of improving control. One which I had not anticipated was that this,
in turn, has led to very considerable pressure by French hauliers on the
Chamber of Commerce in Calais, who run the port, to improve, quickly, security
at Calais. The civil penalty has done more in a matter of months than
conversations with the French Government have done in years.
411. Would you say, from the experience so far, that the voucher
scheme and the switch to largely non-cash benefits has had an effect on the
relative number of asylum seekers?
(Mr Straw) To quantify it is very difficult, but I am not in any doubt
at all that had we not introduced the changes in the 1999 Act, which included
the speeding up of decision making and the associated investment, the one stop
shop for appeals which has only just come into force, civil penalty, NASS are
now in time, a very important change which is yet properly to roll out which
is the control of unscrupulous immigration advisers, if those changes had not
come in then asylum applications would have continued to rise.
412. Would you hazard any estimates of the trend, either in the
number of asylum seekers or in the general level of people coming into this
country?
(Mr Straw) You will excuse me for passing this back, but if you can
predict to me what is going to happen in terms of political stability or
instability in Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iran, Sri Lanka and the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia, I could then tell you whether I thought these
pressures would continue. Those are the top six countries for asylum
applicants. The principal driver of asylum applicants, unfounded as well as
well-founded applicants, is political instability elsewhere, as well as rising
poverty. You then come to countries like China where there is a specific
problem; Turkey where there is the issue of Kurdistan and the border they
share with Iraq; Sierra Leone, whose instability is well known; Albania, where
there are some consequences which flow from the Kosovan war; Algeria and then
countries like India where remarkably few asylum applicants have any
justification whatever, but given the fact that there are situations of abuse
of human rights in India, those applications, like any other, have to be
examined.
413. When we come on to countries that you, I think, term as
reasonably safe, countries like Eastern Europe and North Africa, where a lot
of the asylum seekers do actually come from, would you expect to see a
flattening out or reduction in the numbers?
(Mr Straw) We would hope to see, is the answer, and I think there has
been some---
(Mr Boys Smith) On Eastern Europe there has been a considerable
reduction.
(Mr Straw) I think that is as a result of greatly improved enforcement
and it is more straightforward to return those people. You may like to know
- and it was agreed that I could make this public - that when I met the German
Minister of the Interior last week he was explaining about their policy in
Germany and he told me that they have 500,000 people in Germany who have
exhausted all rights of appeal and yet cannot be removed, and for whom they
continue to pay welfare payments. Half a million. Their initial backlog is
relatively small, 35,000, but that is only up to the point of initial
decision. They then have a four stage appeal process. They could not give
me the figures for the total backlog in that, but I think it is well over
100,000. Then, once those have been exhausted they have this very large
number.
414. Do you have equivalent figures for the number of unreturned?
(Mr Straw) No, we do not, but I think it is going to be many fewer than
that. In terms of where we stand in terms of asylum applicants - this is up
to the first half of the year, June 2000 - we are seventh by head of
population within Europe.
Chairman
415. Seventh lowest or seventh highest?
(Mr Straw) Seventh highest, with Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands,
Switzerland and Austria. I think we are falling so far as the United kingdom
is concerned. Belgium is the highest, 1.8, and then Ireland, 1.4, and United
Kingdom is at O.8.
Mr Linton: As a Fulham supporter I have to be sceptical about the latter
assertion.
Mr Malins
416. Home Secretary, can I ask you a question or two about
organised crime, which we all know is a major issue. I have just come back
from a conference in Rome attended by Parliamentarians from all over Europe
and the Anti-Mafia Commission. Would it surprise you to hear that there was
universal approval from all the European politicians and civil servants,
except me, for the proposition that we should have a common legal area
throughout Europe in relation to organised crime, a European prosecutor and
new European legal code to cover the whole situation, and a common police
force leading to a single police force. How angry would you have been to hear
that?
(Mr Straw) I would not have been angry but I would have disagreed with
those propositions. I am quite surprised that you were alone, I think you must
be keeping bad company.
417. Not even Mr Howarth was with me.
(Mr Straw) Of course these propositions have been around in Europe but
they are not widely endorsed, even by continental members of the Justice &
Home Affairs Council. For example, on corpus juris, everybody accepts that
the idea of having a single so-called legal space in Europe is an
impossibility, I happen to think it is undesirable too. I thought about this
a good deal. To have a single jurisdiction would be to have a single
jurisprudence which also, since the law is deeply embodied in the culture of
each country, would be to have a single history, you cannot do that. A great
deal of the law of any country derives initially from the law of property,
that is on ownership of land. The ownership of land has developed in different
ways in different countries and until you establish who owns what you cannot
really establish, for example, who can thieve from whom and trespass on what.
To try and overturn centuries of history in each of these countries is a near
impossibility and it is scarcely worth trying. If you look at a country like
France, which had a very violent revolution in the 18th century, you see that
even despite this very violent revolution, which was not least to overturn the
power of the aristocracy, they have carried on with most of their traditions
of land holding, so it is actually not a possibility.
418. I am very glad.
(Mr Straw) Can I say, in a speech in Avignon, which I made in October
1998, I set out the British Government's approach to this issue of how you had
better secure co-operation between Member States of Europe in order that we
can more effectively fight organised crime which has no respect of borders and
never has had. What I proposed was that in place of chasing this kite of a
single European legal space, which was neither possible nor desirable, so I
suggest you might as well forget it, what we should seek to an extent is
mutual recognition of our legal systems. That was widely welcomed at that
conference. A huge amount of work has been going on on this ever since. That
is the practical agenda for action. On the European prosecutor, again we are
not going to see a European prosecutor and it is accepted that is not on the
agenda. What is needed instead is much better co-operation between European
Member States, and this is the practical agenda we are following.
419. These views are very welcome in the Conservative Party.
(Mr Straw) I am glad to know you are now adopting the New Labour
approach to Europe.
420. Home Secretary, obviously organised crime is a major problem
for all of us and people smuggling. Do you think there is a possibility that
these gangs generate a higher level of illegal entry or just exploit the
demand for it? Where do you see their role?
(Mr Straw) I think they generate a higher level of illegal entry
because, after all, they are trading in people and they need to maintain
demand.
421. Are you happy we are in a sense catching up? I know it is a
big task of any government.
(Mr Straw) A significant proportion of all those people who enter the
United Kingdom without leave, and that by definition includes almost all those
seeking asylum, have been organised by facilitators. Now I have to say that
includes some of the people whose claim for asylum will subsequently turn out
to be genuine and well founded.
422. Yes.
(Mr Straw) Likewise, as I pointed out in a speech I made in Lisbon,
there is a logical contradiction inherited in the asylum system, which is that
every signature to the 1951 Convention says "We will give asylum to those with
well founded fear of persecution". At the same time every country says we are
entitled to maintain our border controls. Usually the only way anybody can
claim asylum is at some stage in their journey to have broken the immigration
controls of one or other of the countries through which they have travelled.
That said, I do not think there is any doubt at all that a very high
proportion of those who are unfounded asylum seekers have been facilitated
here by criminal gangs.
Mr Cawsey
423. Home Secretary, I think one of the things which struck all of
us when we were undertaking this inquiry was the importance of getting the
decision making part of asylum right, let alone welfare or length of time.
The evidence we got from refugee organisations and, indeed, legal associations
was quite critical in that respect. It was one of the legal organisations that
said to us, if my memory serves me right, that we have gone from a system of
slow, cumbersome, poor decision making to fast, efficient, poor decision
making under the new system. Is that your view? If so, what are you doing
about it?
(Mr Straw) No. It has to be said some of those organisations who monitor
decisions I think will be using an objective and others will not. The fact of
the matter is that everybody said to us when we were consulting on what later
became the 1999 Act, on the basis of the 1998 White Paper, that they wanted
to see the process speeded up. We have put in huge additional investment to
speed up the process, very, very substantial. I am trying to think of the
figure œ199 million in 1995/96, it has gone up to œ794 million in 1999/00 and
of that œ534 is for asylum support. It has gone up from 199 to œ260 million
in terms of the support for the administration of IND.
(Mr Boys Smith) That was for the last financial year. The current
financial year the cost of IND is about œ600 million. There was a big step
change from last year.
(Mr Straw) That is excluding asylum support.
(Mr Boys Smith) Indeed, yes.
(Mr Straw) A huge increase in investment in order, amongst other things,
to speed up the decision making and raise the quality of decision making. Now
one of the stories which has barely been written up at all is how the whole
system of asylum processing was degraded by the previous administration in the
last 18 months in their office. They signed up this contract with Siemens,
and I was told when I came into office that this would be up and running and
working and processing applications speedily and effectively by November 1998.
Everybody knows what happened. What then happened before we took office was
that the alleged savings from this scheme were pocketed by the Treasury and
even though the pressures were there, the backlog was huge, the number of
asylum case workers was cut and at one stage it was down to lower than 60.
There has been this huge investment in case workers and in the whole process,
and we are speeding up the decisions. They are now at about 2,500 a month.
(Mr Boys Smith) Nearer 10,000.
(Mr Straw) Sorry, a week, and rising.
424. Everybody accepts that. It is the quality of the decisions.
(Mr Straw) On the quality, those who said that to you are wrong.
Mr Howarth
425. They fell last week.
(Mr Straw) Hold on a second. There is a reason for that. On the quality
of the decision making, they are wrong. If you judge quality by the proportion
of cases which are overturned on appeal, it is no lower than it was when the
process was very cumbersome and I think may be creeping up above it.
(Mr Boys Smith) That is correct. It is well up in the 80 per cent
area. There has been no deterioration in that.
Mr Cawsey
426. People we speak to were not claiming there was any
deterioration, they were saying it was a poor decision making process and
remains poor.
(Mr Straw) That is simply untrue. If you look at any other area of
decision making in the public service, eight out of ten of the original
decisions to be confirmed on appeal for independent judicial figures show a
very high quality of original decision making, and what you are saying is
untrue. What is the case is that people who want to stay here, whether their
application is well founded or unfounded, strain every nerve to stay here.
Their legal advisers strain even more nerves to do so on their behalf, now
that is their job. At a constituency level I have had to deal with quite a
number of asylum applications over the years and I am hard put myself to think
of more than a couple where the original decision was actually overturned on
appeal. A lot of effort - besides the increase in the number of case workers
- is going into raising the quality of the decision making process, not least
by having in house members of the bar who are members of the bar but are
retained within Croydon offices to provide a ready source of direct legal
advice on issues.
427. You may not have them to hand now, and that is fair enough,
but as a Department you will be able to supply the Committee with the figures
of the outcome of appeals in the period leading up to the changes and since
then?
(Mr Straw) Sure.
428. You have an assessment centre at Oakington now. Is it too
early to judge the success or otherwise of that?
(Mr Straw) The capacity is being built up. 1,491 decisions have been
made, of which 1,468 were refusals. 23 were grants of asylum or exceptional
leave. Of those 1,468, 1,351 have appealed against refusals, of those 654
have been heard, of which 16 have been allowed, which means that the quality
of decision making at Oakington is extremely high.
429. That is very good.
(Mr Straw) You will not get that in Social Security or virtually any
other area I can think of, certainly not within the criminal justice system.
430. Do you have plans, therefore, as a Department to perhaps
establish similar centres to spread that work out still further?
(Mr Straw) Oakington itself is building up. At full capacity it is able
to deal with 13,000 applicants a year. At the moment it is taking 18 a day,
when it is up to 36 - twice that - we will be there. We are planning also to
expand detention capacity as you know. Details have been given to the
Committee but I can give those if you wish.
(Mr Boys Smith) The important point is the figures the Home Secretary
gave for the appeals, we are talking here of the quickest decisions that are
taken, they are taken within a week, but they are quality decisions and that
appeal rate is a 97« per cent success rate on appeal. It is important to see
that there can be that high success rate in the context of fast but carefully
taken decisions.
Chairman
431. Can you just give us the figure now about removals which
follow that process?
(Mr Boys Smith) For those who have been through Oakington?
432. Yes.
(Mr Boys Smith) I cannot give you that figure I am afraid.
433. Could you write to us with it?
(Mr Boys Smith) Indeed, sure.
Mr Malins
434. It is all very well saying that 1,400 applications have been
heard, nearly that number have been refused, nearly everyone has appealed and
nearly everyone has lost their appeal, but if you cannot tell us that nearly
everyone has gone back that is a problem. You might as well not have a
process.
(Mr Straw) A lot of investment is going into expanding the enforcement
process. As I explained earlier, this is a problem which is not just shared
by the European countries, it is much worse in other European countries. Some
of the European countries have put down on their statistics the people who
have been removed, once they have been given a final refusal they are then off
the statistics. We have a greater degree of integrity within our statistics.
435. Will you write and tell us how many have gone?
(Mr Straw) We will do so. I just want to make this point. Were any
other party to go into government they would face the same problem.
436. Yes.
(Mr Straw) There are two difficulties about removal. One is ensuring you
have sufficient staff and detention space to detain people once they become
eligible for removal and to get to the plane and the second is to ensure that
the countries from which they have come will receive them. Some of those
countries of origin are pretty co-operative about receiving them back and that
is straight forward, but others are not. That is a problem which we are
working on but it is a fact of life and it is a fact of life that you would
not be able to change simply by a change of government.
Mr Howarth
437. Do they stay in Oakington until they are physically taken to
the port of exit?
(Mr Boys Smith) No, they stay in Oakington for the five to seven day
period in which the decision is taken. After that, a small proportion - and
we can give you the figures later - might go into ordinary or formal
detention. The great majority will leave Oakington, and most of them will go
into the NASS system ---
438. Go into the what?
(Mr Boys Smith) The National Asylum Support Service System and will
probably be dispersed elsewhere if they want accommodation.
Mr Malins
439. Do you keep in touch with everybody, every one? Do you know
where they all are?
(Mr Boys Smith) Everybody who goes into the NASS system and takes up
our accommodation by definition we do. Those who obtain accommodation
elsewhere we have no running check on them, although one of the changes that
the Home Secretary alluded to when he spoke of increased enforcement capacity
is the establishment - and we have started this now - of what we call
reporting centres around the country to achieve just that, to achieve a much
higher rate of keeping tabs on people week by week.
440. The processes are much quicker but it boils down to the same
thing, everybody stays.
(Mr Straw) No, that is not the case. We are improving enforcement
against a background that the system was close to collapse by April 1997.
Mr Howarth
441. Home Secretary, we have been three years in a Labour
Government now. I do not think you can blame everything back on the Tories.
(Mr Straw) I do blame the Tories, particularly as we are now lectured
about the need to improve removals. I do agree that we need to improve
removals, but I say that the party which was in Government for all those years
and which collapsed the system is in no position to lecture us about how it
needs to be improved.
Chairman
442. May we move on to the 1951 Convention? I think it was in
your Lisbon speech that you reminded people that this is a Convention that is
50 years old and was borne out of totally different circumstances, in a world
which was far less mobile and in many ways was more politically stable,
although there was a down side to that. Do you think it is possible now to
get agreement, perhaps, not so much on changes to the Convention itself, but
the way in which, for example it may be interpreted across the European Union?
Is the discussion going on among Ministers at the EU about this, and is there
some hope of the prospect of achieving that?
(Mr Straw) Given the way in which UN Conventions are drawn up and the
way they are changed, I think it is unrealistic to expect any quick progress
on changing the terms of the Convention. Also there is then the issue of how
you would change those terms. It seems to me that the basic criteria to give
refugee status to those who are in well-founded fear of persecution is
satisfactory and something to which every country which is signed up to human
rights should do. The question is how that obligation is interpreted, Mr
Chairman, as you say. On that we have not been helped as a country by
differing interpretations of some aspects of the 1951 Convention, not least
in the issue of non-state persecution, but there are aspects which do, the
inter-relationship between the 1951 Convention obligations and those under the
European Convention of Human Rights. This is an area where I am convinced
that we would benefit by a greater degree of co-operation with our EU partners
and by there being a greater degree of commonality between the approach which
each EU partner adopts, because at the moment I think you do get what has been
called "asylum shopping", where slightly different interpretation in different
countries leads to people being attracted to one country or another. You then
have problems under Dublin, which is not working effectively and which is an
error agreed by the previous administration in 1990, which has made it more
difficult to return people to safe third countries in Europe rather than less
difficult. As you may know, we have had a couple of court decisions where the
courts have held that for certain groups, France and Germany were not safe
third countries. We have sought to overcome those in part by Section 11 of
the 1999 Act, which has now come into force, but it is a common standard, to
use the cliche, "a level playing field". It would be helpful and a lot of
work is now going on to that effect with the Commission and with other Members
of the JHA Council.
443. I think you have raised a problem in that speech of the need,
at present, for, say, somebody getting out of Afghanistan and wishing to claim
asylum in the United Kingdom, having to get to the United Kingdom to claim
that asylum, rather than making that claim in the first safe country, which,
for the sake of administration, we will call Pakistan. Does that remain your
ambition?
(Mr Straw) Yes. It will be hard to achieve, but I think we have to
begin with the analysis. I was very struck by the much more rational way in
which Western Europe dealt with humanitarian problems in Kosovo. Agreeing,
first of all, that there was a humanitarian problem because of huge political
instability - civil war - and then saying that most of the focus should be on
relief of those people on the border with Macedonia and that their best
interest was served by temporarily housing them just outside the country and
making arrangements, not least through military power, to secure the safety
of their areas and then it would be a lot easier for them to go back, and,
thirdly, accepting that there would be some groups who did, because of their
state of health or other circumstances, need a respite from that kind of
terror and they should be accommodated in various European countries. That
is what we did in this country in the Humanitarian Evacuation Programme and
what happened in other European countries. There has been a problem with
that, which is that the criteria which were used by different European
countries varied. Germany, for example, as part of the condition that they
could go to Germany, each of those who were going on their HEP voluntarily
gave up their right to apply for asylum, and they could not subsequently apply
for asylum in Germany unless the objective circumstances in Kosovo had changed
from the time when they left. The legal advice to England, very strongly, was
that if I had sought to do that and some people subsequently made applications
for asylum, they would claim that they had given up their right to claim
asylum under duress, ie, on leaving the country. We need to sort that out.
That said, it must be more rational to have a situation where the kind of
approach that we adopted in Kosovo is more widely used, but we query whether
it could be used in Afghanistan. The other thing that that would do is focus
the attention of the developed world on the need for there to be political
solutions to these areas of instability. In other words, we are dealing with
the push factors as well as the pull factors. It is pretty extraordinary that
we are, in Western Europe, America, Canada and Australia, spending billions
and billions of pounds dealing with the affects of political instability in
these countries, of civil war, and far less on dealing with the causes of that
instability.
444. We were told that in Germany, Spain and, I think, Hungary,
that they had bilateral agreements with some of the countries in which many
of the asylum seekers/immigrants were coming. In some cases they had made
agreements that the numbers of immigrants they would accept formally met the
qualities that they were seeking, and part of those arrangements were that
they would then not entertain applications for asylum. I must say that it
surprised me that they could do that, and partly for the reasons that you
yourself gave. Given that that is going on, do you think that lessons are
needed to get a common interpretation of the 1951 Convention, or can those two
things go side by side?
(Mr Straw) I think they go side by side. Any country which is signatory
to the 1951 Convention has to entertain applications for asylum. There were
special circumstances around the equivalent of the HEP Programme in Germany
and although they found it easier to require the people on their programme to
go back to Kosovo, that is against the background in which they have hundreds
of thousands of people settle in Germany compared to those who settle in the
United Kingdom. I think that a common interpretation and common procedures
where these made things easier - not where they made things more difficult -
would make life much more sensible within the EU and, in time, would help
overcome some of the problems of the Dublin Convention, which is the subject
of review by the EU at the moment.
445. One of the questions we came away with, Home Secretary, was
that other EU countries, Spain and Germany, for example, have these
arrangements where they immediately return those who they regard as illegal
arrivals, which raises the question of why we are not similarly able to do
that with those on the same footing coming from France?
(Mr Straw) We used to be able to do that.
446. Is this Dublin?
(Mr Straw) Yes. We used to be able to do that under a gentleman's
agreement which was in existence, and that gentleman's agreement still exists
in respect of immigration - people who have been refused leave on an
immigration basis and who do not claim asylum. Although it was not perfect,
it worked pretty well. The extraordinary thing is that Dublin, which was
signed up to by the previous adminstration in 1990, came into force in October
1997 and as night follows day, sadly, led to the abolition of that gentleman's
agreement, and it has made matters worse. That is where we are. I have
looked at whether we can reestablish that gentleman's agreement by doing other
things, but if you see it from France's point of view, they say, "Well, the
United Kingdom agreed Dublin, we have all signed up to it, we have all
ratified it."
447. So did Germany and Spain presumably?
(Mr Straw) There is a bilateral agreement between Germany and Denmark by
which people are returned across the border, but it is infinitely easier to
do that at a border crossing than it is across the Channel.
448. Spain do it with people coming from North Africa.
(Mr Straw) They do and they do not. Spain has hundreds of thousands of
people who are wholly illegal within Spain. There was an amnesty granted last
year in which 500,000, not asylum seekers, but wholly illegals from North
Africa, were given residence, and in turn that is a very successful pull
factor. One the truths about Southern Europe is that they have fewer people
who make applications for asylum for all sorts of cultural and administrative
reasons, but they have hundreds of thousands more people who have no papers
at all and who are not known to the authorities. That is also true in France.
France has fewer asylum seekers per head of population than the United Kingdom
does, but in Southern France the agri businesses would scarcely operate
without people who come across from North Africa, sans papiers, as they are
known, and they work on the margins. I told you about Spain, and although it
is true that there are good bilateral arrangements between Spain and Morocco,
Spain has huge difficulties in getting removals to any part of North West
Africa. So life is not always as it appears.
449. We were told by the Spanish Immigration Minister, a few weeks
before Barbara Roach made that speech on the background of all of these
problems, that they had a need for 200,000 immigrants to do the jobs that the
Spaniards did not want to do, particularly in construction and agriculture.
(Mr Straw) That is despite the fact that Spanish unemployment is one of
the highest in Europe.
Mr Howarth
450. Can I take the Home Secretary back to the 1951 Convention?
Can I invite the Home Secretary to agree that circumstances have changed
pretty substantially since 1951 when this Convention was drawn up? At that
time there were few international air services, international travel was
restricted to very few people and the circumstances today, of course, are
wholly different, where we have hundreds of flights just across the Atlantic
every day. The most recent figures that I have are for last year, which show
that nearly 9,500 people were either recognised initially as being refugees
and being granted asylum, or were not recognised as refugees but given
extended leave to remain. Can I put to you, Home Secretary, that given the
ease with which people can travel today, the 1951 Convention is simply out of
date, because is not the corollary of those obligations we entered into in
1951 that wherever there is conflict around the world and wherever people are
being persecuted - and many of the countries which Britain ruled so
successfully, the successive governments are persecuting their own people -
we must, therefore, accept an obligation to house those people in the United
Kingdom.
(Mr Straw) If there is instability anywhere in the world?
451. Yes?
(Mr Straw) No. I do not accept that and neither does the Convention lay
that down. If you are saying to me should we abandon the 1951 Convention and
the practical and moral obligation that it imposes on Member States in
isolation, my answer to that is no.
452. I am inviting you to review the position given it is now so
out of date.
(Mr Straw) Circumstances have changed since 1951, there is no question
about that, for reasons you have described and, above all, because of the end
of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. Up until literally the
Berlin Wall came down asylum applications to this country were running at
about 4,000 a year, there was a backwater in the Immigration and Nationality
Directorate. Most were accepted, most were from Eastern Europe and they were
political refugees, not, please, the Soviet Union or its satellites.
453. All the figures you gave us just now were nothing to do with
the Soviet Union.
(Mr Straw) Some of them are.
454. Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iran, Sri Lanka.
(Mr Straw) They are to do with the Soviet Union. What was going on
before the collapse of the Berlin Wall was that each bloc, the NATO/US bloc
and the Soviet Union, and to some extent China, had a hegemony over certain
client states in Asia and Africa and there was a kind of stand-off in each of
those countries so it led to the appearance of stability in many of those
countries. Now, you could argue, and I would certainly do so, that system was
leading to huge pent up forces which spilt out in the wake of the collapse of
the Berlin Wall and created that instability, but if you look at many of the
countries where there has been subsequently significant turmoil, Afghanistan
is the best one, that is the best example, but there are many others ---
455. Sri Lanka, China, Somalia?
(Mr Straw) I am not suggesting all of them but in many of them it has
flowed as a consequence of the instability which followed after the collapse
of the Berlin Wall, just as, if I may say, a good deal of migration from
Eastern European itself as those economies went into free fall. Can I just
make a wider point about the 1951 Convention? The 1951 Convention does not
only apply to Western Europe and the more profitable states, it also applies
to any Member, a signatory of the United Nations. The greatest burden of
supporting refugees falls on the developing world, it falls on the states
contiguous to Rwanda, for example, it has fallen over many years on India who
have taken the equivalent of refugees and economic migrants by the hundreds
of thousands across the border from Bangladesh to West Bengal and which in
turn, let me say, has contributed to political instability, particularly in
the North Eastern States of India. There are many other examples as well.
Countries like India and countries contiguous to Rwanda have to an
extraordinary degree actually accepted their obligation, they are not just
sending people back at the point of a gun. They may not have provided them
with the degree of wealth and support they are provided with in Western Europe
and Australia and Canada but they have accepted those obligations. If we in
the West suddenly tear up a Convention then I do not think it would be much
of a message to the countries which have taken the biggest burden over the
years.
456. Surely the point is they have tribal associations across
their boundaries which many people argue are artificial anyway. Although I
take your point, surely it would be natural to expect them to do that, just
as it would be natural for us to accept Jewish refugees from Germany or
perhaps Huguenots from France, it would not necessarily be natural for us to
accept the rise in refugees in the same way.
(Mr Straw) Sometimes the tribal associations lead to a lack of apparent
welcome rather than the reverse, we need to be clear about that. Yes, of
course, it was we who divided East Bengal and West Bengal, the British
Government.
457. A Labour Government.
(Mr Straw) Well, there is a history to it if you want to know. It was
done twice and I think it was in the earlier part of the last century it was
done as well. Leaving that aside, the fact of the matter is that some of the
people in Bangladesh of course have associations, ethnic and religious
associations, with the muslims in West Bengal, some of them do not, but it is
still a very substantial pressure on those countries. It is something we need
to bear in mind in weighing the balance of this issue.
458. I do not want to prolong this but I am keen to try to develop
with the Home Secretary this idea that he did express in Lisbon concern about
the Convention.
(Mr Straw) Of course.
459. There is provision for us to renounce it and I do not think
there is any question anybody wants to do that because obviously we are all
concerned about those who are the victims of oppression. I am not clear that
the Government is clear that the consequences of accepting the application of
a 1951 Convention to year 2000 circumstances will not lead to substantial
further justifiable, in terms of Convention, claims to residency in the United
Kingdom and the obligation on the British people further to accept substantial
numbers of people with all the consequences that flow from that.
(Mr Straw) I think I am pretty clear about what needs to be done, and I
have to say, modestly, that I think the United Kingdom is clearer about the
changes that need to be made than many other Member States in the EU, indeed
they welcomed the contribution that was made by way of the Lisbon speech.
What I called for, as you will be aware, is a more rational approach which
involved the categorisation of groups of people and countries of origin, an
EU settlement programme, the possibility which the Chairman made of
applications lodged overseas and actually the regions of origin to reduce
migration pressures. I think these are sensible proposals we need to look at.
Each has a downside for sure but we need to examine them. Certainly I think
the categorisation of countries would be extremely helpful into countries
which are completely safe, those which were it accepted on a stricter basis
than UNHCR finds at the moment that there are problems, and those that are the
intermediate category where the default setting would be people's applications
fall to be refused but, of course, there could always be one or two
individuals who may be able to make a claim to prove it.
Mr Russell
460. Home Secretary, you earlier mentioned - boasted almost -
about joined-up government thinking in this category. Are you satisfied that
the governments of the European Union are joined-up in their thinking?
(Mr Straw) With each other or internally?
461. I am thinking primarily actually of France and the UK but
broadening it, I do not want to pick on France.
(Mr Straw) Asylum and immigration is an issue which is near or at the
top of the agenda of all ministers of the interior, home ministers across
Europe, with the possible exception of Portugal which, for reasons of language
and history, has simply a few hundred applications for asylum each year. It
is right at the top. It creates difficulties for all governments, whatever
their political persuasion. How it is handled varies a bit. As far as
bilateral contact with the French is concerned, they have very considerably
strengthened in recent years. Officials, led by Stephen, put a great deal of
effort into those bilateral contacts, so have I, both with Jean-Pierre
Chevenement, Minister of Interior, and Elizabeth Guigou, she is less involved
in immigration matters, and now with Danielle Vaillant who is Chevenement's
successor. We have negotiated the protocol to the Sangatte Treaty. They have
agreed to put that through the National Assembly following from that and
juxtapose controls. A great deal of effort is going on to improve
enforcement, particularly in the Pas de Calais area and so on.
(Mr Boys Smith) I have little to add to that, except that I think the
relationship with the French at official level has been a fruitful and
productive one and has undoubtedly got a great deal better in the last year
or so. In my two years in the job things have improved.
462. I am pleased to hear that things have improved. Is there room
for further improvement?
(Mr Straw) Yes.
463. We are working towards that?
(Mr Straw) Yes and, as far as Germany is concerned, I had a long meeting
here in London last week with Dr Shilling, who is the Minister of Interior,
who is an old friend in any event, but relations both at the ministerial level
and official level with the Germans are very good and co-operative. They are
extremely co-operative, for example, on Dublin returnees. The same is true
with most but not all European countries.
464. Home Secretary, you are probably aware that I am currently
serving on the parliamentary police service scheme that has involved an all
party visit to Europol's headquarters. Do you think that more needs to be
done to improve the workings of Europol in dealing with people smuggling?
(Mr Straw) Yes. Europol essentially is an intelligence gathering
organisation. We proposed, and Tampere agreed, the establishment of the
European Police Chiefs Task Force. We are now concerned, as are other interior
ministers, to ensure that Task Force takes on tasks of an operational kind,
in other words starts to catch the criminals, which is the purpose of it. It
takes things a stage further from Europol, which is intelligence gathering.
Within the framework of the European Police Chiefs Task Force the relevant
police chiefs agreed that there is this gang which needs to be intercepted,
disrupted and, where possible, members arrested and, therefore, these
countries should work on that. You do not have a great bureaucratic
superstructure but what you do have is this arrangement where information can
be exchanged, bilaterally or trilaterally and so on, and ad hoc arrangements
can be made for joint investigation.
465. Home Secretary, I think that does lead us on now to the
particular question about the tragic death of the 58 people at Dover in June.
Has that had a lasting impact on other EU countries, the attitude towards
people smuggling, and what has happened since Tampere to bring us closer
together within the EU?
(Mr Straw) Dover was shocking and the shock reverberated across Europe.
It was a profound shock to people across Europe and received a huge amount of
coverage in Europe as well as obviously in the United Kingdom. Amongst other
things obviously it has highlighted the problem of people smuggling, both the
desperation of people to get not only to the United Kingdom but also to many
other EU states because of the total number who apply within the EU probably
only a small percentage apply to this country, so it has highlighted that. It
has highlighted the ruthlessness of the criminal facilitators who are behind
this traffic. It has given increased urgency to the need to improve co-
ordination and common standards between different European Union States.
466. Home Secretary, would heat seeking detectors have located
those 58 people?
(Mr Straw) It is difficult to say. As you know, at the moment, it is
dogs and COý detectors which are used, certainly in this country. A variety
of techniques - Stephen can comment on this in greater detail - are under
investigation, including that of the use of x-ray equipment, scanning
material. As the Chairman knows, not least through representations he made
to me, I organised a study by the Police Scientific Development Branch into
the effectiveness and the safety of different methods of detecting
clandestines on vehicles.
(Mr Boys Smith) Just to add, on your first point, I do not know about
heat seeking detectors but undoubtedly COý or dogs would have found those
people had they been used at an early enough stage in the journey and possibly
they would have been found alive. On the use of x-rays, we are taking that
work forward as fast as we can. Clearly there are safety considerations, which
is why we are looking at various options within the x-ray territory, some of
which I think are quite complicated.
467. Chairman, you will be aware of the letter the Home Secretary
sent you last month when it was acknowledged that the x-ray units are fully
compliant with UK Health and Safety legislation with regard to the exposure
of people and animals but they are not going to be used.
(Mr Straw) With respect, Mr Russell, they are compliant for the purpose
for which they are used, which is the identification of contraband, not
people. I am very happy, subject to this classification, to share with Members
of the Committee some of the advice which I have received. Let me say to Mr
Russell, I have gone into this in very great detail and if x-rays or heat
seeking devices or any other system are more effective than COý and dogs I
want to see them used.
468. In your letter you said they are compliant with regard to the
exposure of people and animals.
(Mr Boys Smith) They are compliant for the purposes for which they are
used, as the Home Secretary said, which is not primarily to search for people,
it is to search in detail, in depth, in the load for contraband. I think the
key issue is not whether they are compliant and would find people, it is the
extent to which they can be used for practical purposes at speed in a port
like Dover where large numbers of vehicles are passing through. What we are
looking at, therefore, is not just X-ray as such, but X-ray that can be used
quickly, in open air, in a way comparable to dog and Co2 to reinforce those
controls.
469. Home Secretary, to conclude my section, what progress has
been made since June in taking forward proposals you put forward in Lisbon for
a common asylum system? Who is actually leading on this, and which EU
countries are most supportive of your views?
(Mr Straw) Well, the ground for a common asylum system itself flows from
Amsterdam, and the lead on that is in the hands of Ant¢nio Vitorino, who is
the EU Commissioner in this area. There have been long discussions with him
and draft texts are being produced, and there is quite a tight time scale on
this. Which countries are we working most closely with? Quite a lot of them,
including France and Germany and the Scandinavians countries, the countries
which take the bulk of the asylum application. I may say that Italy, although
it has fewer numbers of asylum applicants than the United Kingdom, their
numbers are running at a few thousand last year. It is one of the major
transit countries from the Balkans and Greece, and also has a huge number of
people without any papers at all who are just working illegally. It must not
be assumed that just because not so many apply in Italy, or are recorded as
having applied - because they have a rather different approach to public
administration in Italy - they do not have hundreds of thousands of people who
have no basis for staying there.
Chairman
470. Can I ask Mr Boys Smith, just going back to the 58 Chinese
people found dead in that lorry, would you happen to know whether the
intelligence that was available to Customs and Excise on that occasion was
also available to the Immigration Service?
(Mr Boys Smith) I do not believe that it was, although I would like
to have notice of that and pursue it. The search was conducted for Customs
reasons and normally if one or other of the agencies is intervening we would
expect them to take the lead and share any product that might come from that.
471. I would be grateful if you would do that because it touches
on a point that Mr Russell was asking about who was looking for what and the
purpose of that equipment. Clearly, in that case, I think it is fair to say
that the intelligence indicated that this was a truck they should stop,
without being specific as to why. That was the case, was it not?
(Mr Boys Smith) Yes.
Chairman: I should say that it looks as though we are going to have a
vote soon. We will do our best. Perhaps we can go to Dublin first.
Mr Linton
472. I have to confess, Home Secretary, that the Committee found
it a little bit difficult to understand the operation of the Dublin
Convention, and we are hoping that you and Mr Boys Smith can shed light on it.
As from 2nd October, through the Immigration and Asylum Act, every EU country
is deemed a safe country.
(Mr Straw) Yes.
473. Has this had as much effect as it should, indeed, have done,
and if it has not had much effect on the numbers, why not?
(Mr Boys Smith) The 2nd October is really too soon. I do not think
we can say at this stage. What that provision is designed to do is to bottle
up the route that the previous judicial finding had offered. I do not think
I would expect it to have any discernable effect on the intake.
(Mr Straw) You are in very good company if you do not fully understand
the operation of the Dublin Convention. The important thing to say about it
is that although it was agreed in 1990, it was drafted some years before that,
before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, when the circumstances about asylum
were completely different. It is one of these things that was on the track.
It was drafted in the mid-80s and agreed in 1990, and that was after the
collapse of the Berlin Wall.
474. Which categories of asylum seeker does this Section 17 of the
Act---
(Mr Straw) Section 11.
475. ---Section 11, enable the immigration officers at Dover to
send back to France? Are they only those people who admit that they have come
from France, or only those people who have claimed asylum in France, or only
those people who are not sans papier? Clearly, at Dover, all of the people
presenting themselves for asylum coming off the ferry as illegals have come
from France.
(Mr Straw) Whether France was the first safe third country through which
they passed is another question.
(Mr Boys Smith) It does not allow immigrations officers at Dover to
send people straight back if they have made an asylum claim, but what it does
is to say that other EU Member States are safe third countries whose
authorities and courts can be trusted to deal with things in a manner that
meets our standards here, and, therefore, to cut off the route, as I mentioned
a moment ago.
Chairman
476. If they choose, as in Sangatte, not to claim when they are in
France---
(Mr Boys Smith) If they arrive in the United Kingdom their application
then still has to be considered, but what we are saying is that the countries
from which they came - France, particularly here - is one to which they could
subsequently be returned after consideration of their claim and appeal if that
leads to refusal.
Mr Linton
477. The whole purpose of the Dublin Convention was to avoid the
system where people could make a serial application for asylum.
(Mr Boys Smith) If Dublin then applies, indeed, we can operate through
the Dublin mechanism to get them back. I was just taking issue with your
assumption that they could be turned straight round at Dover because of this
position.
Mr Howarth
478. We have seen a shed load of people at Sangatte where the
French authorities have actually put them into this former Eurotunnel complex.
The Red Cross houses them, they feed them, with the complete co-operation of
the French authorities, and these people make it absolutely clear that they
have no desire to stay in France, they wish to come to the United Kingdom.
So all the French are doing is, effectively, facilitating these people to get
off their books and get out of their hair and get on to a boat or a lorry and
come to the United Kingdom.
(Mr Boys Smith) If the Dublin Convention applies - that is to say that
the various tests it has in terms of connection with that country, for
example, if that was the country which initially admitted those people to the
boundary of the EU, or whether they had previously made an asylum application,
have family members and so on - then these new provisions enable us to return
them to the country in a way that we were not previously able to.
Mr Linton
479. If someone comes to Dover and says, "Yes, I have been through
Italy and I made an asylum application there", then they can be sent straight
back, is that right?
(Mr Boys Smith) Well, sent straight back---
Chairman
480. To where?
(Mr Boys Smith) We then have to apply to the country under the Dublin
Convention rule with which that relationship arises, be that Italy or France.
If that country then says, yes, they accept that Dublin does apply to that
person, they can then be sent back to that country. It requires communication
with that country, it is not simply putting them back on the ferry.
Mr Linton
481. That means getting asylum seekers to admit that they have
applied for asylum before and the country where they applied to admit that
they have.
(Mr Straw) The whole purpose of EURODAC is to have a European wide
fingerprint database so that we do not have to get a correct answer from the
applicant, we will be able to tell whether or not they have applied elsewhere.
You are right, Mr Linton, to point out that this Dublin process is fairly
bureaucratic, and it is of huge regret that the previous administration did
not see this coming and was ready to abandon the better working bilateral
gentelman's agreement between France and Belgium, which ended in 1997. As I
say, they were not perfect, they were not fully comprehensive, but they were
better.
Mr Howarth
482. If we believe the Italian figure that in 1998 they received
only 7,100 applications for asylum, against our 46,000 - the figures for 1999
not being available earlier this year against our 71,000 - we are just being
naive, are we not?
(Mr Straw) I come back to the point that some countries' official
statistics are not quite as robust as other countries' official statistics,
and this is true even within the European Union.
483. They are not British really, are they? They do not play
cricket.
(Mr Straw) Leaving aside your xenophobic point, it just happens to be
the case that the statistical collection varies in terms of its
comprehensiveness. In this country our asylum statistics will reflect the
vast majority of people who have arrived here in the year unlawfully. In a
country like Italy, those official statistics reflect only a tiny proportion
of the total number of illegals, as is also the case in Spain. So you must
not assume from that that they have only got 7,000 people who are seeking
permission to remain, they have hundreds of thousands and they also have very
significant problems. Italy does take people. On one occasion a couple of
years ago when the Italian border police required Kosovo refugees to come to
this country rather than accepting applications, I personally arranged with
the then Minister of the Interior, Giorgio Napolitano, to take them back and
he did, the whole lot.
Mr Linton
484. Just to clarify, if somebody has not claimed asylum before
coming here from France, they can then claim asylum in this country and only
when and if they are refused and they loose their appeal can the Dublin
Convention then be invoked to send them back?
(Mr Boys Smith) There are a number of criteria for Dublin, but the
basic principle is to identify the country which initially admitted those
people to the EU area. On top of that there are criteria such as that they
have made an asylum claim in that country, and that is where the EURODAC
fingerprint arrangement will come in, because once that is common information
around the EU it can be quickly established that they are the same people, and
one can check whether they might be the same people and return them without
more ado. There are other criteria to do with family connections and the
existence of dependents within those countries. If they look like being a
Dublin case and we can then establish which country and which criteria
applies, then the legislation you refer to, the recent changes, will
facilitate the return in some cases. There is quite a stiff test and it is
not just simply asylum applications, it is not just simply where they have
arrived in the United Kingdom from and assuming they can automatically go back
there. That is what the reform of the Dublin Convention process is looking
at and, hopefully, will simplify.
485. You mentioned the changes that are now being discussed. What
are the changes you would like to see incorporated in the Convention?
(Mr Straw) A very detailed questionnaire has now been sent out, which we
helped to draft, to each Member State, seeking to evaluate the problems which
have arisen with Dublin and how it can be improved. They issued a discussion
document in March 2000 and the Commission is working on that document to
identify some areas where improvement can be made, for example, the
maintenance of statistical records, currently known to be incomplete, to
reinforce my point to Mr Howarth, dealing with the argument centred in the
text, that applicants destroy documentary evidence. Considering the scope of
the application as Dublin's successor, as Dublin currently applies only to
those seeking protection under the 1951 Convention, and dealing with these
problems of differences of practice and interpretation which go back to the
provenance of Section 11.
Chairman: I am afraid we shall have to go and do our duty. We will
resume at 6.15.
The Committee suspended from 6.00 pm to 6.19 pm for a division in the
House.
Chairman
486. Thank you, Home Secretary. I understand you would like to be
away by 6.45. We will do our best.
(Mr Straw) If it is possible.
487. Can we now have a look at whether border controls might be
improved by creating a single agency or whether, indeed, you think that
growing the operation is the answer.
(Mr Straw) Yes.
488. Your Department has been working very closely with the Lord
Chancellor and Attorney General in trying to get joined-up government across
the whole of the criminal justice system. Is there scope for more of that in
this area as well?
(Mr Straw) As you probably know there is now a Border Agency's Working
Group which meets at least six times a year, and that includes representatives
from Customs, police, Immigration Service and NCIS and it sets priorities for
each of the agencies. At a local level the Agency's Work Group is encouraging
the establishment of tripartite inter-agency groups, comprising
representatives of the Immigration Service, police and Customs at each port
level. You are right to say in the area of criminal justice we are taking a
lot of steps to improve co-ordination and co-operation, we want to see this
happen here. If you are asking me whether I think there should be a single
border agency, control agency, border police which would do Customs' work,
Immigration Service work and police work, the answer from that is that I am
very far from persuaded. We will look at proposals but I think that if you
went down that route, whilst you may end up with slightly better co-operation
at the port between those operatives, but query whether you would, you may end
up with very, very significant problems in the relationship between the new
border police and its work with the former parent agencies, namely Customs,
immigration service and the police. In preparation for this session,
Chairman, I was thinking about a parallel which I think does exist in terms
of the way we have set up youth offending teams. Colleagues here will be
familiar with how they have been established in each area. We thought about
having people who were brought into a new career called the Youth Offending
Officers. We decided not to go down that route but, instead, to draw into
these youth offending teams professionals from the different agencies to work
together, but to ensure that they still had professional and practical lines
back into their respective agencies. After all, it is on them, from the
police through to education welfare officers to social workers, whom the
disposal of youth justice problems would be dependent. I think there is a
lesson to be learned there. You get people to co-operate much more effectively
on the ground, this has already happened, but you bear in mind the real
importance of those links back to the parent agencies.
489. We were told at some of the ports here and certainly
elsewhere in Europe about some of the difficulties of using a common database
and sharing intelligence, because you want to be certain with whom you are
sharing it. Do you feel there are impediments to us doing that here because
we are stricter about data protection rules and do you have experience of that
getting in the way of this?
(Mr Boys Smith) I do not think that is a serious obstacle for us.
There are indeed criteria, and the sharing of information under the new
legislation. The immigration side cannot routinely gather it, for example,
for Customs purposes, although anything that we gather that is relevant to
Customs can be shared and vice versa. I do not think it is a real obstacle
and I think it is important to look at the institutions and the spirit of co-
operation to achieve what you want. Bearing in mind a lot of the intelligence
at the top end of the business, so to speak, is that formulated through the
National Criminal Intelligence Service, which we are close members of and have
our own part of dealing with organised crime.
490. I must say that we were very taken by the comments made, I
think everywhere we went around the ports and the airports, about the reality
of co-operation at that level. The most recent evidence we have had from the
Home Office, Home Secretary, says there are no plans to extend the powers of
police officers to act as examining officers on behalf of other agencies. Why
is this?
(Mr Straw) I cannot tell you without notice, thank you very much for the
question. To answer a question you have not asked ---
491. Okay.
(Mr Straw) --- but might nonetheless be helpful, we have of course
extended the powers of the Immigration Service as far as arrest, search and
detention are concerned, to ensure that they are better equipped with powers
and more subject to PACE, as are Customs. Can you answer this question,
Stephen?
(Mr Boys Smith) The reason there are no plans is because we do not see
any reason to do it. The Immigration Service is present at ports, can exercise
the powers it needs, and is increasingly flexible with the changes which have
been made under the 1999 Act to focus their efforts where the intelligence
information suggests without having police officers brought in specially from
their normal duties to exercise a function that is getting increasingly
sophisticated.
492. We were told that the Immigration Service is not able to
gather information from carriers for Customs purposes?
(Mr Boys Smith) That is right. That is the point I made a moment ago.
There are enhanced arrangements for sharing information but the agencies -
Customs, Immigration and so on - have to gather it for their own purposes and
then any that is relevant to other agencies they can share. We do not set out
from the Immigration side to gather Customs data, nor do Customs set out to
gather our data, but we can share what we jointly gather. What is relevant
for the Immigration Service that has come from another source is available to
us for immigration purposes.
493. I understand what you are saying. If you look at it another
way you think this is quite stupid. There are your Berlin Wall friends where
they need to be but the other way into that is really you are as certain as
you can be that where another agency collects information which is of more
value to its brother or sister that would generally be made available.
(Mr Boys Smith) That is shared. I think the business of gathering
information is itself a sophisticated one, it is not just a hoovering up
exercise, it requires the right kind of questions and examination of material,
so it would be foolish of us to pretend we could gather in a sophisticated and
useful way what was really required by Customs, or I think vice versa.
494. You are looking for something specific but you actually come
across something else, as it were, which is not directly relevant, say, to the
Immigration Service but could be of great value to Customs.
(Mr Boys Smith) Then we can share it.
495. You are happy that works?
(Mr Boys Smith) I think that is the right way. The question should be
posed by those best equipped to pose the question. The data should then be
shared according to the needs of whatever data turns out.
(Mr Straw) I understand the point you make, not so much about data
sharing but data collection. In practice I do not think there are many
impediments in the Data Protection Act as far as sharing of data between these
agencies is concerned. There are impediments about the initial collection of
the data. I think this is something we will have to examine about the
exclusivity of data sharing and data collection in this kind of area. If data
emerges in the course of inquiries for immigration purposes which it is
obvious to anybody indicates there is evidence of, say, a breach of Customs'
obligations or criminal law, then the other agencies are told and vice versa.
496. I suspect this is more for you, Mr Boys Smith. Is there a
procedure in place to ensure that the passenger information sought under
relevant legislation covers the needs of all the agencies? Are there
restrictions on who can look for what?
(Mr Boys Smith) Yes. We can gather information on manifests, as indeed
can Customs, but so far as I am aware there is no problem in ensuring that
what is gathered covers all our respective requirements.
497. I suppose it is an inevitable part of working together to try
and ensure that people do not trip over somebody else's feet. Are you
satisfied that there are arrangements in place to ensure that the Immigration
Service has pre-clearance arrangements which are not going to jeopardise other
agencies' control procedures?
(Mr Boys Smith) I hope and believe that to be the case. You are
getting down to a level of quite considerable detail and it requires, again,
an exchange of sensitive information so that something we were doing does not
jeopardise some operation or exercise that was being undertaken by another
agency. I think we do have in place arrangements for sharing information
about exercises of that kind so that we do not trip over each other's toes.
498. We have had a complaint from Customs that the Immigration
Service does not ask for information from carriers which would be of interest
to Customs usefully. Are you aware of that?
(Mr Boys Smith) I am not aware of that issue. Beyond the point that
the Home Secretary has just referred to, the existing statutory criteria which
we can seek that information on, I was not aware of that as an issue. I will
certainly pursue it.
499. It may be some little local difficulty.
(Mr Boys Smith) It is certainly not an issue which has come up through
the working group to which the Home Secretary referred, or has come up to me
or my senior colleagues in that way.
Mr Linton
500. Obviously this inquiry, Home Secretary, is on border controls
with the emphasis on controls as a means of controlling immigration. We have
looked at border controls in other countries which seem to have rather large
shortcomings. At the green border between Germany and the Czech Republic,
anybody can walk through the forest, and, obviously, they catch some, but they
do not catch others. In fact, the southern border of Spain on the Straits of
Gibraltar did not seem to us to be enormously different in the sense that
although they get people off the ferry, many people came by small boats which
they simply could not catch. I think it made us realise that Schengen
countries tend not to rely on border controls but on internal control to do
this. One of the things we are told at Sangatte is that one of the main pull
factors, in their view, the reason that they were coming to the United
Kingdom, was because of the greater access to public services, and Mr Boys
Smith mentioned in evidence that our country is a relatively un-policed
society. That really prompted the thought whether, in this country, we should
seriously consider something similar, not as an alternative to border
controls, but in addition. It is a very sensitive issue and one is not
necessarily suggesting identity cards, but we understand that the Danes have
a system of identity numbers, which does ensure quite effectively that people
who reside in that country can only use public services if they have an
immigration status. What are your thoughts on this as an approach?
(Mr Straw) There is every sense in making greater use of unique
identification numbers which already exist in our society. Everybody who is
born in this country has what is called an NHS number, which is taken from the
folio of their birth certificate record, which is held by the registrar. They
have that number and then they have a national insurance number.
501. It is supposed to be unique, but, perhaps, some people have
several.
(Mr Straw) There is work going on to make sure that they are unique and
that people do not develop what are called "legends", where they take on
somebody else's personality or identification. That work ought to continue
because it makes every sense to have a single number. If you wanted to go
down the Schengen road - which, for the avoidance of doubt, I do not, and
neither does the Government - and lift border controls, then you would have
to have a strong system of internal controls and that would lead you,
inevitably, into a system of compulsory identification cards. I do not just
mean ID cards which are available for everybody and where there would be a
strong incentive for people to carry them but it would not be an obligation,
I mean where you have to carry your papers with you, as is the case in most
European countries. The police would routinely stop people to ask them for
their papers and a failure to produce papers or produce a reasonable
explanation as to why you have not got them would itself be an offence. I am
not opposed to the idea of the wider availability of an ID card which is
voluntarily and where there is the incentive to use it. I am opposed to
having an ID card which is compulsory to carry and where people have to
produce it on demand to police. I just ask colleagues here to think about the
consequences so far as community relations. The police have to make judgments
about who they ask, but generally speaking they will be less likely to
interrogate people who appear to be white Anglo-Saxon protestants than other
people. So they will be going to people who looked "foreign" in one way or
another. That would mean that people who had different coloured skin or had
different facial features would be the ones who were stopped. Given all the
problems we have had with "stop and search", I do not particularly think that
this is---
Mr Cawsey
502. Would it necessarily have to be as bad as that, Home
Secretary? The impression that I got from the French experience was that it
was not that the police were stopping and asking people to produce it, it was
just that they could not get access to public services, so it was at that
point of delivery that it was established.
(Mr Straw) The question is: Do you want us to deny health service to
asylum seekers who happen to be ill? Things are not always what they appear.
It is not the case that if asylum seekers or sans papier in France need health
care they are denied it. It is made available.
Mr Linton
503. There already are hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants
here illegally any way.
(Mr Straw) The proposition being put to me is that people, presumably,
as a means of control, should be denied basic services. At the moment people
who are seeking asylum here, or people who are otherwise here illegally,
cannot claim social security benefits of any kind. Once they have a right to
be here there is no automatic right to social security benefit, by no means.
Even under the returning residents rule that is strictly controlled. People
do have a right to health treatment, leaving aside elected cosmetic treatment,
which you could exclude. Then there is the issue of schooling. Is it really
being said that children of asylum seekers, who will not have made the
decision themselves to come here, should be denied the right to be educated.
504. The case is not being made for an inhumane regime of access
to public services, but simply the production of an identity number when
claiming public services. It could well be that the Government will be well
advised to make some of the public services available to asylum seekers and
visitors, but at the moment there is no check and that has been cited as one
of the reasons why a lot of people prefer to come to this country rather than
other European countries.
(Mr Straw) Of course the people who are waiting at Calais want to come
here.
505. That is one of the reasons they cite.
(Mr Straw) I know, but there is a huge number of other people who want
to go somewhere else and do not want to come to the United Kingdom. That is
often ignored in the discussion. At a rough guess we probably account for one
in six of the applications that are made across the EU. Five out of six of
the people who apply for asylum in the EU apply somewhere else.
506. You made the point yourself, Home Secretary, that many
countries, Spain, Italy and France, turn a blind eye and allow employers to
turn a blind eye because they need the labour. What we are talking about is
effectiveness of different forms of control. Supposing a country wants to
control immigration, what is the most effective way of doing it, is it through
borders, is it through identity cards, is it through access to public services
or is it through access to jobs? We are just enquiring whether access to
public services might not be an effective way, not necessarily instead of
border controls, because nobody is advocating dissolving those, but in
addition to it.
(Mr Straw) I am always ready to consider suggestions which improve
control and enforcement but do not act in an inhumane way. Certainly the ones
which more readily deter wholly unfounded applications, yes, and there is a
strong case anyway for a unique identification number and then for ensuring
that each person only has one of them, which is another matter. That leads
someone to the whole issue of holding biodata on these individuals and
matching the biodata to the individual.
507. Photographs or fingerprints?
(Mr Straw) Photographs or fingerprints, yes.
Chairman
508. Home Secretary, we were told by both Customs and Immigration
that they are very pleased with the extra resources.
(Mr Straw) Good.
509. And what this has delivered in terms of extra numbers of
staff, as we have seen lately with Customs with the investment in the new
scanning equipment. Is it your general impression that both staffing numbers
and the availability of new technology is either enough, or beginning to be
enough, to enable both of those services to do the job we expect of them?
(Mr Straw) We can always do with more but the changes in the budgets are
pretty extraordinary. For example, the budget for the Immigration Service's
Enforcement Directorate was œ45 million, that is 1995-96, then dropped to œ42«
million, 43, 43, 46 last year, up then in the current year to œ197.23 million
and it is rising still further next year. The total Immigration Service,
again, in real terms, faced cuts in the mid 1990s, just to reinforce the point
I made earlier, rose from 133 in 1998-99 to 145 1999-2000, this year it has
more than doubled to 313 and it is rising again. I will ask Stephen to comment
more widely on this issue as well.
(Mr Boys Smith) I think having suffered a period when there was not
only in cash terms but in the relationship between the number of staff and the
work of the job to be done a real decline, we are now in a completely
different situation, both as regards the port and as regards enforcement.
Just to add to the financial figures. During the current year we are bringing
in about 1,200 additional immigration officers, about 500 assistant
immigration officers, split between ports again, ports in total AIO and IO
about 12 and enforcement about five. So the Enforcement Directorate, not only
in cash terms but with some capital expenditure, is doubling in size in terms
of the people who can deliver the job. This is an enormous transformation.
Alongside the transformation are the increases in staffing on the case working
side, which is of course very relevant for the reasons we discussed earlier,
400 extra case workers for the current year. I think, like the Home
Secretary, I have to say one could always do more and you would expect any
manager to say one could always do more but this is putting us in a position
to get on top of the job in a way which has not been the case for a very large
number of years, indeed the key lesson perhaps from history is once the
backlog builds up it takes a great deal of time to get on top and get back in
a real sense of the situation. We are now on our way to doing that, although
not by any means there yet.
(Mr Straw) We are aware of - to come back to the point Mr Malins raised
much earlier - speed of decision making and then enforcement and removal.
That is why we are having this four fold increase in the investment in the
Enforcement Directorate.
Mr Malins
510. Eurostar, Home Secretary, a couple of years ago or more I
raised the matter with the Government who said the matter was all in hand and
we did not need to worry too much about what was going to happen. My
understanding -and you can correct me if I am wrong - is there are still 500
people a month coming in to Waterloo through Eurostar as illegal entrants, is
that right?
(Mr Straw) It is about right. I do not think I ever said nothing needed
to happen. What happened was it built up as a problem originally on the
Belgium to London route and my then opposite number, Monsieur Van Lanot,
agreed very readily to the imposition of the civil penalty on that route.
That has led to a very significant decline in the number of clandestines on
the Brussels to London route.
511. Yes.
(Mr Straw) Then they transferred to the Paris to London route and it has
been a significant leakage point for us. As a result of that we have been
negotiating this additional protocol.
512. Let us look at the negotiations which have actually happened.
Eurostar is a commuter train, so tell me if my proposition is wrong. Somebody
buys a single at Lille to get them to Paris or somewhere like that and simply
remains upon the train. They do not need proper documents, they are not
properly checked. They cannot be thrown off the train under French law and
when they get to Waterloo they cannot be thrown off back to France. That is
the case, is it not?
(Mr Straw) Yes.
513. What can be done about that, Home Secretary?
(Mr Straw) Hang on a second. A lot is already being done about it, all
right? If you want to allocate responsibility, Mr Malins, this goes back to
what was just a hole in the original Sangatte Treaty. Now at that stage what
ought to be pleaded in mitigation by those who signed it was that asylum was
not a particularly big issue. That is the problem we have had. We have
negotiated effectively with the French. We have agreed this additional
protocol and it is going to be ratified by both Governments and the French
expect it to take place in the summer.
514. That is all very well, Home Secretary, but nobody has said my
scenario of what happens is incorrect. I am telling you, Home Secretary, it
is correct.
(Mr Straw) No.
515. Who is able to stop this at source?
(Mr Straw) That is the whole point of the juxtapose controls so that we
then seek better to stop it at source.
516. Are you saying that in a year or two's time ---
(Mr Straw) No, we are taking other steps as well meanwhile. Plainly,
with Eurostar, as with all the other means of movement across the Channel, it
is far better for us to prevent people from coming in the first place than
having to deal with the consequences afterwards.
517. Everyone is powerless, Home Secretary. Two years on we have
still got 500 people coming in on Eurostar. I am going to go over next month
myself and try it to see how it is worked just to find out whether anybody in
either Government has got a grip on this.
(Mr Straw) Mr Malins, you are not actually, with great respect, paying
attention to what I have said. You are talking about this Government ---
518. Good job you did not say that to me in court!
(Mr Straw) I will do. The previous administration ---
519. You appear before me and you would get six months.
(Mr Straw) Yes, but I would come back here and get some legislation
through to deal with shirty stipendiaries! The previous administration failed
to deal with this and they failed to deal with this when they could have been
excused that in the 1980s. They failed to deal with it at all when they should
not have been excused of it in the 1990s when there was a big problem. Within
the constraints of international law and this Treaty, we have got on with the
case, strengthening controls and co-operation with the French border police,
PAF and much else besides. We have now got this agreement signed up, it is
a question of legislating for it.
(Mr Boys Smith) First of all, could I associate myself with the Home
Secretary's opening remarks on this. Certainly in none of the evidence that
I gave on the previous occasion in the summer when I appeared did I suggest
that the Waterloo Eurostar situation was satisfactory. What we have done is
to work hard with the French who have delivered a good deal, although not
enough, to close up the route pending the arrival of the juxtapose controls.
They are exercising some checks at the Gard du Nord. Those checks are
partially, but by no means wholly, effective. We are continuing discussions
with the French. We hope that before long there will be a formal exchange of
letters which will reinforce what they are doing in the period before
juxtapose controls come and deal with the issue finally. So by no means is
it satisfactory, but although I realise these are things one can say and
cannot prove, I am quite clear in my own mind that it would be a great deal
worse were the French not now being as active as they are when conducting the
checks which are already in place, which are checks at the expense of the
French Government, to no purpose of the French Government but in a spirit of
co-operation with ourselves.
Chairman
520. Thank you, Mr Boys Smith, and thank you, Home Secretary, for
your patience and your courtesy in answering all the questions we have asked
you. I do hope your cold is better very soon.
(Mr Straw) Thank you very much indeed.
Chairman: I am just coming out of one myself. Thank you. We will see
you in two weeks.
