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Session 2006 - 07 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates UK Borders |
UK Borders Bill |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Emily
Commander, Committee
Clerk
attended the
Committee
WitnessesLiam
Byrne, MP, Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality,
Home Office
Joan
Ryan, MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home
Office
Stuart Hyde,
Senior Director, Enforcement, Immigration and Nationality
Directorate
Tony
Smith, Head, Border Control, Immigration and Nationality
Directorate
James
Hall, Chief Executive, Identity and Passport
Service
Bob Lauder,
Deputy Director for Scotland and Northern Ireland, Serious and
Organised Crime Agency Enforcement
Directorate
Public Bill CommitteeTuesday 27 February 2007(Morning)[Mr. Eric Illsley in the Chair]UK Borders Bill10.30
am
The
Chairman:
Before we begin properly, I have a few
preliminary announcements. Members may, if they wish, remove their
jackets during the Committee
meetings.
Please will
all Members ensure that mobile phones, pagers and so on are switched
off or switched to silent mode during the Committee meetings?
I remind the Committee that
there is a money resolution in connection with the Bill, copies of
which are available in the Room.
Today is only the second
occasion on which a Public Bill Committee will hear oral evidence on a
Bill. So that everyone is clear about the procedures and what will
happen this morning, I will briefly explain what is
proposed.
As with a
normal Committee, the Committee will first be asked to consider the
programme motion. We will then proceed to a motion to report written
evidence and then a motion to permit the Committee to deliberate in
private in advance of the oral evidence sessions. Those two motions
should be formalities. Assuming that the second of these motions has
been agreed, the Committee will then move into private session. Once
the Committee has deliberated, the witnesses and members of the public
will be invited back into the Room and the oral evidence session will
commence. If the Committee agrees the programme motion, the Committee
will hear oral evidence this week before reverting to more the familiar
proceedings of clause by clause scrutiny in subsequent
sittings.
We come
first to the programme motion, debate on which may continue for up to
half an hour. I call the
Minister.
That
(1)
the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 10.30 a.m. on
Tuesday 27th February)
meet
(a) at
4.30 p.m. on Tuesday 27th
February;
(b) at 9.00
a.m. and 1.30 p.m. on Thursday 1st
March;
(c) at 10.30
a.m. and 4.30 p.m. on Tuesday 6th
March;
(d) at 9.00
a.m. and 2.00 p.m. on Thursday 8th
March;
(e) at 10.30
a.m. and 4.30 p.m. on Tuesday 13th
March;
(f) at 9.00
a.m. and 2.00 p.m. on Thursday 15th
March;
(g) at 10.30
a.m. and 4.30 p.m. on Tuesday 20th
March;
(h) at 9.00
a.m. and 2.00 p.m. on Thursday 22nd
March;
(2) the
Committee shall hear oral evidence in accordance with the following
Table;
(3) proceedings
on consideration of the Bill in Committee shall be taken in the
following order: Clauses 1 to 43; Schedule; Clauses 44 to 46; new
Clauses; new Schedules; remaining proceedings on the
Bill;
(4) the
proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a
conclusion at 4.30 p.m. on Thursday 22nd
March.
It is a
privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Illsley. I
am proud to be one of the first Ministers to be asked to give oral
evidence in this constitutional innovation of public evidence sessions
preceding our debates on the Bill over the weeks to come. I should also
like to thank all members of the Committee in advance for taking part,
not just in the debates but in the oral evidence
sessions.
The
purpose of the Bill is to strengthen our UK borders and our fight
against illegal immigration, however it manifests itself. This Bill
does not sit on its own. It sits as part of a comprehensive package of
reform, which includes a different kind of cross-government strategy to
tackle illegal immigration; additional resources to tackle illegal
immigration; the use of new technology, including technology to count
people in and count people out of the country; and stronger
international alliances to tackle illegal immigration. This Bill, the
fifth element of that package, provides additional powers for our
front-line officers to tackle illegal immigration
too.
We
have a good range of witnesses in the Committee sittings this week. The
usual channels have worked hard to ensure that there is a good balance.
We have sought to ensure that the Committee has the benefit of a number
of different perspectives, not just from those with a legal training,
but from trade union representatives who have particular arguments to
make about how we manage immigration and illegal immigration. There is
also a wide range of additional witnesses. Although we have not been
able to programme them for this week, it is in the Committees
gift to call them during the course of our proceedings in the weeks to
come. I ask the Committee to support the programme
motion.
The
Chairman:
Before I put the question on that motion, I
perhaps should have mentioned earlier that while we are in this Room
and taking evidence, Members may remain seated. The microphones are set
at a lower level, and if those speaking were to stand and sit
throughout the proceedings, it would interfere with the
broadcasting.
Paul
Rowen (Rochdale) (LD): It is a pleasure to serve under
your chairmanship, Mr. Illsley. The Programming
Sub-Committee left one slot free for additional witnesses, and the
Refugee Childrens Consortium has requested an opportunity to
present evidence to the Committee. I should like to move an amendment
to the programme motion to the effect that it be invited to submit oral
evidence.
I beg to
move a manuscript amendment:
In the table, under the
last entry for Thursday 1st March, leave out Additional
witnesses to be decided by the Committee and insert
Refugee Childrens
Consortium.
Damian
Green (Ashford) (Con): I echo the Ministers
welcome to you, Mr. Illsley, not just to the Chair of the
Committee but to the journey of discovery that I suspect we are on,
certainly until we get to grips with the welcome innovation of allowing
Committees to question not just Ministerswhich will no doubt be
entertainingbut expert witnesses from outside. The Minister has
set out what he intends to happen with the Bill. It is already clear
from the submissions to the Committee by those who are going to give
oral evidence, and by many others, that our serious reservations about
parts of the Bill are shared by experts in the field. There are clearly
deep reservations about this across the spectrum, so the sessions will
be useful in that we will be able to hear about them in detail from a
large number of witnesses. The amendment is also down in my name and in
that of my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate. We support the idea of
hearing witnesses from the Refugee Childrens Consortium as at
this stage of the Bill.
Mr.
James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con): I associate myself with
the remark that it is a pleasure to serve under you, Mr.
Illsley, and I speak in support of the amendment to the programme
motion.
This is not
as much of an innovation for me as it appears to be for other members
of the Committee, because I served on the Committee considering the
Bill that became the Immigration Act 1999. Under the old rules of the
House we had the then fairly unusual procedure of evidence-taking
sessions beforehand. The present Leader of the House, then the Home
Secretary, gave evidence to that Committee. I well remember his saying
that he regarded the Bill as the final word. I think that he said that
sorting out the immigration system was the greatest challenge then
facing him as Home Secretary and that he hoped that the Bill would be
the final word.
What
appeared to be important then was that different groups should have the
opportunity to give evidence, that the Committee should conduct itself
at such a pace that it could digest that evidence; and that Ministers
should have the opportunity to reflect on what the witnesses had said.
My one slight criticism is that we heard some good evidence on that
Committee,
but unfortunately not all of itvery little
of it, in factwas reflected in changes in the Bill, because the
Government became very resistant to changing any dot or comma of it. I
hope that this Committee will proceed in such a way and with such
timing that the Government can actually think about the evidence that
it hears and then make the changes to the Bill that I apprehend may be
necessary to make it a better Bill.
Mr.
Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab): I share the view that it
is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr.
Illsleyin fact, you seem to chair every Bill Committee on which
I serve. I do not know which of us has drawn the short straw.
I should like
to speak against the amendment. I know that wethe Committee and
the Houseare finding our feet, but the Refugee
Childrens Consortium provided written evidence for hon.
Members, in UKB 05, which I found very useful. However, I wonder what
precedents we are setting, having oral and written evidence. I would
like the broadest possible range of evidence available, from a whole
host of sources, but I wonder whether we are taking up the
Committees time when we could be using other avenues to explore
and tease out particular aspects of the Bill. As I said, I found the
written submission of the Refugee Childrens Consortium
extremely useful and informative, but I would feel happierthe
Committee might feel happierif we had another source in that
oral evidence
slot.
David
T.C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con): I too welcome the general
consensus on getting as wide a range of views and opinions about the
Bill as possible. I support my colleagues amendment. Hearing
from the Refugee Childrens Consortium is important, but, given
what other hon. Members said earlier, I am sure that they would welcome
other organisations as well. We do not seem to have any submissions
from Migration Watch, which would obviously take a very different view.
Given that all sides of the political spectrum here welcome the idea of
diverse opinions coming in, may I suggest that Migration Watch could
provide an additional set of
witnesses.
The
Chairman:
The reason Migration Watch is not scheduled to
give evidence is because of
unavailability.
Damian
Green:
On a point of order and to help my hon. Friend, the
Committee has the power to move for another evidence session. I am sure
that hon. Members on both sides will wish to bear that in mind as we
make progress. People who might not be available this week might well
be available in future
weeks.
Question
put, That the manuscript amendment be
made:
The
Committee divided: Ayes 6, Noes
9.
Division
No.
1
]
AYESNOES
Question
accordingly negatived.
10.45
am
Mr.
Blunt:
I welcome you to the Chair of these proceedings,
Mr. Illsley. I am minded to contribute to try to clarify
what has just happened. The Committee has voted against having oral
evidence from the Refugee Childrens Consortium, although the
programme motion allows time not only for the Refugee Childrens
Consortium, but for other witnesses, should the hon. Member for
Hartlepool have desired to put forward alternative witnesses.
We have struck out the
opportunity for the Refugee Childrens Consortium to give oral
evidence to the Committee for no apparent reason other than to leave
early. Under the programme motion as it is now, we will finish at 3.30
pm on Thursday 1 March, with an hour and a half of available, scheduled
Committee time and no witnesses, despite the Committee having put them
forward. I am surprised at the decision of Government Members to strike
out the opportunity for the Refugee Childrens Consortium to
give evidence; it has been told that it cannot give evidence without
any alternative having been put forward by members of the Committee,
which is deeply
regrettable.
Damian
Green: I echo and amplify my hon. Friends words.
We have all welcomed the new procedure, which enables a Committee to
take evidence from experts to improve the scrutiny of the Bill, yet the
Governments first act, in one of the first Bills to use that
procedure, is to reduce the opportunity of the Committee to take
evidence. As a window to the Governments real attitude to
scrutiny, that cannot be improved; their first act is to reduce the
possibility of independent evidence and improved scrutiny of Bills.
That sets an appalling precedent. Presumably, having tested out such an
approach, the Government will have the power in all future Bills to
strike down individual witnesses whom they might find inconvenient. The
words of the Minister, of the Leader of the House and of other
Ministers, who have welcomed this innovation to improve the scrutiny of
Bills, have been shown to be hollow. The Minister and his team have let
down Parliament this morning.
David
Wright (Telford) (Lab): Will the hon. Gentleman tell us
how many Bills were considered using this mechanism between 1979 and
1997?
Damian
Green:
I welcomed the innovation and congratulated
the Government on producing it. I object, as anyone who cares about
parliamentary scrutiny should, to the Governments first act of
the Committee, which reduces the ability to scrutinise the Bill. If he
cared about that when he came to scrutinise legislation in Committee,
he too would want to fill the time that we have for available witnesses
with contributions from experts. It is regrettable that the Government
should foist such censorship on people who have great expertise in the
field.
Mr.
Byrne:
I should like to express mild surprise at the pose
that Opposition Members are striking. I thought that in previous
discussions, we agreed a principle that it was important for Back
Benchers to have selectability to table amendments, which may or may
not entail calling witnesses. There are a large number of witnesses who
could throw further light on our deliberations, not only Migration
Watch, whose members are unfortunately out of the country, but
organisations such as the CBI, which has a perspective to add, and the
east London community organisations that represent migrants
rights. There is a wide range of others as well.
I would like to pick up on the
point made by the hon. Member for Hertsmere. It is important that the
Committee has the opportunity to digest the evidence presented to it,
as it goes along, and the flexibility and recourse to table amendments
to summon additional witnesses. I think that that principle is
extremely important and, subject to your guidance, Mr.
Illsley, one that is already in
place.
Mr.
Clappison:
I am grateful to the Minister for his kind
words. I hope that he will be equally kind on my second proposition,
which was that Ministers should consider evidence given and make
changes to the legislation. I shall be holding a marker down for that
and looking forward to seeing the changes as they come
along.
On the point
about reflection, I say this to the Minister: I am the first to admit
that I do not have the greatest powers of reflection in the world, but
I wonder whether it will take me so long to reflect on the matters
before us that I will need an extra hour and a half on Thursday 1
March. After that, I shall have time to think about matters and table
amendments. I think that I am right in saying that we will now finish
at half-past 3 on 1 March. Will the Minister be kind enough to tell us
what the magic is in 3.30 pm?
The House sits until 6
oclock on Thursdays these days, I think, when we are here. We
will not need that extra hour and a half, or two and a half hours, of
additional thinking time then because we will have so much time for
that afterwards. Why can we not use that valuable time to take further
evidence? What is the magic in 3.30 pm? We have adopted this
evidence-taking procedure, so our constituents will ask why we are not
prepared to work a little harder and have an extra hour and a half of
evidence taking. We might hear some vital evidence that will make a
difference. I do not see the magic in 3.30 pm. Will the Minister
explain why it is necessary to finish at that time and why we cannot
have an extra hour and a half?
Mr.
Byrne:
On a point of order, Mr. Illsley. Will
you guide me? Is it still within the power of Committee members to
table amendments seeking to call additional
witnesses?
The
Chairman:
Yes. It is within the power of the Committee, up
until 3.30 pm on Thursday 1 March, to make an amendment to bring in
another witness for that particular sitting. All the Committee has done
this morning is to reject an amendment scheduling a witness for that
particular sitting. It is for the Committee to make amendments as it
sees fit in regard to that sitting. My understanding is that the
Committee can decide or deliberate on motions to bring in extra
witnesses at any time during deliberation of the
Bill.
Paul
Rowen:
I am disappointed by the attitude of
Government Members. Four sittings have been allocated for witnesses. My
understanding from the meeting on the programme motion was that there
would be an opportunity today for Members to suggest additional
witnesses, if we are to have one on that Thursday afternoon. We at
least need to find out if they are available and make that decision
today. I admit that Members can move additional meetings during the
Committee stage but presumably, given that there are no more special
sessions programmed, that will be at the expense of debating
time.
We have an
opportunity this afternoon to propose witnesses, so if the Government
are not prepared to accept that witness, which I regret, I shall
propose a second witness. I think that it is important that we make
full use of the time available for witnesses. If we are not going to do
that, we are showing that this process is nothing more than window
dressing. I would like to move that Manchester Airport Security be
invited on Thursday afternoon at
3.30.
The
Chairman:
I am unable to select that amendment. It would
have had to have been presented to the Committee as a manuscript
amendment. It is open to the Committee to amend its Order at any
timethis afternoon, for
example.
Paul
Rowen:
I understood from our discussions last night that
you would permit Members to bring forward suggestions this morning,
Mr. Illsley. Otherwise, we are just throwing away a session
in which we could have heard from
witnesses.
The
Chairman:
The amendment that we debated last night, and
which was suggested by the Programming Sub-Committee, has been put and
lost. The only reason that I cannot select the hon. Gentlemans
further amendment is that it needs to be in manuscript
form.
Damian
Green:
On a point of order, Mr. Illsley. As you
have just made clear, given that it is possible to table manuscript
amendments for new witnesses to be added, either on Thursday or in
other sittings, can you give guidance as to whether it is possible to
ask the Committee to consider the Refugee Childrens Consortium
again, or is it now ruled out of court? I would like to know whether
the Government have a particular prejudice against this group of
childrens charities, or they are just trying to get away
early.
The
Chairman:
It is a general rule of the House that, once an
amendment has been defeated, it is not brought back. So, I could not
accept the same amendment again.
Mr.
Blunt:
On a point of order, is it possible to propose a
manuscript amendment now for Thursday 1 March? At the moment,
we have an artificial break at 3.30 pm, when the House will be sitting
until 6.30 pm. We can still have additional witnesses, to be decided by
the Committee, but it seems sensible not to have Professor Ross
Anderson and Liberty artificially constrained. I wish to propose an
amendment, on Thursday 1 March, under the witness listing for Professor
Ross Anderson and Phil Booth, to delete 2.30 pm and
insert 3 pm, and under Liberty, to delete 3.30
pm and insert 5 pm. At least then,
Mr. Illsley, we will have the opportunity to establish
whether the Government are simply taking the opportunity to leave
early, or whether they are actually interested in
scrutiny.
Lord
Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury (Mr. Alan
Campbell):
Further to that point of order, is it your
recollection, Mr. Illsley, as it is mine, that when we
discussed the last sitting in the programming sub-committee, its
purpose was to ensure that the usual channels did not produce a
prescriptive list of witnesses, and that an opportunity should be given
to Back-Bench Members to come up with people that they would like to
see? Furthermore, part of the reason for leaving that sitting at the
end of Thursday was that issues may arise during the Committees
deliberations today. We have not yet started that deliberation, and yet
we are seeking to fill that time.
Mr.
Blunt:
We are not necessarily filling the time. The
purpose of the amendment is merely to remove the buffer at 3.30 pm. It
is entirely in the gift of the Committee to finish earlier. Indeed, if
the evidence from Professor Anderson and Mr Booth comes to a natural
conclusion before 3 pm, and that of Liberty before 5 pm, that is the
position.
The
Chairman:
Given the length of time available now to debate
the programme motion, I will not select the amendment that the hon.
Member for Reigate has just proposed. It is open to him at a later
stage to suggest an
amendment.
The
Chairman:
The hon. Gentleman can suggest it for the start
of the next sitting, which is this afternoon.
The
Chairman:
The procedure would be for the hon. Gentleman to
suggest an amendment; it is then up to the Chairman whether to select
it. My ruling is that I am not prepared to select this amendment now,
but it is open to the Committee to make an amendment at the beginning
of the next sitting, or in any other
sitting.
The
Committee divided: Ayes 9, Noes
6.
Division
No.
2
]
AYESNOES
Question
accordingly agreed to.
The
Chairman:
I now call the Minister to move the motion to
report written evidence. This is a formality whereby any written
evidence that the Committee accepts enjoys the benefit of parliamentary
privilege.
Ordered,
That,
subject to the discretion of the Chairman, any written evidence
received by the Committee shall be reported to the House for
publication.[Mr.
Byrne.]
The
Chairman:
Copies of any memorandums that the
Committee receives will be made available in the Committee Room. I now
call the Minister to move the motion to permit the Committee to sit in
private.
Ordered,
That, at this and any
subsequent meeting at which oral evidence is to be heard, the Committee
shall sit in private until the witnesses are
admitted.[Mr.
Byrne.]
Written evidence to be reported to the HouseUKB 01
Asylum Group of WarwickshireReligious Society of Friends
(Quakers)
UKB 02
Daon
UKB 03
Immigration Advisory
Service
UKB 04 Joint
Council for the Welfare of
Immigrants
UKB 05
Refugee Childrens
Consortium
UKB 06
Elizabeth Coleman
UKB
07 National Car
Parks
UKB 08
Immigration Law Practitioners
Association
The
Chairman:
Could I now ask that the Room be cleared
of members of the public please, in order that the Committee can
deliberate in private?
11.1
am
The
Committee deliberated in
private.
11.18
am
On
resuming
The
Chairman:
We will now hear oral evidence from the
representatives of the Home Office. I welcome the witnesses. Would the
Minister, Liam Byrne, like to introduce the team himself or ask them to
introduce
themselves?
Mr.
Byrne:
Thank you, Mr. Illsley. On my far
left is James Hall, the chief executive of the Identity and Passport
Service. On my immediate left is the Under-Secretary of State for the
Home Department, Joan Ryan. On my immediate right is Tony Smith,
director of UK border control at the immigration and nationality
directorate. On Tonys right is Stuart Hyde, director of
enforcement at the IND. On my far right is Bob Lauder, a deputy
director of the Serious Organised Crime
Agency.
The
Chairman:
Before I call the first Member to ask a
question, I remind the Committee that questions must be limited to the
provisions of the Bill. I understand that Mr. Byrne would
like to make a very short introductory statement, but once again, I
caution that it must relate to the contents of the
Bill.
Mr.
Byrne:
Absolutely. I want to explain the context of
the Bill. At 10 oclock this morning, we announced that we had
hit the Prime Ministers tipping point on asylum and that we had
removed more failed asylum seekers than came in during the year. The
point about this Bill is that the Governments ambition is to go
further than simply tackling asylum abuse, which is one of the subjects
of the Bill, towards tackling illegal immigration in the round. That is
why we have set out five key steps this year of which this Bill is
part. They deal with the extra powers for our immigration front line to
tackle illegal
immigration.
There
are three key themes that run throughout this Bill. First, stronger
powers to strengthen our border controls. Secondly, a range of extra
powers to tackle illegal immigration and the causes of illegal
immigration. Thirdly, new powers to secure much more effective identity
management in the future, because we know that one of the great
enablers of illegal immigration is the power to impersonate somebody
else or to destroy ones own
identity.
I hope that
is helpful by way of introduction to the context of the UK Borders
Bill.
Q
1
Damian
Green:
I want to start with the first section of the Bill,
Detention at ports, and the extra powers that the
Minister regards as necessary for immigration officers. Even before we
start the scrutiny of this Bill, the Scottish Executive have rejected
this section of it and said they will not enforce it in Scotland. Apart
from being a personal humiliation for the Minister, does this not mean
that if these powers are necessary to protect our borders, our borders
are not protected if the Scottish ports and airports do not have the
same system as English and Welsh ones.
Mr.
Byrne:
As I said on Second Reading, because the powers
that we seek for front-line immigration officers touch on devolved
matterssuch as,
specifically, policingthis is a devolved issue and it is
therefore something that the Scottish Executive would need to move
on.
With the Scottish
elections coming, obviously there is a great deal of pressure on the
legislative timetable in Scotland, but I am sure that this issue will
surface during the Scottish election campaign and that there are
political parties in Scotland that will bring forward proposals that
touch on this area. I am pretty confident about where my own party will
sit on this issue.
Operationally, the Committee
will be interested to know, there are many fewer international ports in
Scotland. There are many more in England and therefore, as the
Minister, I have had to satisfy myself that there is an operational
solution in place while these powers are not in place in Scotland. The
discussions that the Scottish Executive have had with ACPO Scotland
have given me reassurance on that
point.
Q
2
Damian
Green:
I am sure that people in Scotland and in the rest
of Britain will find that answer amazingly complacent. If these powers
are necessary to protect ports in England and Wales, they are necessary
to protect them in Scotland. Unless the Minister is proposing to
rebuild Hadrians wall, if the Scottish ports and airports are
unsafeas presumably he must regard them as being, if his
legislation is not being passed in Scotlandthe whole country is
unsafe. I remind him that his party is the leading party in the
Scottish Executive. What have they told him as to why it is unnecessary
there? If, as I understand from newspaper reports, they are saying that
there are more police at Scottish ports than at English ports and
airports, what is he doing to remedy the situation in England and
Wales?
Mr.
Byrne:
These proposals are about how progressively we
strengthen the part that immigration officers can play in securing our
borders over the years to come and how we can strengthen the ability of
immigration officers to play their part not just in the fight against
illegal immigration, but in the battle against trafficking and human
smuggling, as well as in national security. Examples have been given to
me, for instance, of where UK citizens have facilitated the arrival of
people illegally in British ports where there are problems in detaining
somebody who is a British
citizen.
These are not
powers that will be implemented overnight. They will be implemented
over the months to come. Because they touch on matters that are subject
to devolution, it is absolutely right that the Scottish Executive move
on them. In the run-up to the elections, I can quite understand that
pressure on the legislative timetable is tough, but it is for political
parties in ScotlandI hope that the Conservatives and the
Liberal Democrats will include this in their manifestosto make
proposals to strengthen border controls with measures such as this. I
am sure that voters in Scotland will look quite closely at this
matter.
It would be
quite wrong to cast aspersions on the police in Scotland. They have a
strong history of work in this area and they do their job well. If ACPO
Scotland and the Scottish Executive can provide me with assurances that
the Scottish police will continue to play that role, it is right for me
to accept them.
Q
3
Chris
Mole (Ipswich) (Lab): My constituents are less bothered
about what happens in Scotland than what happens in the ports of
Ipswich and Felixstowe. Those who work there are regularly frustrated
to see people legging it off the back of a ship and making their way
out of the port or, even worse, being directed by staff to head to
Croydon, where the immigration and nationality directorate head office
is. What will the Bill do to change that perception of insecurity on
our
borders?
Mr.
Byrne:
As I said in my introductory remarks,
the Bill does not stand in isolation from the other reforms that the
Home Secretary is driving through in IND. This mornings
announcement that we now remove more failed asylum seekers than we get
in or make claims each year is an important step for IND along the road
of reform that the Home Secretary set out last
year.
The Bill is part
of a package that includes additional resources to strengthen
front-line enforcement and removalmeasures that we will
announce shortlyand much more effective use of technology, not
just to count people in and out of the country, but to help us to
secure peoples identity. We will also make stronger
international alliances, because we know that we cannot tackle illegal
immigration on our own in a globalising world. We need to be able to
share information with foreign frontier forces, so that we can build a
combined picture of people who seek to break immigration
rules.
In addition to
that is this package of extra powers, which includes not only stronger
powers for immigration officers to protect our borders, but a range of
powers that strengthen our ability to tackle illegal immigration
in-country and the cause of illegal immigration, which we know is
illegal
working.
Q
4
Paul
Rowen:
What discussions has the Minister had with airport
and ports authorities about how the Bill will operate
Bill?
Mr.
Byrne:
I suggest that Tony Smith, the director of UK
border control, answer that question in a moment. By way of
introduction, I should say that, for some time now, there has been a
programme called the border management programme, which brings together
police, customs and immigration officers to talk about how,
collectively, we can work more effectively to share intelligence and
create a single intervention at the
border.
There is no
legal barrier to stop a customs officer and an immigration officer
playing each others roles. Under, I think, section 8 of the
Customs and Excise Management Act 1979, there is a power for Treasury
Ministers to designate an immigration officer to have customs powers.
Equally, the Immigration Act 1971 contains a power for the Home
Secretary to designate a customs officer to have immigration
powers.
Let
us look at the powers that the police already have to stop and search.
They have a number of powers that ACPO argues are more than effective.
Under schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act 2000, officers of all those
agencies have the power to act as the examining officer for the
purposes of the schedule. There are no legal barriers to
officers on the front line taking each others roles, but the
border management programme provides a practical drive to secure that
inter-agency joint
working.
So,
if you went to Blackpool, you would see police performing some
immigration roles; if you went to Coquelles, you would see customs
officers performing some of the roles that immigration officers
perform, and if you went to Gatwick, you would see immigration officers
performing customs roles. There are no legal barriers to that, which is
why the idea of a single border agency is difficult, because it
involves an enormous amount of disruption for not much gain. Perhaps I
could ask you, Tony, to talk a little about the type of consultation
that agencies have carried out in order to produce a Bill like
this.
Tony
Smith:
We work closely with the travel industry at
national and local level on a range of issues relating to border
crossings at airports, sea ports, and of course by rail. Regarding the
specific powers in the Bill to detain people for three hours on behalf
of the police, we do not think that there will be a massive impact on
the industry. We are seeking to establish our authority as the primary
line holder, which is how we term it in the business. That is to say
that the UK has immigration officers acting on its primary line; they
are the people that you see when you show your passport when you enter
this country. Those immigration officers are working under the
Immigration Act 1971, as amended, which gives us a range of powers and
authorities over foreign nationals. However, regarding non-foreign
nationals who we findas we collect more information on
travellersmay be coming to the UK to cause harm, if one of my
officers encounters such an individual in the course of their duties
operating the passport controls wherever they may be, we would like to
have a system under which we can at least hold that person when there
is not a police officer immediately present, so that that person can be
properly handed over to the parent organisationthe
policeto enable them to take forward the individual case,
howsoever they may wish to do that, for example establishing whether
there is a warrant for that persons arrest, or whether there
has been some other criminal act or some other reason why the police
would want to detain them. That is the missing piece; for the first
time, the Bill would enable immigration officers to detain, for a
limited period, non-foreign nationals on the basis that they would be
of interest to another agency.
Mr.
Byrne:
Some of my colleagues might like us to add a
word about the success of a program called e-Borders. What e-Borders
allows us to do essentially is to screen peoples names against
a range of Government databases, in order to identify people who may be
of concern to the authorities. That is why identity technology is so
important. For example, regarding our ability in the future to issue
biometric visas, which will cover about three quarters of the
worlds population by the end of 2008, plus anyone from the 169
non-EEA countries who would like to come to this country to work, study
or stay for longer than six months, as we ask those individuals to
apply for a biometric visa we are acquiring much greater assurance
about their true identity. That means that,
once they check in, the e-Borders name-based screening technology, which
is already widely used by the Americans, becomes far more effective.
However, it may produce a number of cases where we are identifying
British citizens who are of concern to the authorities, and it could be
the case at international ports in the UKthere are about 44
such ports in Englandthat it will be down to immigration
officers, in the first instance, to detain such individuals. Tony,
would you like to add something about the impact that e-Borders has had
already?
Tony
Smith:
Absolutely. E-Borders is a programme similar
to the techniques being used by many modern border control authorities
around the world. It aims to capture as much information as possible
about travellers before they arrive at the physical frontier. That
happens through a process of engagement with the carrying companies on
data called advanced passenger information, which is captured routinely
by them as part of the travel continuum. It also aims to give us the
capacity to run that information against our watch lists. In a way, we
are exporting the border. We are giving our officers advance notice
that something is coming at them, which gives us the opportunity to
analyse that information and establish an interventions process when
that person arrives.
Ultimately we would like
e-Borders to introduce something called the authority-to-carry scheme.
That would mean that if someone was coming to this country to cause a
serious harm and we had the powers to exclude them, we would not
authorise the airline to carry them in the first place because there
was an alert. We would instead invite them to present themselves to the
nearest mission or embassy overseas to clarify their process of
admissibility before we granted clearance. It is really about gathering
more information and establishing the identity and the entitlement of
someone to travel prior to their arrival here and exporting the border.
That is what we would like to progress as our border control strategy
for the
future.
Q
5
Paul
Rowen:
I was interested in what the Minister said about
the fact that a range of officers operating at ports already have
authority to co-operate and interchange. Has consideration been given
to widening that and making best use of available resources? I visited
Manchester airport last week and it would be very supportive of the
idea. It has problems at certain peak times because the officers are
not inter-operational. It would see that as a positive benefit and a
first step towards a unified border
force.
Mr.
Byrne:
I am not surprised to hear the comments from
Manchester airport. It reflects comments that are made to me when I
visit border posts up and down the country. I come back to something
that I said earlier. To date there is no significant legal barrier to
producing the alignment of powers. Nor is there a legal barrier to
creating an interoperable front line where officers from one service
can take on roles that are performed by others. That kind of approach
has some benefits over and above a big bang reorganisation and the
creation of a single border agency which, I fear, might be a recipe for
disorder at our border. Making sure that the right individual with the
right specialism
is playing the right role and also able to take on a wider range of
powers is a much better
solution.
No
one argues for the merger of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force.
People recognise that different organisations have different latent
strengths. When you visit countries that have gone down the path of a
single border agency over the last few years, it is not too long before
you come across front-line officers who basically say, Well, it
was very expensive, it was very disruptive, it is five years on and we
have not moved much further forward. Although you might
encounter officers with the same cap badge on the primary line, when
you are taken to a secondary line you notice that all the different
units that made up that agency are still operating as different units
and performing their
specialisms.
We
believe that the objectives of the single border agencywe
respect the arguments that are made for a single border agency and I
remain open-minded about thiscan be achieved by ensuring that
there is an equalisation of powers behind our current front line. Part
of the answer is the UK Borders Bill, which will ensure that our
immigration officers have the range of powers that they argue are
needed. But there is still the legal machinery set out in the Customs
and Excise Management Act 1979, the Immigration Act 1971 and the
Terrorism Act 2000, which enables us to equalise powers where we think
that is sensible. The border management programme gives us an
opportunity not simply to test this stuff in theory, but to test it in
practice on a case-by-case basis. Tony, you might just want to say a
little bit more about some of the case studies where we are deploying
the border management programme and where the travelling public can see
some of the
differences.
Tony
Smith:
We have a programme under way called the
border management programme. That regularly brings together the border
control agencies to discuss joint ways of working and, under that
programme, we have undertaken some trials in the last year or
so.
The first one to
refer to is probably at Gatwick airport, where immigration officers are
now acting as the primary interventions agency on behalf of other
agents. Therefore, customs officers and police officers are providing
us with specific information about people that would interest them,
while our immigration officers are using the customs authorities to
identify people that may be of interest to customs, and to pass such
persons over to them. I have had reports back from customs at Gatwick
airport that this programme has been successful for them, because
immigration control at the airport is universal. Everybody gets stopped
at immigration control to show their passport, and where we have that
primary line facility it makes good sense for us to use intelligence
provided to us by other agenciesand to help them capture people
that might not be of direct interest to immigration control, but might
well be to customs.
The other example I would give
is in the freight search areas, where customs and myself both have
freight search teams. Existing legislation empowers us to enable
customs officers to act as immigration officers in certain specified
circumstances, and we have exercised that option so that in certain
parts of the country such as Harwich, or down on the south coast in
Poole and Bournemouthor even over in France at
Coquellescustoms officers can deal with people who
they find hidden in vehicles even though their search was, in the first
instance, for contraband.
So, there is already a platform
available for us to do this and we intend to continue to make best use
of it.
Mr.
Byrne:
This programme of equalisation of powers at the
border is part of a new philosophy of border control, which starts with
much tougher checks on people abroad and the introduction of the
authority-to-carry system. That will allow us to deny those individuals
that we think have no right to come to Britain from being offloaded
from a plane or, perhaps, to stop them at a juxtaposed control. It
should be remembered that last year, at our juxtaposed controls in
Calais alone, we stopped 17,000 potentially illegal immigrants in that
one year. So, it is offshore controls first; then, stronger and
equalised powers at the borderthe primary and secondary line
being here in the UKand, thirdly, much stronger in-country
activity to shut down the causes of illegal immigration, which we know
to be illegal working and, often, the organised crime that is involved
in people trafficking and smuggling.
Q
6
Paul
Rowen:
Given what the Minister has briefly said there, why
has he not taken the opportunity to regularise some of those things in
the Bill, and to move them forward?
Mr.
Byrne:
The question of amnesties was put to me by a
Committee just across the corridor not long after I became Immigration
Minister. At the time, I said that I was new to the job and genuinely
kept an open mind on that question. The logic of the argument put to me
was that providing the ability for people to come to this country
illegallyand then to head straight to the front of the queue
for work permitswould act as a draw for illegal immigration and
make it harder, not easier, for us to control it.
We have to conduct this debate
in tones of respect. Illegal migrants are not coming to this country
because they are necessarily evil people, but because they are in
search of a better life. They are often ruthlessly and systematically
exploited by organised crime, and in-country by businesses that
systematically break the rules. The Committee will be interested to
know that in the pilot work that we have done in the west midlands,
where we have found businesses breaking the rules and employing people
illegally they also happen to be breaking every other labour protection
rule in the book. They are not paying national minimum wage, or
operating in conditions that are healthy or safe. Frequently, they are
not paying their taxes either. We are talking about serial offenders,
who prey on and exploit illegal migrants. None the less, I do not think
that regularisation will help; it will make the situation more
difficult to
police.
The
Chairman: I remind Members and witnesses to keep questions and
answers succinct and to the point.
Q
7
David
T.C. Davies:
We are talking about giving immigration
officers significant extra powers. That is not necessarily a bad thing.
However, there are implications, one of which is that there will be a
rise in compensation claims against the IND. Can you give us
a rough ballpark figure as to how much the IND paid out in compensation
claims, in and out of court, in the last year for which you have
figures, plus a estimate of what you expect the increase to be as a
result of the increased powers of immigration
officers?
Mr.
Byrne:
It is an important point. I have not brought
those figures with me, but I shall be happy to provide them for the
Committee. Mr. Davies touches on a wider point, which is
whether we have made provision for the right kind of protections and
oversight for the powers that we are providing. Tony, can I ask you and
Stuart whether you want to add anything? We plan to make an oversight
regime available, so that the legitimate travelling public can have the
confidence that there will not be abuses of power if the House chooses
to put these new powers on the statute book.
Tony
Smith:
Let me put that in the context of the border
and ports of entry. The immigration service already has holding
facilities at all major points of entry, in which it can hold foreign
nationals under immigration laws. Those are in use now. Standards that
have already been developed are being renewed in relation to the
circumstances under which people will be held in those places. Our plan
is to use the existing processes for the short period during which we
will hold people under the new powers, and if minor adjustments are
needed to those processes we will make them. We already have the
infrastructure in place.
Stuart
Hyde:
Just to finish that point, IND staff,
particularly immigration officers, will be subject to Independent
Police Complaints Commission oversight. We have agreed on that and are
funding
it.
Q
8
David
T.C. Davies:
Briefly, Minister, thank you so much for your
offer. I have been trying to get that information for the past year,
and you say that you can write to the Committee, presumably in the next
two weeks, with the figures for the amount of compensation paid out by
the IND in the last year for which you have
figures.
Q
9
David
T.C. Davies:
I am grateful. Just one final, separate,
point. Do you agree that immigration officers who could be dealing with
potentially difficult clients should have the ability to use pepper
spray and some sort of baton like that used by the police, and to
undergo training for
that?
Mr.
Byrne:
I shall ask Tony to make a comment about the
general philosophy of staff protection. However, by way of
introduction, I would make the point that we are not asking in this
Bill for the power to arrest. If we were to introduce such police
powers, we would have to consider the much wider implications of how
the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 would be
applied.
By and large,
ports are operated by the private sector. If we wanted to arrest and
detain people in the
way in which the police are able to arrest and detain people at port, I
would have had to present the House with a regulatory impact assessment
which would have said that I am going to ask for PACE-style police
stations, custody suites and custody officers at all ports in England
and Wales. I do not think that the House would have looked very kindly
on that proposal. The powers that we are asking for are different. We
are asking for the power to detain and to conduct searches. Tony, you
might like to add a little about the philosophy of protection, because
that is an important point that is well made.
Tony
Smith:
Absolutely. We detain people now. We detain
significant numbers of foreign nationals at the border, and I am
pleased to say that the majority are compliant. That is not to say that
we do not need to build capacity to deal with people who are not
compliant. We will develop that capacity in any case. I cannot tell you
in detail what a use of force policy might look like at the border;
that would require further consideration in terms of some of the tools
that you mention. Most of the people who come to us at the border have
already been through significant security checks to get on board the
aircraft before they reach us, so the context is slightly
different.
Stuart may
have something more for you on the equipment available to immigration
officers, if that is helpful.
Stuart
Hyde:
Immigration officers have a range of protective
equipment, all of which is subject to the same standards of training
and risk assessment as police officers. Yesterday I was out on
a raid on a hotel and the officers were equipped with stab vests to
protect themselves.
There is a training regime.
There is an assessment regime and IND staff have been trained in arrest
techniques. That same training will be applicable in the ports as it is
in dealing with outside organisations.
The
Chairman:
We have spent about 35 minutes on this one
section; if there is time towards the end of the sitting, we may return
to it. Let us move on to clauses 5 to 15 on biometric
registration.
Q
10
Damian
Green (Ashford) (Con): Rather than attempt to discuss the
principle, which we have done on many occasions and will no doubt do
again, I want to take an individual point from the evidence that has
been submitted by Daon, which is a company that provides biometric
systems for the American and Australian Governments. Its people are
presumably enthusiasts, as the Minister is for this. Their evidence is
fascinating. They say that
biometrics are not fool proof.
Two biometrics from the same person may fail to match (a false
negative). Conversely, two biometrics from different
individuals may appear to match (a false positive).
When dealing with large enrolled populations and high volumes of
transactions, these error rates become a critical operational
consideration.
When
the people who produce the biometric kit say that if it is used in the
way that the Minister intends to use it, large numbers of errors will
result, does he not worry? Has he made any estimate of what sort of
percentage of errors there will be?
Mr.
Byrne:
I shall ask James Hall to talk about the detail
of this. I note we are talking about two biometrics rather than 10 or
11, if you include facial biometrics. I hope that we will have the
chance to talk about the issue in principle in the future because I
think the hon. Gentleman would agree that when we have a situation
where foreign nationals are able to offer up to 50 or 60 different
20th-century, insecure paper-based documents there is a good case for
phasing them all out and introducing a single, more secure biometric
document and compulsory ID cards for foreign nationals so that it is
much easier to verify whether somebody is who they say they are and
whether they have the right to public benefits or the right to work.
This will obviously be impossible to deliver if we cancel the contract
for ID systems because, as we explained at Christmas, the systems for
issuing biometric visas, which is important to help our e-Borders
system run effectively, and compulsory ID cards for foreign nationals,
will all sit on the national identity register. James, perhaps you
could say something about the efficacy of biometrics and biometric
matching?
James
Hall:
Daon obviously identified that no new
technology, or indeed any technology, is 100 per cent foolproof. That
is, of course, correct. We already have large-scale experience of the
use of biometrics, particularly in IND, which already collects
biometric information, both with visas and for asylum
seekers.
One of the
things that Daon recognised is that you do get a percentage of false
matches, and it has a capability specifically dedicated to resolving
those issues. In our planning for the broader national identity scheme
we have recognised and costed into our thinking the fact that we
likewise will need some sort of specialist capability for dealing with
those false matches.
I do not have to hand our
estimates of the percentage of those false matches but we have done
some assumptions and we have scaled the sort of capability we think
will be needed in proportion to what we have
estimated.
Mr.
Byrne:
The point to underline is that there will never
be any substitute for an immigration officer. We consistently provide
our immigration officers with the resources, the training and the
powers to undertake the roles that they play with the professionalism
that they bring to their job, but where there are tools that will help
them to conduct that work more effectively, particularly to help to
establish peoples identity, we should use
them.
The
Chairman:
Before the next question, may I ask Members and
witnesses to come back within the scope of the
Bill?
Q
11
Damian
Green:
I want to pick up something that Mr.
Hall said. He said that you have made estimates of the likely false
matches. It would obviously be extremely helpful if those estimates
could be made available to the Committee.
Mr.
Byrne:
As I said to Mr. Davies earlier, I
will look at what IND and the Identity and Passport Service are able to
provide that I think will be useful. I will seek to provide that to the
Committee in good time.
Q
12
Paul
Rowen:
I want to ask about biometric identity documents
for children and the issue of unstable biometrics. Why does clause 6(3)
require children to have biometric
ID?
Mr.
Byrne:
We already ask children from the age of five to
apply for biometric passports. Foreign nationals in this country who
are under the age of 18 or 16 will currently have some kind of
immigration-related documentation that establishes, seeks to establish
or purports to establish, not only their identity but their entitlement
to be in this country and the conditions of the leave they are being
granted. My chief concern is that, just as for adults, those documents
will be insecure, 20th century documents. The technology now exists and
runs at a scale to provide a more secure alternative. Where there is an
alternative that is more secure we should use it. Establishing
peoples identity and their entitlement to be here is
fundamental to providing secure immigration
control.
Q
13
Paul
Rowen:
Would the Minister make available the
Departments estimates of the unreliability of these data for
children? That is the crux of the
issue.
Mr.
Byrne:
I shall be happy to look at what the Department
can provide in good time for the Committees
debates.
Q
14
Paul
Rowen:
Secondly, given that you will require people abroad
to get biometric data when they apply to come into this country, what
estimate have you made of the effects on foreign posts and whether the
officers will be able to process this information? At a busy post like
Islamabad, people wait four or five months to get a visa issued once it
has been granted. What additional resources will you make available and
what is the estimate of the additional cost to operate that at busy
posts?
Mr.
Byrne:
That is an important point. Like the hon.
Gentleman, I have a large number of constituents who frequently visit
places like Pakistan. Over the next two or three years there will be a
revolution in the way that UK Visas runs its operations. We will be
introducing biometric visas throughout the world. There are also
questions about whether our current visa regime extends widely enough
around the world. It is so fundamental that we introduce tougher checks
abroad before we give people permission to come to this country that I
think that is a question we must ask ourselves over the next few weeks
and months.
Over the
next week or two UK Visas will be signing a series of contracts with
partners around the world to make it much easier for people to apply.
Obviously we are introducing the points-based system, which will also
have changes, not for people who are coming to visit, but for those who
are coming to work or study. Because of the introduction of biometric
visas and of the points-based system, we will need partners to help us.
They will provide additional offices, process, knowledge,
infrastructure and technology so that the issue is as easy as
possible.
Sometimes,
it is absolutely right for an entry clearance officer to conduct
in-depth background
checks. That is what they are paid to do. We have set out public service
agreement targets that govern the way in which UK Visas operates. They
are among the most ambitious targets in the world for providing visas.
When I talk to my constituents, they say that UK Visas has done a
fantastic job. Since the reopening of the office in Islamabad, after it
had to close for security reasons a few years ago, volume growth
through that post has been absolutely enormous. The staff of UK Visas
have done an excellent job in making sure that there is the right
balance between checks on people abroad, and the provision of a good
quality and, where necessary, rapid
service.
Q
15
Mr.
Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con): I shall ask more
general questions, then a specific one. First, a general question to
the Minister. Why is so much of the detail about biometric registration
left to secondary legislation, when will the regulations be published
and what level of consultation does he envisage
occurring?
Mr.
Byrne:
That is an extremely fair question. There are a
couple of reasons why there will need to be regulations, which will be
reasonably detailed. Let me try to sketch out a couple of reasons.
First, there are something like 3.4 million foreign nationals already
in Britain. As we change the systems that we operate over the next few
years, we will be asking everybody seeking to come to this country from
a visa country or to work, study or stay for longer than six months to
go through the process of applying for a biometric visa. So they will
have a biometric identity before they come anywhere near our islands.
However, that leaves the question of how we roll out biometric identity
documents for the estimated 3.4 million foreign nationals who are
already here.
Those
foreign nationals will fall into a number of different categories.
There are those who are working in particular high-risk sectors, and
others whom we just happen to see during the course of our ordinary
business each year. A good example of those would be students who are
already here and who are seeking to extend their leave. Another example
would be those foreign nationals who have old passports and who want to
transfer conditions to a new document. There are potentially 300,000,
400,000 or 500,000 people who IND would see in Britain during the
course of a normal business year. What we have to construct is the
right roll-out plan for biometric immigration documents. We are
starting with none of those 3.4 million people with biometric
immigration documents; we want to get to a situation where they all
have them.
The
question for us is: what path do we take to 100 per cent.? My
argument is that the path that we should be seeking to take should be
guided by two principles: efficiency and risk. First, that means that
we should be seeking to introduce biometric immigration documents to
those people whom we happen to see in any given year. Secondly, there
are particular parts of the economy that are especially vulnerable to
illegal working, and I have provided to the House in a number of
parliamentary answers a breakdown of where those
sectors are, and of where we end up detaining more people and what
sectors they work in.
There are particular sectors
where we should be seeking to introduce biometric immigration documents
first. However, I do not think that we should impose that solution on
industry or business by diktat. We are going to have to work closely
with good employers in the private sector, who want to drive out
illegal immigration, in order to get that roll-out plan right. That
plan is the subject of some detail, so I think that it would be
inappropriate to specify that on the face of the Bill.
There is a minor technical
question, which is that it is important to ensure that the
specification of the technology that we use is common across the EU.
The EU is obviously bringing in a directive for biometric residence
permits in the not too distant future, and it is important that we take
account of the specifications that that entails. That is another area
where there are elements of detail that mean that it would be
inappropriate to put specifications on the face of the Bill but there
is quite a lot of detail still to set out.
It is important that we ensure
a good deal of parliamentary scrutiny of such regulations. That is why
any regulations proposed under the powers that we are seeking under the
Bill will be subject to affirmative resolution in both Houses. I cannot
be too specific on the question of the timetable, but my commitment is
that we will start to roll out biometric immigration documents for
foreign nationals in 2008, which means that we need the regulations in
place, debated, scrutinised and made ready in good time for us to set
up the systems that will allow us to roll them out in the first
place.
Mr.
Byrne:
I am happy to incorporate consultation, because it
is essential if we are to get the sectors right. As I said, we cannot
impose biometric immigration documents on sectors of the economy
without collaboration. When we talk to organisations such as National
Car Parks, from which I am glad to see that we will be taking evidence
over the weeks to come, we see that a huge number of excellent
employers have high standards of risk management and believe, rightly,
that there is damage to be done to corporate reputations if people are
caught employing illegal immigrants. I want to move quite quickly to a
situation where we name and shame employers who employ people
illegally, and as we increase the risk to businesses of employing
people illegally we will see far greater co-operation, and a much
greater appetite for that co-operation, in making it more transparent
and easier to establish that someone is who they say they are and
whether they have the right to work. The consultation has to be part of
getting the roll-out strategy right. I hope that that is
clearer.
Q
17
Mr.
Jackson:
Thank you. I shall try to be brief with my second
question. Your colleague, the Under-Secretary, told my colleague, my
hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), recently
that the number of passports lost by the relevant
Department had gone from 691 to more than 1,000 in
respect of secure delivery in just two years. It is estimated that some
1,000 will be lost this year. The nub of the issue is about the
security of biometric data. How secure do you think they will be? Who
will have access to them? How will the data be collected in the first
place?
Mr.
Byrne:
That is an excellent question. Let me ask James
Hall to come in with some of the detail. The point that I would make by
way of introduction is that as we introduce biometric immigration
documents it is important that we strengthen the verification process,
which we use to check whether someone is who they say they are. That is
why we want to introduce authentication by interview. It is important
that those provisions are in place so that the standard of checking is
higher. James, do you want to add a little bit, and something about
technical security as well, if you want?
James
Hall:
Let me quickly address the issue of lost
passports. That was an issue about four years ago when we used first
class Royal Mail to deliver passports. As you identified, we
implemented a secure delivery system that has significantly cut the
numbers from about 3,500 to 650 in the first year, about 1,000 in the
second year, and our estimate is that the number will be about 700 this
year. To put that in context, that figure comes from the more than 6
million passports that we issue every year, and contrasts with the
nearly 800 passports that are reported as lost or stolen to us every
day by members of the public. All those passports, whether lost in
delivery or lost by a member of the public, are immediately cancelled
and put on the watch lists that were referred to earlier.
In terms of
the security of biometric information, if you had the opportunity to
read the strategic action plan you will have read that one of the
things that we have done in our design of the national identity scheme
is to split physically the national identity register into three
components: one relating to biographic information, one relating to
biometric information and one relating to some technical security
issues. One of the benefits of doing that is that we are, first of all,
able cost-effectively to store that biometric information to very high
security standards accredited by our security agencies. We are also
able to allow slightly broader access for accredited staff to the
biographic information, without the great majority of them ever needing
to review and see the biometric information. In fact, the numbers of
people to have complete access to both biographic and biometric
information on an individual can be very
small.
We believe that
the change in the design of the national identity scheme that we
developed last summer and published in our report in December heightens
our security arrangements. That design will be used for information
both on UK nationals and on foreign nationals, which will be collected
as part of issuing those biometric immigration
documents.
The
Chairman:
Now we move on to the next section of the Bill,
Treatment of claimants, clauses 16 to 19. I again ask
for brief responses from the
witnesses.
David
T.C. Davies:
My questions have been covered. I appreciate
that the Minister is going to write to me. In fairness, he said that he
was going to write to me in September, but I have not received the
letter yet.
Q
18
Paul
Rowen:
May I ask the Minister what has prompted the
Government to bring forward the proposals? How will the proposals
operate in practice? How many people does he envisage being subject to
them? What arrangements will be put in place for those people who have
the reporting restriction added to their
conditions?
Mr.
Byrne:
May I ask my colleague, Joan Ryan, to address
that? However, the broad ambition is to strengthen the immigration
system.
Joan
Ryan:
The main purpose of clause 16 is to improve
contact management with particular categories that are granted limited
leave. As we made clear, in the first instance we would seek to apply
that to unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. The second category we
identified was foreign-national prisoners, who we have legal barriers
to returning, mainly because of European convention on human rights
legislation.
Why
are we doing this now? In the IND review, the Home Secretary and my
hon. Friend the Minister gave a public commitment to ensure and enforce
compliance with our immigration laws. Maintaining contact management
enables us to do just that. There are other reasons, such as the
welfare and protection of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.
Maintaining contact with them could be very important to protecting
them against abuse, misuse and trafficking uses in-country. At the
moment, if we want to maintain that kind of contact, we can only do so
on a voluntary
basis.
We
currently have the ability to place conditions on people with limited
leave. The clause simply adds two more conditions: restricting
residency, and reporting restrictions. We add those to the restrictions
currently available: employment, maintenance of accommodation, and
registration with the police. We think that the provision will
contribute by allowing us to attach the conditions and therefore make
it easier for IND to maintain contact and to enforce removal from the
UK should leave be curtailed. We are clear about the purpose. It is
about enforcing compliance, but it also can have other purposes, such
as those that I outlined in relation to unaccompanied asylum-seeking
children.
Q
19
Paul
Rowen:
On that last point, the Minister did not answer the
question about the numbers. I should be interested if some estimate
could be given to us, as to how many are expected and what categories
will be applied. On the subject of children, does she not accept that
there are other, more appropriate agencies, which perhaps have better
skills for dealing with children and already have contact with
unaccompanied children, than immigration officers? If immigration
officers are going to be used, what additional training will they be
given and will they be compliant with child protection legislation and,
for example, the police
check?
Joan
Ryan:
Of course we intend to work with other agencies,
particularly social workers and others that are involved, in agreeing
how these measures would go forward. However, we already have an
end-to-end
process and therefore it is appropriate, given that immigration officers
have the primary responsibility regarding the presence of an
unaccompanied asylum-seeking child in this country, for them to have a
key role in dealing with such children. We expect that they will work
with other agencies that are involved with the care and welfare of an
unaccompanied asylum-seeking child.
You asked me
about numbers. I can discuss the two categories that we have
identified. First, regarding foreign national ex-prisoners whom we
cannot return at a particular point in time because of legal barriers,
we expect their numbers to be small, not necessarily even running into
the hundreds. Secondly, regarding asylum-seeking children who are
granted leave, the numbers are likely to be a little more significant.
We had 1,960 grants of discretionary leave at initial decision to this
category in 2005. However, since then we have had a sharp drop, of
about 26 per cent., in applications from asylum-seeking children, and
certainly we anticipate that that decline will continue.
You asked me about the training
of immigration officers for the treatment of unaccompanied
asylum-seeking children; we have specially trained immigration officers
who deal with such
children.
Mr.
Byrne:
I shall ask Stuart to comment on that shortly.
It was a Conservative Minister, Charles Wardle, who said in 1993 that
unaccompanied asylum-seeking children would not be deported until they
came of age and that is a convention that we have respected. At the
moment, we are not working closely enough with unaccompanied
asylum-seeking children to begin planning the process of return much
earlier in their lives, and often that means that individuals are
confronted with that state of affairs when they come of age. It is
important that we begin that process of planning removal and
deportation much earlier and that is why reporting restrictions and
contact management are absolutely fundamental.
Stuart, you
might want to add something about child protection, because it is an
important issue, one that IND takes seriously. Some of these points
will be in a consultation document that we will issue on unaccompanied
asylum-seeking children in the next few days. Again, we have tried to
ensure that the document will be issued and released before the stand
part debate takes place. Stuart, would you like to add something
else?
Stuart
Hyde:
Just to provide some reassurance, I personally
sit on the national safeguarding board representing IND. I have
extensive experience in managing child protection staff within the
police service. We are developing our own child safeguarding strategy;
that will be implemented among our staff. We are also in the process of
creating fairly innovative trainingnot just highly specific
training for some officers but more general training for all our staff
on how to manage children under our safeguarding strategy, so that they
will have a clear understanding of the responsibilities that we have to
protect the rights of children and to ensure that their safety is of
uppermost importance. We are also developing working relationships with
the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre and the United
Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre to ensure that we have a joined-up
approach across law enforcement.
Q
20
Chris
Mole:
May I ask the Minister, or perhaps the
Under-Secretary, about what processes exist to determine whether an
applicant is a minor? There are documented examples of youthful
claimants who purport to be minors, but later turn out not to have
been. That has created problems of minors with whom they come into
contact being put at risk.
Mr.
Byrne:
That issue is absolutely crucial. It is so
important because we cannot have adults in the childrens system
in this country. Equally, we cannot have children in the adults
system. Establishing and verifying somebodys correct age is
essential, to the extent that we can and that science allows
us.
Very often, of
course, people seek to mislead the immigration service about an
individuals age. There has been a lot of debate about how it
might be best to identify an individuals age. There have been
arguments in august journals such as The Guardian about whether,
for example, dental X-rays are appropriate as a means of establishing a
childs age.
The issue that we have to
confront is that if you undertake X-rays of wrists or collar bones, you
are able to verify somebodys age only plus or minus five years.
That is quite a big range. As I understand it and as it has been
explained to me, the truth is that if you use different methods, such
as dental X-rays, that range is reduced from plus or minus five years
to plus or minus two years. That is a significant difference in respect
of the welfare of children. One of the key issues on which we shall
seek to consult as part of our reform proposals on unaccompanied asylum
seeking children is what is the best, most effective way of
establishing a childs age.
As I said, a
fundamental principle is at stake: we cannot have children in the
adults system and we cannot and must not have adults in the
childrens
system.
Q
21
Damian
Green:
I am puzzled that the context of this discussion is
unaccompanied asylum seeking children. The regulatory impact assessment
says that clause 16 is about those who have committed serious crimes,
and the Bill involves tough, punitive measures imposing conditions on
people. Will the Minister clear that up? Are those measures meant to
improve our control over serious criminals or are they meant to
increase the protection of unaccompanied children? It seems slightly
strange to try to do both with the same set of
measures.
Joan
Ryan:
Clause 16 amends an existing statutory
provisionsection 3 of the Immigration Act 1971. The clause is
broad, in that it can apply to any group given limited leave.
Obviously, it will achieve different things for different groups. We
have identified two groups to whom we seek to apply the measures in the
first instance; the clause and the restrictions that we seek to add
will achieve different things in respect of unaccompanied asylum
seeking children and monitoring foreign national prisoners.
However, they
can also achieve the same thing: the protection and welfare of
unaccompanied asylum seeking
children. It is also clear that we shall seek to use the restrictions to
ensure compliance in respect of being able to remove when an
unaccompanied asylum seeking child reaches age 18. Equally, when it is
possible to remove a foreign national ex-prisonerwhen the legal
barriers are overcomewe would seek to remove them also.
Reporting and residency restrictions are to help us maintain contact
management, which will send a clear message, make removal easier and
provide protection and welfare. We can apply existing sanctions if
there is non-compliance. The measures can achieve different outcomes or
the same outcomes for different groups.
Q
22
Paul
Rowen:
Why were not some of these provisions introduced in
the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act
2006?
Mr.
Byrne
:
It is difficult for me to speak for my
predecessors. All I can say is that when the gaps were drawn to my
attention, I thought that it was impossible to fill
them.
Mr.
Byrne
:
I shall ask Joan Ryan to say a little
bit about trafficking and I shall ask Tony and Bob to add what I hope
will be some useful
scenarios.
Mr.
Byrne
:
Yes, on trafficking facilitation. Could
you just sketch out the broad purpose? It is one of those areas in
which scenarios are terrifically useful, both to understand
the provisions of extra-territoriality and to clarify the law about
when somebody is considered to be in Britain for the purposes of the
offence.
Joan
Ryan
:
Briefly, I shall try to provide some
clarity. Clause 25 refers to facilitation. The issue is when one enters
and arrives. We are seeking to extend the scope of evidence admissible
in court to acts of facilitation that are committed when an asylum
seeker has entered the country, that is to say stepped off an
aeroplane, but before they have arrived, which means before they have
crossed the border line and been given the right to entry by an
immigration officer. There have been issues in the courts concerning
evidence of an act committed in that gap between entry and arrival and
whether it can be admissible in court. Clearly, we think that it should
be. We have made changes in the past; we used enter but
the court wanted arrival, so there is still that issue
that we want to resolve, because we are having difficulty prosecuting
people who commit acts of facilitation in that gap. I am sure that an
example would illuminate that
point.
Clause
26 is about facilitation and territoriality. We want to extend our
ability to prosecute those who facilitate entry knowingly and for the
gain of illegal asylum seekers. For gain is a crucial
point, as is illegal entry. We want to extend our territoriality so
that acts
that are committed outside the UK come into the scope of our courts. We
want to be able to cover not only perpetrators who are British
nationals; non-British nationals are out of our scope at the moment and
are having a significant impact on the UK in facilitating illegal
entry.
Mr.
Byrne
:
Let me ask Bob to say a little bit from
the Serious Organised Crime Agency perspective about some of the
characters that we are dealing with. I shall then ask Tony to explain
how some of the scenarios manifest themselves in the immigration
service.
Bob
Lauder:
In terms of human trafficking, we are
currently building up a caucus of knowledge on how the organised crime
groups work when facilitating and exploiting and trafficking people.
These organised crime groups engage in criminality in its general form.
While it is probably disgraceful to refer to people as a
commodity, they are as far as crime groups are
concerned. It is about where they can make the most profit from the
commodities that they traffic, and that could be class A drugs, or it
could be people or contraband. They not only facilitate the trafficking
of people into the UK, but having managed to bring people here they
then exploit them in the terms previously discussed, by putting them
into various forms of labour.
It is important that the
Serious Organised Crime Agency attributes the knowledge-building beyond
the shores of the UK; to the source countries, to find out what
actually happens in them and to get a view of those organised crime
groups, and to the nexus countries with the stop-off points for people
coming to the United Kingdom. In fact, the ports are also nexus points
for intelligence to be gathered. People who engage in trafficking are
ruthless, and the level of violence that they would exhibit on the
victims of that activity is fairly extreme.
We have had recent evidence in
Italy of trafficked individuals being kept in what can only be
described as akin to concentration camps, with armed guards. They are
then farmed out to do work in areas where they are given minimal reward
for it. I am not suggesting that that is present in the UK; but the
same principles can apply, where the harm caused to these individuals
is fairly extremeas is the economic harm caused to the country
and the communities where they are put into work. Let us have no
argument about it: these people are determined, they would seek to
apply their will to others and they have little respect for the
individuals who are trafficked.
A lot of our work will be
assisted by the territorial extent; by being able to introduce evidence
that we can collect in those source countries, and to have that
evidence accepted by our courtswhen we manage to get sufficient
evidence to take these organised crime groups to
court.
Mr.
Byrne
:
So, this is a global business. It often
manifests itself at the border in a manner that, today, makes it
difficult for us to prosecute. Tony, I think that a couple of examples
would illustrate this.
Tony
Smith:
Yes, we are working closely with SOCA, and
with the police and other enforcement agencies, to get after the
traffickers and racketeers. This is a very nasty business and, in some
cases that we have taken
forward, we have identified some problems with the legal position, as
Joan outlined.
Perhaps the first example would
be the mischief that takes place between disembarkation from an
aeroplane and arrival at an immigration officers desk. If you
fly into the UK, at some airports you would now have quite a long
walkand lots of mischief goes on in those areas. For example,
if a facilitator accompanies somebody into the country and travel
documents are subsequently taken away into airside areas and, for
example, flushed down lavatories, the act itself took place before the
facilitator arrived at our immigration officers desk. We have
had cases where that has been construed in court as an act not covered
by existing legislation. We really want to cover that whole period
where so much mischief is caused in those airside areas at
airports.
Another point
was well made about mischief taking place at the boarding stage, or
prior to people being brought herefor example, boarding people
and, perhaps, even children with false documents. There, the children
are actually dealt with under the immigration laws; but if the
individual perpetrator of the act is not a British citizen but a
foreign national, we have no authority to proceed legally against them,
because the act was committed extra-territorially. So, by extending
these authorities to have prosecution units in place at the major
airportsGatwick, Heathrow and Stanstedmy operational
colleagues tell me that if we can secure these amendments in
legislation, it will enhance our capability in that area by about 50
per cent.
Q
24
Mr.
Clappison:
Minister, this is a difficult subject. Some
judges still complain about what is happening with deportation. Clauses
28 to 35 deal with foreign criminalspeople who are not British
citizenswho have come to this country and abused their
permission to be here by committing an offence, or offences, that are
so serious that only a sentence of imprisonment is appropriate. Why are
you restricting the provisions to sentences of more than 12
months?
Mr.
Byrne:
I know that you have investigated and
explored this issue in depth over the last few months and years,
Mr. Clappison. It is one of the most important debates that
the Committee needs to have. If there are constructive measures that
the Committee thinks would strengthen the ambition of our policy in
this area, the Government will look at them very closely. As you said,
a balance must be struck. Many of us will have constituents who are
foreign nationals and who have been in this country for decades. They
might have families or be involved in the local community, but might
also commit offences that result in a prison
sentence.
Q
25
Mr.
Clappison:
May I interrupt you there? That is not relevant
to my point. If they commit an offence resulting in a sentence of more
than 12 months, they will be deported, whatever their family
ties.
Mr.
Byrne:
Let me just finish. Very often, if such
a person commits an offence resulting in a sentence of less than 12
months, there should be some reflection about whether the offence is so
serious that automatic deportation should follow.
As I said, I remain very
open-minded on how the provisions in the Bill can be improved by the
Committee. They require the Home Secretary to write a deportation order
automatically under four sets of circumstances: first, if the
individual has committed an offence resulting in at least a 12-month
sentence; secondly, if a court recommends that the individual be
deported; and thirdly, if they have committed an offence included in
the list of serious offences in section 72 of the Nationality,
Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. Fourthly, we have preserved the
generic power in the Immigration Act 1971 for the Home Secretary to
deport people on the grounds that they are non-conducive to the public
good. We have sought to provide clarity and certainty for foreign
nationals who commit an offence and to preserve important flexibility
for the courts and the Home Secretary so that people who have committed
an offence can be deported if we think that they have forfeited their
right to be in the
country.
Q
26
Mr.
Clappison:
The new power of automatic deportation has been
added to the existing provisions that you have described, but it would
not necessarily lead to automatic deportation for those who receive
more than 12 months. I draw your attention to clause 34(1)(b), which I
call the serial offenders concession. I shall be corrected if I am
wrong, but it seems to make it clear that somebody who receives a
series of consecutive sentences, each of less than 12 months, but in
total of more than 12 monthsthat is how courts are told to
sentence separate offenceswill not be subject to automatic
deportation. That means that somebody who commits a series of serious
offences and receives two or more individual sentences resulting in a
total sentence of nine, 18, 27 or even 36 months, if they commit up to
four offences, will not be subject to this provision. Why are you
leaving them
out?
Mr.
Byrne:
This is an important point to clarify.
We have sought to preserve the Home Secretarys flexibility when
deporting people on the grounds that they are not conducive to the
public good to ensure that serial offenders are addressed by the
provisions. At the moment, we issue guidance to caseworkers to help
them to judge whether somebody who has committed an offence is
conducive to the public good. The provision is for two to three
sentences, committed over a five-year period, that total 12 months. It
is important to keep guidance in place in the first instance so that
those serial offenders can be dealt with using the provisions before
us.
Mr.
Byrne:
Because it is best addressed in guidance. If it
were in the legislation we would have to debate how many convictions
somebody should have had, within what time period the offences should
have been committed, and what should be the cumulative
threshold for the sentences to add up to before they
could be considered under the provisions. Those are three pretty
crucial moving parts to the Home Secretarys considerations.
That is why I think that the issue is better dealt with by guidance
issued under the Home Secretarys power to deport people who are
deemed to be non-conducive to the public good than by
legislation.
If
members of the Committee would like to table amendments that answer
that problem, I shall be more than happy to consider them. The point
that you raise is extremely serious. We have considered it in agonising
detail over the past few months as we have prepared this legislation. I
came to the judgment that the matter is best dealt with by guidance,
but I shall happily consider
alternatives.
Q
28
Mr.
Clappison:
I think you will find that there are some very
good amendments that answer the questions that you have just posed, and
which would simply change the total sentence to 12 months. That gets
round all the problems that you have described.
Is not a bigger problem in the
approach that you describeadding it on to the existing
powersthe danger that the courts and others will treat it as a
rule of thumb that if somebody is not subject to automatic deportation
there will be a tendency for him not to be deported? It will be argued
in court that he is not subject to automatic deportation so the court
can exercise its discretion in his favour.
Mr.
Byrne:
That is why I think that we need a
belt-and-braces approach, and why we propose what are effectively four
ways of attacking the problemthe minimum sentence of 12 months,
the court recommendation, the Home Secretarys flexibility and,
of course, the specification of the section 72 list in the 2002 Act. We
have genuinely tried to come at this from as many angles as possible.
However, I underline seriously and genuinely that if improvements can
be made in this area the Committee must look at them in
detail.
Q
30
Kerry
McCarthy (Bristol, East) (Lab): All the points that I was
going to raise have been covered. However, can you clarify a few
matters that are not dealt with here but are caught up in other parts
of the legislation? Am I right in saying that if somebody who has
acquired British citizenship becomes involved in serious criminal
offences there are mechanisms to strip him of that
citizenship?
Q
32
Kerry
McCarthy:
The deportation provisions and the automatic
presumption apply to people who are not British citizens. Is it correct
that you would not be able to enact those
retrospectively?
Q
33
Mr.
Byrne:
I believe that we can, but I shall get
clarification on that point for the stand part
debate.
Q
34
Kerry
McCarthy:
Recently, there has been press coverage about
the exemptions that would apply to Irish nationals. Can you explain
what they
are?
Mr.
Byrne:
Two points are germane. One is that the Good
Friday agreement creates a different context for border control and
border security within the common travel area, and we have to take
account of that. If we are deporting people, we have to give effect to
their not coming back in again, and that has a different dynamic within
the common travel area. The second, fundamental, point is that Irish
citizens are European Economic Area nationals, and EEA rules therefore
apply; so Irish citizens have to be treated like other EEA nationals.
That explains the context for the written ministerial statement that
was provided last week.
Q
35
Paul
Rowen:
Do you not think, Minister, that this is merely a
case of introducing legislation to deal with an administrative failure
by your Department and that there is already sufficient legislation to
deport prisoners if that is what the courts and Home Secretary wish to
do?
Mr.
Byrne:
I thought about that very carefully when the
Bill was being drafted and it is correct to say that there are two
parts to the solution that emerged last year. The first is reform of
processes within IND: those are under way. We are now in a position
where by spring this year we will be considering foreign national
prisoners six months in advance of the end of their sentence so that
more are put on a plane as they come out of the prison door rather than
having to be held in prisons or in the immigration estate under
immigration powers. That process of reform is undoubtedly important and
the director-general has updated the House recently on our progress on
that
front.
The
importance of the legislation is twofold. First, it sends a very clear
signal that those who abuse our hospitality in this country will be
deported. SecondlyI think this is an area of debate which we
should spend some time on in Committeewe are able to
effectively put in place a non-suspense of appeals process for those
individuals who are given a deportation order under those provisions.
That means the appeal has to be conducted from abroad and, when I
undertake my own reviews of our progress in deporting foreign national
prisoners, one of the reasons for the time that it takes is that,
unsurprisingly, foreign national prisoners, where we seek to issue a
deportation order, appeal that decision all the way through the
judicial system.
I would much
rather that foreign national prisoners went through that rigmarole
abroad. I am sorry, I should not call it a rigmaroleit is an
important part of the judicial system. I would rather, however, that it
was undertaken abroad. A question was posed, I think, on Second Reading
about whether people would just judicially review
us. There is an important precedent that we should look at, namely the
process for non-suspense of appeals in the asylum system. That
legislation allows the Home Secretary to certify an appeal for asylum
or a
claim for asylum as unfounded and the individual has to undertake that
appeal abroad.
Out of the
5,067 asylum claims that were designated by the Home Secretary as
clearly unfounded there have been only something like 451 judicial
review applications. So this is a process and a piece of legislation
that will dramatically speed up our ability to get those to whom we
issue deportation orders out of the country.
Part of the virtue of this
legislation is the clarity of the link it creates between criminality
and deportation. An important part of it is also the acceleration and
streamlining of the appeal system so that by and large those appeals
are conducted abroad rather than in this
country.
Joan
Ryan:
It might be helpful if I add that there has been a
very significant development with regard to the European Union. The
Minister referred to the fact that the situation is different with the
European Union as opposed to third countries and we are on the verge of
a framework decision on prisoner transfer. That will not be
retrospective and it is subject at the moment to our parliamentary
scrutiny. Mr. Clappison knows about this as we discussed it
at some length last week in the Home Affairs Committee. It will mean
that European Union offenders from other European Union countries will
serve their sentence in their own country and we will no longer have to
have their consent for that to be the case. Equally, British prisoners
in other European Union countries will serve their sentence here. I
think this is very important. First of all, numbers-wise it is hugely
to the benefit of the United Kingdom. There are about three times more
other European Union prisoners in our prisons than there are British
citizens in other European Union prisons. Also it will assist in
rehabilitation and the reduction of recidivism in terms of working with
British prisoners in prisons here as opposed to having no contact with
them while they are abroad. I think that that is a significant move; it
is outside the scope of the Bill, but it adds to the picture.
Q
36
Paul
Rowen:
I understand that, but there are two
elements to what the Bill does: first, it removes the Secretary of
States discretion; secondly, it removes the ability to appeal,
except on human rights or refugee grounds. Let us go back to the
practical case of Sakchai Makao from the Shetland islands. The appeal
judges considered his offence, as well as compassionate grounds and the
support that he had in the community. If the Bill goes through, he
would have no chance of remaining in this country, despite the fact
that the majority of Shetlanders support him and there are
compassionate grounds for him to remain in the country. Is this not an
unnecessary piece of legislation? It would mean the automatic
deportation of that young man, even though the court ruled, in the end,
that he has reasonable grounds to remain in this
country.
Mr.
Byrne
:
I generally have a policy of not
discussing individual cases in the House, but the hon. Gentleman will
have to remind me of the sentence that was handed downI think
that it was nine months in this case.
The
Chairman:
In the circumstances, this is not the forum for
pursuing individual cases. Although I allowed the hon. Gentleman a
little leeway to use that case as an example, I do not think that we
should discuss it further.
Q
37
Paul
Rowen:
But the Minister quotes the opposite, and
when he presents us with a fait accompli, he must look at the other
side of the coin, because there are clear cases in which the Secretary
of States discretion could at least be
exercised.
Mr.
Byrne
:
And that is why, in response to
Mr. Clappisons question during my introductory
remarks to the questions on this part of the Bill, I said that a
balance has to be struck here. It is quite possible that we have
individuals who have lived in this country for decades, who have
families and who are well integrated into the community, but who have
committed an offence, which has resulted in a sentence. We all read
The Daily Telegraph and know of cases of individuals who have
been[
Interruption.
] I am sorry; I am
casting aspersions on my hon. Friends. However, there are cases in
which people have gone to jail for not paying their council tax, and I
would argue that that does not necessarily involve a sentence that
should require automatic deportation. That is why it is important that
the Committee has a debate about whether the 12-month threshold is the
right one, and some Committee members may think that a different
threshold should be set. However, we should be clear that those who
have committed a serious breach of our hospitality should face the
prospect of automatic deportation. That is why we have tried to put in
place a systematic approach to pick these issues up.
I encourage the Committee to
focus not only on the 12-month threshold, but on section 72 of the 2002
Act. When I looked at the number of foreign national prisoners in our
jails who might be affected by these provisions, it was clear that, at
a very rough estimateI put it no more strongly than
thatabout 4,300 would be. Now, 2,200 of
themballparkwill be affected by the 12-month threshold
provisions and about 2,100 will be affected by the section 72
provisions, so it is important that the Committee looks at both.
However, the basic answer to your question is that there needs to be a
stronger link between criminality and deportation than there is today.
There will no doubt be individual cases that are
difficult.
Q
38
Damian
Green:
It is a general question, because I am aware
that we want to go back to one or two previous issues. The overall
problem, as the Minister will be well aware, relates to the information
version of mission creep: information is collected for one purpose and
can then be spread through the Government machine in ways that people
find unacceptableeven those who think it acceptable to carry
out the collection of biometric information for a specific purpose when
the user accepts it voluntarily. I am slightly nervous that there do
not seem to be many safeguards against such indiscriminate sharing of
information once it is collected.
Mr.
Byrne
:
Before I ask my colleague, Joan Ryan, to
talk about the protections that are in place, particularly the criminal
sanctions that have been introduced, perhaps I could ask Bob to say a
little about why information sharing is so important in helping
immigration and customs, police and SOCA to build up an integrated,
systematic picture of the issues that we are trying to
tackle.
Bob
Lauder:
That subject is important. Until we have the
full knowledge of what is involved in all this, we are at loss to apply
any legislation to good effect. In SOCA, we work closely with IND, the
UK Human Trafficking Centre and HMRC and it is about developing the
knowledge and the ability to take that information and make maximum use
of it. Of course, there have to be safeguards, and those safeguards are
fairly well in place when it comes to the SOCA legislation and the new
legislation, to ensure that that information is used proportionately to
what we seek to achieve when it comes to building up a picture, making
our processes effective and determining what we need to do to protect
the UK and to reduce the impact of harm. That is an important area,
especially if we consider the need for information sharing on the
exploitation of children in the CEOP field. Foreign national children
are brought to the United Kingdom so that they can be exploited, and
such information is the lifeblood of our ability to apply the laws in
the UK.
Mr.
Byrne:
The only thing that I would add is that if we
are serious about tackling illegal working, much closer co-operation
between HMRC, which undertakes the inspections on behalf of the
national minimum wage regulators, and IND is important. The evidence
that we have shows that where businesses exploit illegal migrants and
break the immigration laws, they break a whole set of other rules, too.
Perhaps, Joan, you could say a little but about the protections that we
have sought to structure into the Bill.
Joan
Ryan:
Clause 37, for instance, includes a statutory duty
of confidentiality, in the main in relation to information sharing with
Revenue and Customs. Sharing information with Revenue and Customs is
absolutely crucial to many of INDs main functions. Front-line
staff, in particular, have identified that information held by Revenue
and Customs as information that will make a significant difference to
them. We already have some information
sharing, but we want a single information-sharing power. The seriousness
with which we view wrongful disclosure and the confidentiality issues
is demonstrated in the take-across, which has been discussed at some
length between Ministers and the Paymaster General. The maximum penalty
for wrongful disclosure is some two years in prison or an unlimited
fine. Those are pretty serious sanctions, which we will enforce and
which give a strong message. For private individuals, the Data
Protection Act will also apply to personal information. In terms of
information sharing with SOCA, it is subject to the PACE codes of
practice and the Independent Police Complaints Commission. There are
strong measures in place and I hope that will be
reassuring.
The
Chairman:
May I stop you there, Minister. I think this
will have to be the final question, Mr.
Jackson.
Mr.
Jackson:
Mr. Byrne, you wrote to your colleague
the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) on 8 February to say
that the decisions in respect of reserved and devolved powers were an
appropriate remedy for Scotland and an operational solution. Yet, this
morningperhaps I am confusedyou seemed to be saying
that the situation will resolve itself, and you prayed
in aid the manifestos of the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives. Are
you happy with the situation as it is, or do you wish it to be changed
from May 2007? Can you clarify that
quickly?
Mr.
Byrne:
I think that that subject will be debated in
the Scottish election. I am satisfied that there is an operational
solution in place in Scotland that secures our border effectively in
the way that I seek to do in England and Wales.
It being One oclock,
The Chairman
adjourned the Committee
without question put, pursuant to the Standing
Order.
Adjourned
till this day at half-past Four
oclock.
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