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Session 2006 - 07 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates UK Borders Bill |
UK Borders Bill | ||||||
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Emily
Commander, Committee
Clerk
attended the Committee
Public Bill CommitteeThursday 8 March 2007(Afternoon)[Mr. David Amess in the Chair]UK Borders BillClause 5Registration
regulations
Amendment
proposed [this day]: No. 74, in clause 5, page
3, line 29, leave out from
documents to end of line 30 and
insert
which may
include the following non-biometric
information
(i)
name,
(ii) date of
birth,
(iii) place of
birth,
(iv)
address,
(v) immigration
status, and
(vi) National
Insurance number, if appropriate;.[Paul
Rowen.]
2
pm
Question
again proposed, That the amendment be
made.
Amendment No. 46, in
clause 5, page 3, line 46, at
end insert
(2A)
Non-biometric information under subsection (2)(d) shall be limited
to
(a)
name,
(b) date of
birth,
(c) place of
birth,
(d)
address,
(e) immigration
status, and
(f) National
Insurance
Number..
Amendment
No. 73, in
clause 5, page 4, line 27, at
end add
(7) A biometric
immigration document may only be used in connection with an immigration
and nationality
matter..
Amendment
No. 24, in
clause 15, page 8, line 43, at
end insert
(h) non
biometric information does not include any sensitive personal
data (within the meaning of the Data Protection Act 1998 (c. 29)) or
anything the disclosure of which would tend to reveal such
data..
New
clause 1No requirement to carry a biometric information
document
Nothing in
this Act authorises the making of regulations the effect of which would
be to require an individual to carry a biometric immigration document
at all
times..
Damian
Green (Ashford) (Con): When we adjourned this morning I
was being nice about the Minister and his reasonableness. I would like
to assure the Committee and, indeed, the Minister, that that should not
be taken as a precedent in any way. I was coming to the conclusion of
my remarks on the second group of amendments, which includes new clause
1. I am glad that the Minister has agreed to go away and look at new
clause 1 again to see whether its objectives may be
incorporated elsewhere. In an effort to focus his thought processes, I
should make it clear that we will be pressing it to a
vote.
Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn.
The
Chairman:
I understand that the Minister wishes to move a
motion to amend the programme motion agreed by the Committee on 27
February to enable the Committee to take evidence from Migration Watch
for an hour next Tuesday morning. Manuscript copies of the motion have
been circulated to the Committee. I remind the Committee that the
motion moved by the Minister is debateable, but will lapse if a single
Member
objects.
That the order
of the Committee of 27 February 2007 be amended by the addition of the
following at the end of the Table in paragraph 2:
Damian
Green:
I have no wish to object and exercise this unusual
power of veto that everyone has. Indeed, I would urge other Opposition
Members not to object either. I simply rise to seek clarification. I am
conscious that there are other potential witnesses whom members of the
Committee may wish to call at some later stage, but we are getting to
the point where there are not that many later stages left. Does the
Minister think it possible that he will move a further amendment to the
programme order to enable a further witness session to take
place?
Mr.
Byrne:
I know that some members of the Committee are
anxious to hear further evidence, given the importance of the subject
we are debating in the Bill. Organisations like the CBI and other
business organisations have a great deal more to say about the need for
things like compulsory biometric ID cards and the role they play in
driving out illegal working. I am sure that that may be possible and I
will undertake to consult hon. Members through the usual channels to
see whether there is a blockbuster order that we could perhaps present
with all the remaining witnesses that people want to
call.
Question put
and agreed
to.
The
Chairman:
I must now make the Committee aware of the
practicalities of taking oral evidence next Tuesday. As the Committee
has agreed to take oral evidence for an hour and then seamlessly to
resume clause-by-clause scrutiny of the Bill, my fellow Chairman and I
would prefer it if the Committee remained in one room throughout. It is
hoped that the Committee will be able to use Room 9 on the
Committee Corridor for this purpose, as that is the only room that is
set up to enable Public Bill Committees to take oral evidence sitting
as the Committee is currently arranged, rather than in a
horseshoe.
It is
possible that Room 9 will not be ready to accommodate a Public Bill
Committee in that way. The work to prepare it was not scheduled to be
completed until after the Easter recess. If the room is not ready the
Committee will need to take evidence on the Upper Committee Corridor
and then suspend and return to this room to continue with the
clause-by-clause scrutiny. That sounds slightly tortuous but I am sure
that it will be fine. I will ensure that all hon. Members are informed
in advance of the location of the sitting next Tuesday and I thank
members of the Committee for their continued patience in this
matter.
The
Chairman:
With this it will be convenient to discuss the
following amendments: No. 75, in clause 5, page
3, line 38, leave out in specified
circumstances and insert
if their name or family
circumstances have
changed.
No.
76, in
clause 5, page 3, line 44, leave
out in other specified circumstances and
insert
if he or an
authorised person suspects it is being used for a purpose other than
was
intended.
No.
49, in clause 5, page 3, leave out lines 45
and 46.
No. 48, in
clause 5, page 3, line 46, at
end insert
(2A)
Circumstances under subsection (2)(h) shall be limited
to
(a) change of
address,
(b) change of name,
or
(c) loss or theft of a
biometric immigration
document..
Damian
Green:
I hope that next Tuesdays
sittingwill be worth the strain that it is clearly
causingto our logistical arrangements. I assume that the
representatives of Migration Watch UK have arrived safely back in this
country, which is why the Minister was able to move the motion.
[Interruption.] If the Minister wishes to speak from a sedentary
position about their ability to get through border controls, I will
leave him to it.
The
underlying purpose of the amendments is to restrict the Secretary of
States power to do what he will with peoples private
information. It continues previous debates on clause 5, which showed
the serious philosophical difference between the two sides of the
Committee about how biometric information is used. The Minister and the
Government want all-encompassing powers that enable them to collect
large amounts of information and do rather a lot with it, which we
think is dangerous. We debated this morning how that information should
be collected and who should have access to it; this debate is about its
use after it has been
collected.
Amendment
No. 47 would remove from the Bill the permission to combine biometric
immigration documents with other documents, which on the surface may
seem like a practical thing to do and Ministers may want to
do it. However, once again the clause as drafted is hopelessly vague and
allows Ministers far too much power, so that biometric immigration
documents could be combined with almost anything else and used for
almost any purpose. Although in my less cynical moments I believe that
that is not the underlying purpose of the clause, the Minister or the
Home Secretary, it is incumbent on the House when it is trying to
perform its duties of scrutiny to ensure that the legislation does not
allow either present or future Ministers powers that it would not want
them to have, hence the
amendment.
All the
amendments, but principally amendmentNo. 47, would limit the
use of biometric immigration documents to their stated purpose: to
tackle illegal working and other immigration offences. It inevitably
involves some repetition of this mornings debates, but we
established during previous debates on clause 5 that, as one would
expect, there is no difference on either side of the Committee in our
recognition of the need to combat illegal working. If the new documents
are to prove useful in doing so we have no objection to them. However,
we have big objections to the possibility of their being used for other
purposes and we seek to limit such
use.
Amendment
No. 49 would remove the right of the Secretary of State to demand the
surrender of other documents upon the issuing of a biometric
immigration document. Again, the main objection to the clause as
drafted is its vagueness; it could entitle the Secretary of State to
acquire all manner of documents, some of which may have no relevance to
a persons immigration or working status. Clearly, that is not a
power one would lightly confer on any Secretary of State. The Minister
admitted this morning that some of the provisions contained within
clause 5 involve breaching the relevant section of the Data Protection
Act. Therefore it is illegal for the Government to collect some of the
information that will be collected for immigration purposes. The
Minister was unable to reassure us how extensive that collection of
information would be and said that he had no ambition to extend the
collection of dataI think that was the phrase. It is clear that
the Bill has the capacity to allow Ministers to collect vast rafts of
the most private information about people. Such information is
specifically covered by the relevant section of the Data Protection
Act. Therefore, we wish to limit that power and in this case are
seeking to do so by raising the issues relating to the surrender of
other documents when someone is given a biometric immigration
document.
The
arguments presented by the Minister should lead him to consider the
underlying thought behind this amendment. If he has full confidence in
the biometric document, which the Government argue will be an entirely
watertight document establishing the identity of the person holding it
and their entitlement, it is not obvious why they wish to remove other
documents, which will presumably become valueless.If everyone
accepts a biometric document, the other60 documents that the
Minister talks about will have no purpose and I do not understand why
the Government want to collect them in, as it may cause levels of
cynicism and scepticism to rise about why the Government insist on
doing so.
It would be
interesting if, during the debate on this group of amendments, the
Minister would furnish us with examples of people who were issued with
one
official document and required to surrender other entirely unconnected
ones. If someone changes their passport, they keep the old oneI
was trying to find an example that might aid the Ministers
case, but that is a bad one. There are examples where outdated
documents must be returned, but most of those are useless because they
are obsolete. Powers requiring completely unconnected documents to be
returned to the Government when a new document is issued are extremely
unusual. The value of surrendering such documents must be low because a
new biometric document is infallible in the Ministers world
view. Such a view has been comprehensively demolished by the expert
witnesses whom we heard last week and is not shared by anyone. I am
trying to think myself into the Minsters mindset at the moment,
but I cannot understand why, in his mindset, he would demand the return
of such documents having issued a magic biometric document to the
people. Those are the issues relating to amendment No.
49.
Amendment
No. 48 would limit the instances in which a person in possession of a
biometric document must notify the Secretary of State about a change in
circumstances to change of address, change of name or loss or theft of
the biometric immigration document. The amendment would serve the same
purpose as the previous one in limiting what is, at present, the
extraordinarily wide scope of the clause and identify the circumstances
in which the Secretary of State may wish to act. We believe that we
have identified the key changes about which the Secretary of State
needs to be informed and about which it would be reasonable to ask for
information. This amendment would simplify and strengthen the
requirements on the Government and on the person who holds the
document. We believe that a small selection of relevant but vital
informationaddress, name and whether the document has been
stolenwould leave the document holder in no doubt about what he
needs to report. The removal of uncertainty would be good for building
public confidence in a system that may well be seen as intrusive. We
had a long and fruitful discussion this morning about the degree of
intrusiveness that possession of the documents will entail, but the
removal of uncertainty about when people need to interact with the
state would help the Ministers
case.
2.15
pm
Mr.
Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con): Does my hon. Friend
remember that on Second Reading I specifically asked the Minister why
the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 was not being used? There are
powers in it for employers to demand, or at least check, documents held
by their employees. The Minister was not able to give me a satisfactory
answer. Does myhon. Friend agree that the provision is using a
sledgehammer to crack a nut? There are existing powers in place to do
what the Minister wants it to
do.
Damian
Green:
My hon. Friend makes a valid point, as he did in
his excellent speech on Second Reading. This is a symptom of a wider
problem: the necessity is not for new legislation but for the will and
the ability to use legislation that has already been enacted. That
applies particularly to the example that he gives but
also to the power to convict those who employ illegal workers, which has
been scandalously underused in the past five years or so. I hope that
the Minister will address that issue
directly.
If the
amendment were accepted, it would help the Home Office as an
institution. It would prevent it from being flooded with reports of
changes of circumstances irrelevant to the underlying purposes of the
clause, which would not help to improve border safety or help in the
fight against illegal working. Having limits would increase the
practicality of the clause and perhaps Ministers ability to use
it. The Minister might argue that we should extend the list that we
provide in the amendment, but I hope that he does not just say that we
need to be flexible. We are hearing that a lot, and he must be aware
that every time he says it he is increasing the scepticism about the
purposes underlying the
Bill.
Mr.
Byrne:
I have listened with great patience and interest to
the hon. Gentlemans argument, which started off being
intriguing this morning and has grown more intriguing still this
afternoon. This morning we heard about the support of Opposition
parties for biometric visas, and this afternoon we have heard from the
hon. Gentleman that he has no objection in principle to biometric
immigration contracts. I am struggling to reconcile that with the
policy position adopted by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and
Howden (David Davis), which is that contracts for both biometric visas
and biometric immigration documents should be cancelled. I am not sure
how that stands up.
On
a point of clarification, which I hope will help the hon. Member for
Ashford, I absolutely did not say that the information that we would
collect would be a breach of the Data Protection Act. My point was that
that Act allows the processing of sensitive data and provides members
of the public with strict safeguards. We will always comply with those
safeguards along with those embedded in the Human Rights Act and other
legislation.
As the
hon. Gentleman developed his argument it became more reasonable rather
than less. He is concerned about unfettered power in the hands of the
Home Secretary and his Ministers, which is a perfectly reasonable
position to adopt. It is absolutely right that the hon. Gentleman and
his party should seek to table probing amendments designed to test some
of the arguments that we have used to put the legislation in place.
There are two or three points that I should like to draw out, however.
The effect of the amendments in the group would be twofold. First, they
would prevent us from effectively designating a document as an ID card,
because it would be impossible for us to roll the data over. Secondly,
the amendments would impose quite substantial constraints on the kind
of circumstances that we would ask individuals to update us
about.
I have two
problems with that. The first problem is that we have been clear in our
intention to designate the cards as ID cards as soon as the national
identity register comes online. That is important, because doing so
will provide migrants who are here legitimately with the additional
protections on which Parliament rightly insisted in the Identity Cards
Act 2006. The second problem is that if we accepted the amendment,
migrants in this country with biometric immigration documents would have
several bits of identity. That is problematic, because the whole thrust
of our policy is to bleed out those documents.
We had a useful debate this
morning, the conclusion of which was that we should indeed equip
employers with the ability and the right to check the information on
the biometric identity document. Last week we heard at length from
organisations such as National Car Parks, which has blazed a trail in
driving out illegal working from its operations. A great deal of
evidence was presented about how it is sometimes difficult for
businesses in this country to understand the different kinds of
documents that are available and therefore understand whether the
migrant in front of them is here legally and has an entitlement to
work.
Phasing out all
the insecure 20th century documents and replacing them with a single
biometric document will make it easier for the business community to
play its part in driving illegal working from this country. If, for
example, we were unable to recall other documents, as the amendment
suggests, we would not advance very far. I am concerned that there is a
pattern of argument building up that is not very serious about
tacklingthe problem of illegal working. Opposition parties
abstained on measures such as the civil penalty regime, which would
allow us to make it easier to punish those businesses that break the
rules or turn a blind eye, but now they are saying that we should not
drive down the proliferation of documents. I am concerned by that line
of argument, because we should make it easier for employers to play by
the rules, not
harder.
The second
issue concerns the limits on the kind of information and updates that
we could request from people. It is important to understand that the
documents in question are biometric immigration documents. It is
therefore important for us to be able to solicit from individuals
important news about changes in their status, because changes in their
status will often be relevant to whether their leave should continue.
Also, as the world changes it is important for the Government to be
able to have in place different categories through which to invite
people to come to this country.
This morning I gave the example
of ministers of religion. Like many members of the Committee, I have a
strong Muslim community in my constituency. It is important that
individuals in that community should have the opportunity to deepen
their faith and their identity. It is therefore often helpful for us to
be able to invite from abroad, particularly from Pakistan, those who
are experts in Islam and teaching. One of the Governments
responses over the past few years has been to introduce new immigration
categories, such as ministers of religion. It is important for us to
have the flexibility to be able to collect different kinds of
information because it is relevant in granting people different
categories of immigration status.
Mr.
Jackson:
I have been listening carefully. Incidentally, as
a historical fact, in his breathless prose of 1996 the Prime Minister
stated in his book New Britain: My Vision of a Young
Countrywhat a bizarre titlethat ID cards are
only supported by the wilder shores of the Tory right. Maybe the Prime
Minister considers himself now to be on the wilder
shores of the Tory righthow we have travelled that circuitous
route. There is a dichotomy at the heart of the Ministers
argument. On the one hand, he is saying that we will have biometric
immigration documents that will be cutting-edge, possibly expensive and
a full bells-and-whistles system of identity management, but at the
same time he is saying that they have to be combined with 20th century
documents. He cannot have his argument both ways. One will do the job,
or else he should explain why he needs to have other documents to
accompany it.
Mr.
Byrne:
I have not quite followed that argument, but I do
not think that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is the only
person who has travelled the distance that the hon. Gentleman outlined.
I was leafing with some interest through some of the remarks that Sir
John Stevensnow Lord Stevensmade recently. He is a man
that the Conservative party holds in some high regard, or it would not
have asked him to chair its task group on border security. He said to
the House of Lords that
the technology is certain, which
is the reason why the Association of Chief Police Officers and others
have changed their
view.
Later, he said
that
in relation to
where we are on identification cards, the police and others in the
security services are absolutely certain that there is a need for a
certainty of identification.[Official Report, House
of Lords, 31 October 2005; Vol. 675, c.
28.]
So, Lord Stevens was
reflecting on the fact that as the world has changed, so many people
have changed their views, not only in the Labour party but in
Opposition parties and all fields of public life.
The argument that I am
posingclearly not well enough for the hon. Member for
Peterboroughis that constraints on the kind of information that
we seek to solicit from immigrants might need to be more flexible than
the kind of prescription that can be set out in primary legislation. As
new categories of leave are introduced, for example for ministers of
religion, or as marriage rules are changed, it might be important to
request updates to certain categories of information so that we can
modify the basis of peoples leave. That is not inconsistent
with the encoding of that information on a single secure document
rather than multiple bits of paper.
David
T.C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con):
Given the
Governments record on the handling of complex IT programmes and
technologies, is the Minister confident and will he state for the
record that if he has his way he is certain that there will be no
financial overspend whatsoever, and that this complex information
technology product will be delivered on time and on
budget?
2.30
pm
Mr.
Byrne:
I am as confident that there will be underspends as
I am confident that there will be overspends. I will make no stronger
argument than that.
The key points are that it will
often be important for us to be able to request information about the
changes in peoples circumstances so that we can modify
changes in peoples leave. There is no point in having a more
secure document if the underlying basis of the information is in danger
or jeopardy because we have ruled out in primary legislation our
ability to understand whether people have got married or divorced or
have been deported. If the amendments were implemented, we could not
collect information about deportation.
I should like to give the
Committee the following reassurances. The thrust of our policy is to
phase out documents and introduce a single document, so that we can be
serious about tackling illegal immigration and harnessing the good will
and drive of the business community in this country to tackle a problem
that we know good employers are determined to tackle. The amendments
would render that
difficult.
It
is important, however, that appropriate regulations are in place.
First, we will designate the cards only if we can satisfy the House and
secure support for a designation order approved under section 4 of the
Identity Cards Act 2006. Secondly, any regulations that we provide for
under the clause will be subject to an affirmative statutory
instrument. If we are serious about tackling illegal working, it is
important that we have the civil penalty regime in place. Indeed, I
hope that the Opposition parties change their stance on that approach
and give it the support that it deserves. It is important that we can
not only phase out the proliferation of documents, but ensure that the
underlying information provided in them is up to date, so that we know
whether people genuinely have the right to be here and to work, and the
right to other public
benefits.
Paul
Rowen:
I want to speak to amendments Nos. 75 and 76, which
stand in my name. The Minister has already helpfully clarified some of
the points that I want to make. The key point about the amendments is
seeking information from the Government as to what sort of specified
information will be required. Again, that information is not provided
in the Bill. We want to limit, as far as possible, such information as
is made available to that which is absolutely
necessary.
As was said
previously, the Opposition parties support stronger border controls,
but not the extension to ID cards. In clarifying the position on
amendment No. 47, the Minister helpfully illustrated that difference.
We want to strengthen the borders and ensure that people can come here
for their declared purposes, so if the use of biometric data aids the
checking of employment records and is a sure, non-corruptible source
that cannot easily be imitated, it is a step forward. However, as to
combining such data with lots of other information, we believe that the
Bill is going beyond its title in what it is seeking to do. We believe
that the only information that should be stored on the cards is that
which is necessary to enable them to do the
job.
We believe that
the surrender of the cards should be required only if their misuse can
be demonstrated. For example, passing a card from one person to another
is a very legitimate reason. We do not want a situation whereby the
Home Office, without the backing of primary legislation, is able to
take someones card. We do not want circumstances in which
someone who has
been involved in a drunken brawl and is facing deportation but has not
yet been tried may yet have the card
removed.
Mr.
Byrne:
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it would be
important for the Home Office to require surrender if somebody was
deported?
Paul
Rowen:
Yes, of course. I believe that the amendment would
enable that to happen. We want to know in what specific circumstances
the Home Office would require the surrender of the card. The problem
with much of the legislation before us is not what it attempts in broad
terms, but the loose wording that allows feature creep. We have talked
about that before; it is a process whereby a measure is introduced for
one purpose, but over time, its use is allowed to change and be
modified because of loose wording. The UK Borders Bill relates not to
ID cards, but to border protection and policing, which we want dealt
with very tightly.
I
have heard from my constituents about bad experiences of the Home
Office holding on to documentation. I dealt with a case this morning on
my way to the House, involving a constituent who had to return to
Islamabad because his wife had died. He was stranded there because a
document was stuck in the Home Office system. Thankfully, my office had
a copy of his UK visa, which we could pass on to Islamabad, and the
problem was
sorted.
David
T.C. Davies:
I am following the hon. Gentlemans
story with great interest. It is important that we understand the
problems that can result, but will he explain why that man had to go to
Islamabad because his wife had died? Presumably he was married to
somebody living in this
country.
Paul
Rowen:
His wife died in this country, but their family
wanted her buried in Pakistan. He got there very quickly because he had
a Pakistani passport as well, but could not get out again because some
of the papers in his UK passport were incorrect or were with the Home
Office. We had a copy of that passport and he was able to come back. As
I said, experiences of the Home Office holding on to information have
not been good, and we believe that it should have only information that
is necessary.
The
more information that we put on the cards, the more liable they are to
be misused. We had a discussion earlier about information being secure
and used only for the purposes for which it is intended. The more
information that is stored on a document, the more it can be misused.
Again, we also have concerns about the IT and whether it is robust and
can
deliver.
Damian
Green:
I cannot say that I was particularly reassured by
the Ministers arguments in favour of flexibility. He continues
to advance a novel constitutional doctrine whereby a Government do not
have to fulfil policies promised in their election manifesto if the
previous Government signed contracts that were expensive and too
lengthy. I find that slightly more bizarre every time that he repeats
it.
To accept the Ministers
argument that the cards would provide safety, one must believe two
things. First, one must believe that the biometric documents are
completely secure. We talked this morning about evidence given by
Professor Anderson and others stating that that is not the case. The
Committee is into its seventh or eighth sitting and I shall now succumb
to the temptation to refer to the Daily Mail, which I have so
far resisted. On 5 March, it tried to hack into a biometric passport
and produce a new documenta process that took those involved
four hours. If journalists can do that now, I suspect that the
documents are not 100 per cent. secure, as Ministers believe them to
be.
That
is the first point on which I am not very reassured. The second is that
we must believe, as the hon. Member for Rochdale pointed out, that when
the documents are under the control of the Home Office they will be
dealt with efficiently and expeditiously. I dare say that Members on
both sides of the Committee could spend the rest of this sitting and
many others giving examples of pieces of paper vital to peoples
lives going missing inside the Home Office, not just for days or weeks,
but for months and in some cases years, in my experience. I am not
reassured by the Minister and I would therefore like to press the
amendment to a
vote.
Question put,
That the amendment be
made:
The
Committee divided: Ayes 6, Noes
8.
[Division
No.
5
]
AYESNOES
Question
accordingly negatived.
Paul
Rowen:
I beg to move amendment No. 77, in
clause 5, page 4, line 18, leave
out from modification) to end of line 19 and
insert
as has been laid
before, and approved by resolution of, both Houses of
Parliament..
The
Chairman:
With this it will be convenientto
discuss the following amendments: No. 51, in
clause 5, page 4, line 19, at
end insert
(3A) Before
making regulations under subsection (1) the Secretary of State
must
(a) publish the
code set out in subsection (3)(e) and (f),
and
(b) lay a draft before each
House of
Parliament..
No.
50, in
clause 5, page 4, line 27, at
end add
(7) Before making
regulations under this section the Secretary of State
must
(a) publish
proposals,
(b) consult members
of the public, and
(c) lay a
draft before Parliament..
No. 52, in
clause 5, page 4, line 27, at
end add
(7) The Secretary
of State shall lay before Parliament, not more than 12 months after the
commencement of the provisions under subsection (1), a report on the
operation of the
regulations..
No.
69, in
clause 5, page 4, line 27, at
end add
(7) The Secretary
of State may issue a code of practice relating to the issuing of
biometric immigration documents by UK Visas
providing
(a) the
maximum processing times and maximum costs for biometric immigration
documents;
(b) the minimum
level of service that visa applicants could expect from UK Visas and
their partners; and
(c) any
other guidance that he deems
appropriate..
Paul
Rowen:
We are coming to the end of the discussion on this
clause. Throughout the debate, we have sought assurances from the
Minister that its provisions will be subject to parliamentary scrutiny,
and he has helpfully clarified some of our points.
I am speaking to amendments
Nos. 77 and 69. The former is very similar to what the hon. Member for
Ashford proposes, as it seeks to ensure affirmative approval by
Parliament for some of the issues that we have discussed. Going by what
the Minister said earlier, I hope that the Government will respond to
the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley by
tabling some tighter amendments during later stages of the
Bills passage so as to replace shall with
will. That will be progress.
Amendment No. 69 is slightly
different. Anybody who has had dealings with UK Visas and the IND will
know that they are subject to interminable delays. I am dealing with a
number of constituents whose visa applications were approved last
September. We are now in March and they are waiting for their families
to visit, but the visas have still not been issued. The Government now
seek to introduce a biometric visa necessitating the collection of more
data. However, we not yet had any details as to how the data will be
collected at the different posts and how long it will take to process
that information. Since the Minister switched from dealing with the
police to looking after immigration, I know that he has been charged by
the Home Secretary with sorting out the IND. I put it to him that
accepting amendment No. 69 would give him a perfect opportunity to put
his money where his mouth is, because it would require him to set out
very clear time scales and deadlines for biometric visas.
UK passports were mentioned
when the hon. Member for Peterborough raised the Governments
record on IT. When passports were introduced, they were issued on
schedule to tight deadlines. We want our borders to be secure, and we
have no objection to the use of biometric data. My huge concern about
the process, however, which I expressed on Second Reading, is what the
Government propose to put in place to ensure a smooth and seamless
transition at the various posts, particularly those that are not
busy.
2.45
pm
We already deal
with a six-month backlog in issuing the family visa. That is not just
for complicated requests, but for routine ones where an extended family
wants to attend a wedding or come over for a religious celebration. My
big concern is that if we are to have a
new system in place that requires the collection of more data, we will
want to ensure that those data are collected alongside the interview
that takes place at the high commission and that there are strict time
scales to ensure that the information is processed.
I hope that the Minister can
now reassure us that, in the new world of biometric visas, we will see
a dramatic improvement in the visa-issuing service. In accepting
amendment No. 69, he would have an ideal opportunity to demonstrate his
commitment to ensuring that the IND is sorted out, that visas are
issued speedily and securely, and that people have a guarantee. If he
is going to double the cost of some visasI know that we will
discuss that next weekwe should certainly have some reassurance
that the level of service will dramatically
improve.
Damian
Green:
I have a great degree of sympathy with the two
amendments that the hon. Gentleman has tabled, although I confess to
having had some black and hollow laughter at one proposed paragraph in
amendment No. 69, to the effect that the Secretary of State should
guarantee a
minimum
level of service that visa applicants could expect from UK
Visas.
I am afraid I
suspect that many who have been at the other end of that service would
share in that laughter, which gives rise to the thought that we often
appear to be in a paradoxical and unhelpful situation in which the
Government cannot keep out those who should not be here and cannot let
in those who should be. That is the experience of many, and
particularly those from minority communities who come here for family
weddings, as the hon. Gentleman just mentioned. That appears to be a
very difficult thing for some of our posts to achieve and it causes
quite a lot of distress.
I want principally to speak to
the three amendments standing in my name, amendments Nos. 50, 51 and
52, each of which is designed to make the procedure more transparent
and to allow greater public involvement in the process at every stage,
both while the regulations are being made and afterwards. Amendment No.
51 would require the Government to publish the code used by authorised
persons who collect data under clause 5. As we have said many times, we
know that this is such a sensitive area that people hold two views that
are simultaneous if not conflicting: they want the system to be robust
and tough or firm and fair, but they want those going through it to be
treated fairly as well. The system fails on both counts too often at
present.
We are
arguing for a code of practice that I suspect would be of huge value to
the designated immigration officers themselves, who would be beginning
to exercise their new powers in what are uncharted waters. A good code
of practice that they knew had public support and which had been
arrived at after discussion with all interested parties would help them
by offering guidance. It would also offer them protection; they would
know what they were expected to be doing. That would help them, since
we all agree that these officers are being asked to do a difficult
job.
In laying the
draft before Parliament and the public, the Government will be
accountable for their actions, with all those interested parties
knowing what they can expect to happen under these new practices. It
would
also be interesting to know what constitutes good practice in the mind
of the Government.
I
have not sought to be either as prescriptive or as ambitious as the
hon. Member for Rochdale regarding specific minimum standards of
performance, but it would be useful for the Government to publish what
they regard as a proper code. Amendment No. 50 states that the
Secretary of State must publish proposals, consult and lay a draft
before Parliament. That would allow a proper public debate on what it
is reasonable for the Government to demand of those required to carry
biometric documents.
We have all agreed that we are
talking about the collection of vast amounts of personal data and about
the power of the state to impose some documents on people and
confiscate other documents. It is proper that these important proposals
are fully debated in public and in Parliament, and not simply left to
the statutory instrument process, in which the power to amend is much
less significant. If the Minister is confident in his case, he will
welcome a public
debate.
Amendment No.
52 would require the Secretary of State to publish a report to
Parliament on the operation of
measures
not more than
12 months after the commencement of the provisions.
As has been made clear, far too often,
particularly in this field, we pass legislation that has less effect
than Ministers promise andI suspectexpect, because it
is not used by the enforcement
agencies.
It would be
extremely useful and in accordance with good practice for the House to
revisit legislation systematically in order to find out whether it is
making any difference in the world outside this place, and if so
whether that difference is positive or negative. I commend that to the
Minister as an innovation that could spread to other areas. On the
matter before us, there are considerable public concerns about the
measures and sweeping powers that the Government have taken. Parliament
can reasonably expect to be informed on a regular basis of how the
system is operating, what is working and what needs to be
changed.
Common sense
suggests that not everything will work perfectly from the start. As I
said, that is a general truth about legislation and parliamentary
scrutiny, and particularly about Home Office legislation and
legislation affecting the immigration department. It is also
particularly true with the combination of the immigration department
and large-scale IT projects. One could not pick criteria requiring more
scrutiny not just before and during the process, but afterwards.
History and experience tell us that that is when things tend to go
wrong.
I should not
be unkind to the Home Office, because it is not alone in this. One
thinks of the Rural Payments Agency and the national health service IT
systems. Throughout the public sector there are IT disasters, but the
Home Office seems to attract more than its fair share. The three
amendments standing in my name would allow both Parliament and the
public much greater scrutiny before, during and after the passage of
the legislation and lead to much better implementation of the
clause.
Mr.
James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con): I have been moved to
intervene very briefly by the contribution of the hon. Member for
Rochdale, not so much to disagree with him or to dissent from his
amendments, but to sound a word of caution. At the same time, I add my
support for the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for
Ashford and for the spirit of his call for
transparency.
On the
subject of visa issuing, I give a word of warning to the Liberal
Democrats: they should not lose sight of the other end of the equation
and the vital importance of immigration control to this country and the
role played by those who issue
visas.
Mr.
Clappison:
Certainly, but the hon. Gentleman may want to
hear a bit more first, because there is some more criticism.
[Laughter.] Well, it is more words of caution, but I shall give
way
now.
Paul
Rowen:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way.
Perhaps I might regret it when he continues but we shall
see.
I made a very
specific reference in my remarksand the hon. Member for Ashford
supported meabout the routine issuing of visas for family
weddings. It takes UK Visas an interminable time to get a simple visa
sorted. I am not talking about the difficult cases; I deal with those
as well. Does he not consider that, in the case of an established
family over here and an extended family in another country wanting to
visit, if it cannot set reasonable time limits for issuing a visa, it
should not really be in
business?
Mr.
Clappison:
I can see the white flag being hauled halfway
up the mast. I have not even mentioned family weddings. I was not going
to mention them, and that was not going to be the nature of the caution
I gave to the hon. Gentleman. I was just going to use a gentle word of
caution to draw his attention to the pressures that exist in the field
of visasthe huge demand for visas to come to this country from
certain other countries and the pressures under which immigration staff
are working. I support those staff, because I believe in immigration
control. I think immigration control is extremely important to this
country, and if it does not workit is the first line of
defencewe are then presented with the problem of illegal
immigration, which the Government have said that they are trying to
address today. This issue has tremendous consequences for people in
this country in terms of population growth and also in terms of all the
expense and the legal problems that we face in trying to remove people
who are in this country when they should not
be.
Paul
Rowen:
Let me reiterate what the hon. Member for Monmouth
said, which is that we have a problem at the moment with not letting in
the right people and letting in the wrong people. That is the crux of
the matter. We need to get that
right.
Mr.
Clappison:
The word of caution I will addressto
the hon. Gentleman is that he should not underestimate the pressures
that visa operations face.
As a member of the Home Affairs Committee, I visited Nigeria and Ghana
last year. From Nigeria alone there are more than 250,000 visa
applications to come to this country every year. It is very important
that some of those applications are granted, but it would be
naïve not to realize that there is also at the same time in
Nigeria a huge problem with people applying to come to this country on
forged documents and people who simply should not be coming here at
all.
Mr.
Byrne:
The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point and
he makes it very well. During his visit to Nigeria, did entry clearance
officers brief him on the refusal rate of visas against applications
made in Nigeria?
Mr.
Clappison:
They probably did, as they are very
conscientious, and it may be that the figure has slipped my mind. It
would not come as a surprise to me on the basis of my overall visit to
learn that there was quite a high refusal rate. It is also important,
however, that some people from Nigeria do come to this
countrysomething I shall deal with in a
minute.
Mr.
Byrne:
The hon. Gentleman is extremely kind. Would he be
surprised to learn that in some categories the refusal rate can hit as
high as 80 per cent.?
Mr.
Clappison:
I am not surprised by that, and I give the
Committee one figure that the Home Affairs Committee quoted in its
report. It is one example of the sort of thing the hon. Member for
Rochdale needs to think about very carefully. We were told of just one
university in this country which received 2,500 applications from
Nigeria for its foundation course. Of those applications, 1,250 were
accepted by the university. We do not know exactly how many of those
people received a visa to come to the United Kingdom, but I understand
that quite a number did so, and that out of those who had applied and
received a visa, five arrived at the university to undertake the
course.
That is an
illustration of the pressures that we are up against. At the same time
I add that it is very important for properly qualified and properly
motivated people to come from Nigeria to study at courses in
universities in this country. These are people who intend to return to
Nigeria at the end of their courses and intend to carry out the courses
properly and to follow the terms of their leave properly. That is very
important, for example, in the field of law, where this country has a
strong connection with Nigeria. A very high number of people in the
Nigerian high courts have been trained in the United Kingdom. I do not
want to go too far down that route, but I hope that I have illustrated
some of the problems.
In conclusion, I ask the hon.
Member for Rochdale to remember that the visa system is the first line
of defence in immigration control. If that line of defence is breached,
we must go to all the lengths that the Government have outlined today
in the Home Secretarys crackdown on illegal immigration, which
I shall have some more to say about later. However, it ill behoves the
Liberal Democrats to appear in the media, as their spokesman did today,
complaining that that crackdown was not sufficiently effective when the
first
line of defence is being undermined and potential illegal immigrants are
being allowed into the country.
That is my contribution in
support of my Front-Bench team and to remind the Liberal Democrats of
the importance of immigration control for UK citizens and for other
people who genuinely want to come to this country for proper
reasons.
3
pm
Mr.
Byrne:
I am pleased to be able to follow the hon.
Gentleman, because the argument that he is making is absolutely right.
In this era of global movement, it is no longer possible to sustain a
notion that our frontier controls are in fixed points around the
British isles, with immigration staff reliant on a paper-based process.
We need a different concept of the frontier, in which the frontier
controls begin abroad; we need to offshore those controls. That is
precisely why the programme of biometric visas is so
important.
You missed
my interesting fact this morning, Mr. Amess, when I told the
Committee that we have introduced the process of issuing biometric
visas in just a few posts overseas and already we have found that about
2,000 people with what I shall call an adverse immigration history were
trying to come back into the UK, possibly under a different identity.
That is why biometric visas are so important, and will continue to be
in the future, and why it is a matter of such regret that the right
hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden proposes to cancel the contract
for them.
On the
issue of biometric visas and immigration documents, which the hon.
Member for Rochdale addressed, I wanted to clarify one matter and I
hope that it will give him some reassurance; biometric immigration
documents will, of course, not be issued by UK Visas. UK Visas will
only issue visas. Biometric immigration documents will be for those
people who are staying in the country for a certain period of time.
That is an important point of
clarification.
Paul
Rowen:
I was interested in that comment. Will the Minister
clarify the status of biometric documents? How long must someone be
visiting this country to need one? If someone is coming for three
months, will they need a biometric visa or a paper visa? It is
important to clarify
that.
Mr.
Byrne:
Approximately three-quarters of the worlds
population need a visa to come here and from 2008 that will be a
biometric visa, even if someone wants to come to Britain for a single
day. If anyone from the 169 non-EEA countries wants to come to work, or
study, or to stay for longer than six months, they will also need a
biometric visa. However, the current proposal is that if people are
staying for longer than six months, they will need a biometric
immigration document. There are debates as to whether to bring that
limit of six months down to three months and we will have further
proposals on that matter to lay before the House in the months to come.
David
T.C. Davies:
On a point of clarification, can the Minister
tell us whether this system will include
countries such as Australia and New Zealand, which already give us
fairly easy access rights and allow us to visit for up to 12 months
with barely a
formality?
Mr.
Byrne:
The proposal is that those who are staying in
Britain for longer than six months should be required to have a
biometric immigration document. There is a secondary question, which is
relevant to the hon. Gentlemans intervention, and that is the
question of those countries where we seek to extend a visa regime.
Currently, I am not completely convinced that the right countries
around the world have a visa requirement imposed on them. Some
countries, such as America and Australia, with which we have very
strong relationships, have extremely robust processes for issuing
documentation, and therefore have systems that are sufficiently robust
for us not to require their citizens to have a visa. However, there are
other parts of the world where that is not the case.
There is a debate in Europe
about whether the ceiling in European regulations should move from six
months to three months. We will have more to say on that in due
course.
Before the
hon. Member for Ashford rises, I should like to clarify the issue
raised by the interesting Daily Mail article. It is important
for me to point out that electronic passports are designed to be read
at border controls as well as abroad. Once public access readers are
available, people will be able to read the passport chip. Any attempts
to modify the chip would be detected at a border control point and the
individual concerned would be rapidly diverted to a secondary line for
further conversations.
Damian
Green:
If the Minister believes that, I hope that he is
right, but that is not the experience of those who were modifying the
chip. I am fascinated by the figure that he has now repeated
twicethat three quarters of the worlds population will
require a biometric visa. Is he saying that for as far ahead as he can
see, a quarter of the worlds population, which is 1.5 billion
people, will not be required to have a biometric
visa?
Mr.
Byrne:
I am happy to clarify that point. It is not that
three quarters of the worlds population will require a
biometric visa at some point in the future, it is that they require a
visa today. From 2008, all visa posts will issue biometric visas. There
is a requirement for the remaining quarter of the worlds
population to secure a visa if they are coming to work, study or stay
for longer than six months.
How Britain keeps under review
the issue of whether visa requirements are imposed on the right
countries is an open question. All sorts of considerations have to be
taken into account, some of which were raised by the hon. Member for
Monmouth, who mentioned the closeness of our links to the country
concerned, the strength of its security controls and the economic
impact of the relationship. We will have more to say about that issue,
which I realise is not subject to the amendment, in the months to come.
The key point is that biometric visas would cease to be issued if the
right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden got his hands on the
contract book, because he would close down that system.
The purpose of many of the
amendments is quite rightly to secure a much greater degree of
transparency in the way in which regulations are drafted and codes of
practice developed. We want the flexibility to keep the regulations up
to date, because security features that we want to bring online might
be added to the national security scheme, for example. We might add to
the categories of information that we collect; we have talked at length
about new categories of leave to remain, such as that for ministers of
religion, and we have highlighted the importance of certain categories
of information, such as whether people are married and therefore
eligible for spouse visas. That flexibility is important.
I do not think that any member
of the Committee would want a situation in which people were here
without leave and were not required to keep their documents up to date
so that it was clear whether they had a right to be here. There is
rightly concern about the level of performance throughout the
INDs operations, which was at the heart of what the hon. Member
for Rochdale said.
In
other countries, our entry clearance officers work in some pretty
difficult and often quite dangerous circumstances, as the hon. Member
for Hertsmere said. They do the job well and provide a service that is
extremely good internationally. That said, is it good enough? No, it is
not. Does it need to be better? Yes, it does. Does there need to be
greater transparency? Yes, of course there must be. That is why I
propose to bring forward amendments, which I hope to table this
afternoon, that will set out in some depth the kind of functions that a
new, stronger, more powerful regulator would provide. That would
include an investigation into whether the IND is operating effectively
in accordance with race relations regulations and whether there is
consistency in the quality of its operations. Is there consistency in
how it is following the rules in its enforcement operations? That is
particularly relevant to this mornings debate. I do not propose
that the regulator would produce reports that it kept secret or
submitted only to the Secretary of State, as it is vital that
Parliament can scrutinise the reports to see whether the service is
improving. I have said on the record many times that it is important
that communities throughout the country have a chance to see how the
immigration service is doing where they live, and the regulator should
help with that target.
The Bill
states that the Secretary of State may issue codes of practice that
require authorised persons to have regard to them. That is important;
it is expressed in that way because we want to undertake a thorough
exploration of whether existing codes provide the best means of
securing the ends that Opposition Members rightly seek. Those codes are
most likely to be the Police and Criminal Evidence Act codes issued in
1984, which are rightly regarded as something of a gold standard and
encompass processes that would include taking biometric information.
They would set out the processes that are involved and they are tried
and tested, well recognised and probably the right basis for the codes
that the Secretary of State would issue to guide authorised persons in
the work that they do in this
respect.
Paul
Rowen:
I am grateful to the Minister for his agreement to
table amendments on the important role of the regulator. To respond to
the hon. Member for
Hertsmere, I do not seek to weaken or downgrade the immigration system;
we are discussing how to strengthen it. However, we do not want a
system that is already struggling under the weight of what it has to
deal with to get worse, which has happened on many occasions when there
have been changes as a result of new legislation.
I hope that the Minister will
reassure us that the regulator will have all-encompassing powers and
will consider how the system is introduced, because we want it to work.
The most disastrous thing that could happen to hon. Members is that we
introduce into a system where there is already delay because of the
sheer volume of work something that causes even further delays and
makes it impossible for anyone going about their legitimate business to
get a visa.
I was a
bit disappointed, however, as I thought that the Minister this morning
agreed with his neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham,
Yardley, that he would change may to
shall, which is important as we need to see the
regulations. There have been occasions in the pastadmittedly,
not while the hon. Gentleman has been the immigration
Ministerwhen promised legislation or guidelines for the
operation of immigration officers, for example, have not been
published. We agree with the increase in powers but we want them to be
published.
I hope that
the Minister will reflect on what I have said, because we want the
system to work and we want everyone to be confident that everything is
in place to make it a success. Shall rather than
may will give us that certainty. I beg to ask leave to
withdraw the
amendment.
Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn.
3.15
pm
(3A)
Regulations under subsection (1)(b) may, in particular, require the
production or other use of a biometric immigration document that is
combined with another document; andsection 16 of the Identity
Cards Act 2006 (c. 15) (prohibition of requirement to produce ID card)
is subject to this
subsection..
Our
debate this morning gave me the opportunity to clarify the fact that
despite many of the concerns legitimately expressed by Opposition
Members I do not have the ambition of equipping the Secretary of State
for the Home Department with unfettered powers to compel anyone he
likes to acquire an identity card, or with the power to solicit all
kinds of unnecessary information. I take a far more cautious approach
to the Bill than perhaps hon. Members will accept. They are perfectly
right to be sceptical.
We want to issue biometric
immigration documents to help those who are here legitimately to prove
their immigration status and their entitlements. As I have said several
times in these debates, my ambition is to phase out 20th century
paper-based documents, which are too insecure, too many in number and
provide too many opportunities for fraud. I want to make it much easier
for businesses and public services to check a single document and to
check it securely. It should put peoples identity beyond doubt
and provide an easy way for them to prove who they are and what they
are entitled to do.
I have also made it very clear
that when the national identity system comes on line it will be our
ambition to designate these cards under the terms of the Identity Cards
Act 2006. The Committee might find it useful if I sketch out a little
bit of the background that is relevant in the Act. Under section 16
there is a prohibition on anyone being required to produce an ID card
as the only means of identity, save in three exceptions. The first is
where there is a reasonable alternative; the second is where we have
introduced compulsory registration; and the third is where we have made
additional provisions under another enactment, such as Acts subsequent
to the 2006 Act.
It
may strike all reasonable members of the Committee as perfectly obvious
that the UK Borders Bill is a reasonable enactment and therefore
satisfies section 16 of the 2006 Act. But advisers have suggested that
there is the merest shadow of a doubt, which I seek to eliminate with
the amendment. I want to put it beyond question that once biometric
immigration documents are designated, we can require this card and
nothing else to be produced. Before designation, regulations will set
out where they can be produced, such as to employers, and we would want
that situation to carry on after designation.
We need to ensure that section
16 of the 2006 Act does not take us backwards once these cards have
been designated under the terms of that Act. I do not believe that it
does, but I want to put the question beyond doubt with this amendment.
This does not take away any of the protections in section 16 that an
individual cannot be required to produce a card for a non-immigration
purpose where the immigration status is not relevant, such as opening a
bank account. A person could not be required to produce an ID card in
that situation. If he wanted to work in a bank, that would be a
different matter because his immigration status would be directly
relevant. That is the long and short of this amendment. It is a
technical and cautious amendment which seeks to put quite a small
question beyond all reasonable
doubt.
Damian
Green:
I rise briefly, because I feel encouraged by the
Ministers words that he does not believe that this is necessary
but that there is the shadow of a prospect that it may be necessary to
provide protection for people. That is laudable and I merely commend
that approach to him on other parts of the Bill. We heard this morning
that he would take new clause 1 away to think about it. I urge him to
adopt the same process with that, because it has a similar ring to it
as the problems that he is trying to avoid with this
amendment.
Paul
Rowen:
I want to support those comments. I am pleased by
the Ministers comments in setting something out so carefully. I
believe that it is a protection that people will value. There is
clarity as to how this is to be introduced. I welcome the
amendment.
Amendment
agreed
to.
(7) Nothing in
regulations under this section shall apply to persons under 18 years of
age..
The
Chairman:
With this it will be convenient to discuss the
following amendments: No. 61, in
clause 6, page 4, line 33, leave
out subsection
(3).
No. 79, in
clause 6, page 4, line 36, leave
out from regulations to end of line 37 and
insert
may permit only
the use of iris
data..
Damian
Green:
The two amendments in my name, amendments Nos. 60
and 61, are probing amendments on the application of regulations under
the clause to children. It is clearly one of the most sensitive matters
for debate, and since Labour Members regrettably chose to snub the
Refugee Childrens Consortium and refused to hear its evidence,
it is important that we
show
Mr.
Byrne:
On a point of order, Mr. Amess.
Isit still within the gift of Committee members, particularly
Back-Bench Committee members, to table amendments that would allow
further witnesses to be summoned to give
evidence?
The
Chairman:
I am advised that the Committee can change such
matters. Of course we would have to reconvene the Committee, but it
would be entirely dependent on the Minister to propose the motion.
Perhaps Mr. Damian Green would like to reflect on
that.
Damian
Green:
The last time I looked, I was not the Minister.
[Hon. Members: Shame.] If things
changed, I would be delighted. I am always delighted to talk to the
Refugee Childrens Consortium. Indeed I, all my hon. Friends on
the Committee and the hon. Member for Rochdale voted to hear from it,
and I assume that the Ministers point of order means that he
regrets the action that he and his colleagues took last
week.
The
Chairman:
Order. The Committee did actually vote against
taking evidence from that
organisation.
Damian
Green:
In which case the Ministers repentance is
sadly too late. It is wholly welcome, but unfortunately his attempt to
do something about it will be stopped by procedure, which is
regrettable.
To return
to the amendments, there are issues both moral and practical to
consider on the collection of biometric data from children. The
Minister will remember that on Second Reading he
said:
Biometric
immigration documents will be issued to under-16s as proof of their
immigration status, and they will contain a facial
image.[Official Report, 5 February 2007; Vol.
456, c. 676.]
He
went on to say that he was still considering at what age the
requirement of fingerprints would apply. Will he clarify the position
on that?
The Refugee
Childrens Consortium tells me that the EU is examining how to
ensure a consistent approach to the use of biometric identifiers and
considering the setting of a minimum age for the recording and storing
of facial images and fingerprints. The Minister will no doubt be
involved in those discussions, so will he clarify
where we have got to on that? He will be aware of a study in the
Netherlands that
concluded:
The
facial changes taking place up to the age of 12 are so marked that face
recognition is not possible without highly sophisticated software and
the considerable expense which goes with
it.
On fingerprints the
same document
stated:
Scientific
tests have confirmed that the papillary ridges on the fingers are not
sufficiently developed to allow biometric capture and analysis until
the age of six.
It is
clear that, in purely practical terms, there are different ages at
which it would be sensible to take biometric information from children,
and that different biometrics require different ages.
The EU document proposes that
for children aged 0 to 12, the member state should decide on storage in
the chip of the passport on the basis of national legislation, but that
from the age of 12 it should be compulsory. I am sure that members of
the Committee would find it useful if the Minister gave his thoughts on
that EU proposal and whether the Government intend to support it or
bring it into our own national law in some other way. I should be
grateful if he would do that.
Would the Minister also tell
the Committee the cost of the software needed to calculate age-related
changes in biometric information, and set out the frequency of
registration to which under-18s would be subject for the purposes of
maintaining a biometric immigration document or eventually, if he has
his way, identity card? The regulatory impact assessment for the Bill
states that one of the key benefits of the power for the compulsory
registration of biometric details of third-country nationals is
to
Align with
the wider National Identity Scheme to ensure that there are no gaps in
the system.
However, as
the clauses are drafted, there is an inconsistency in relation to the
biometric identification of children. The 2006 Act applies to UK
nationals aged 16 and over, but the Government intend biometric
immigration documents to be issued to under-16s. There is clearly some
inconsistency, so I should be grateful if the Minister would clear that
up.
My concern is not
just with practical matters but with moral issues. There is a wider
point regarding the compatibility of the Governments proposals
with our international obligations, in particular with the United
Nations convention on the rights of the child. The Refugee
Childrens Consortium argues that extending any provisions on
biometric registration documents to under-18s may well conflict with
article 16 of that convention. Again, it would be helpful if the
Minister were to let the Committee know why he thinks that that is not
trueI assume that that is his view; otherwise, he would not be
proposing this legislation.
Mr.
Byrne:
I did not quite follow that last point. Would the
hon. Gentleman rehearse his argument once again for my benefit? I want
to ensure that my response is as full as
possible.
Damian
Green:
The argument about the UN convention is that any
extension of provision for biometric information to under-18s may
conflict with article 16, which provides children with the right to
respect for their private and family life without unlawful interference.
The argument of the Refugee Childrens Consortium is that
without the full details of how the Government plan to use such a
registration scheme, it is not possible to determine whether its
application to under-18s would be in accordance with their rights under
article 16. I assume that the Minister does not propose to breach the
convention, so I should be interested in his comments as to why he
thinks that those fears are unfounded. Clearly, the degree of vagueness
surrounding various clauses in the Bill, particularly this one, gives
rise to such fears.
A
raft of issues, practical and moral, and in relation to our
international treaty obligations, requires serious debate by this
Committee.
Paul
Rowen:
I support what the hon. Gentleman has said about
the clauses and amendment No. 79, which is a variant to be used if the
Government are not prepared to consider withdrawing the use of
biometrics for young people. Like the hon. Gentleman, I was
disappointed that we were not able to hear from the Refugee
Childrens Consortium. We have serious questions about how these
clauses and the later one requiring people to report will affect the
rights of children.
I
should like to refer the Minister to the remarks of his colleague in
the Lords, Baroness Scotland, which have been quoted by the Refugee
Childrens Consortium. During the debate on the Identity Cards
Bill, she stated that the Government
had
no immediate plans
to reduce the age below 16 as the cost of doing so outweighs any
benefits that may arise. This is due to the fact that children have
unstable biometrics which would result in them frequently having to
re-register.[Official Report, House of Lords, 23
November 2005; Vol. 675, c.
1681.]
3.30
pm
During this
debate, we have been saying that we want a system that works and is
robust and fair, but clearly there is a problem with childrens
biometrics changing with time. A Minister said that we will not require
UK children below the age of 16 to have an ID card because they have
unstable biometrics, despite the fact that ID cards obviously will
apply to people in the UK. It seems reasonable, therefore, that we
apply the same criteria elsewhere. The hon. Member for Ashford spoke
about human rights and treating people fairly and equally. If we will
not require children below the age of 16 from the UK to register for
biometrics, we cannot impose such regulations on children coming to
this country. There is a question, therefore, about whether their human
rights would be
breached.
That is the
argument that the hon. Member for Ashford makes against registering the
biometrics for children below that age. If the Government are not
prepared to accept his argument, they could consider my alternative
amendment, which is based on evidence given by the Professor on
biometricsthese evidence sessions are useful. I understand the
problems with rejection rates, particularly among black people and
other ethnic minorities, but it was stated clearly that iris data do
not change, but remain stable from the day that somebody is
born.
I tabled my
amendment to help the Government, to whom I put it that if they are not
prepared to take on board the comments made by the hon. Member for
Ashford and to abandon their proposal for children, they could consider
the use of iris data only. If facial and fingerprint data are going to
change and become unstable, it will make a mockery of the system. We
want a fair and robust system that will not be subject to ridicule
because part of it does not work. On the basis of what Baroness
Scotland said, a case could be made for the Government to reconsider
where they stand on that
proposal.
Mr.
Byrne:
Perhaps I can deal with the question about the UN
convention on the rights of the child. Article 16 does indeed include
the right to respect for private life. Under article 8 of the European
convention on human rights we are obliged already to respect that
right. I could not quite keep up with the debate among Opposition
Members and cannot recall whether their position is to derogate from
the ECHR. However, as long as the ECHR is incorporated into UK law
under the Human Rights Act 1998, the Government are obliged to respect
the private lives of children. It would be interesting to have that
debate with the Refugee Childrens Consortium. I can imagine
what it would say about derogating from the
ECHR.
I can assure the
hon. Member for Ashford, however, that biometrics will be used only in
a way that is necessary for the maintenance of immigration control. Of
course, when EU regulations on biometric cards come into
forceas we discussed this morning, there are proposals for
biometric resident permitsit is inconceivable that they would
be incompatible with ECHR
obligations.
In
response to the amendments, children below the age of 18, if not
British citizens, are subject to immigration control. I think that all
members of the Committee will agree that that is very sensible. We
would not want to grant amnesties or to end immigration control for
those below the age of 18. I suspect that, if we were to take such a
step, we would start to see pretty rapid build-ups of people arriving
at our border controls pretending that they were under the age of 18.
Last week I launched a consultation document about, for example,
introducing tougher checks on peoples ages. If children under
the age of 18 come to this country and claim asylum, it is important
that we know genuinely how old they are, so that we avoid the risk of
having adults in the childrens system or, indeed, of having
children in the adults
system.
We should not
end immigration control for those under 18. Doing so would be a serious
pull factor, which would encourage illegal immigration to this country.
I fear that it would also be a green light for traffickers and
smugglers. Therefore, the maintenance of robust immigration control for
the under-18s is important, so that we do not set up any perverse
incentives in the
system.
Paul
Rowen:
Does the Minister accept that nobody on our side,
certainly during this debate, has sought either an amnesty or to have
anything other than robust systems in place? Our concern is that the
proposals are not robust and, therefore, could lead the system into
disrepute.
Mr.
Byrne:
I am grateful for the first part of the hon.
Gentlemans question, but I am slightly warier about the second.
If he is suggesting that the most robust
system for immigration control is the current system of immigration
controls or, indeed, the very philosophyof frontier
controloutlined earlier by the hon. Gentlemanwhich has
a static point at a border where people offer various bits of paper to
the immigration officer standing at a desk, then I would humbly beg to
differ. I am glad that we are united in wanting immigration controls to
persist for the under-18s; I am saddened that we differ about the best
means of securing such immigration control in the
future.
A few months
agoI think before ChristmasI was interested to note on
the Liberal Democrats website a response to one of the hon. Friends of
the hon. Member for Rochdale, the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn,
Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander). I was excited to see that
the Liberal Democrats had come to full support for the use of biometric
information in passports. That is a very welcome advance. That is a
sensible recognition that the use of biometrics in immigration
documents is important. I want to extend that principle to the
immigration control documents that we use for those foreign nationals
under 18 in this country, subject to all the protections that we talked
about in the ECHR and other international agreements. We currently take
biometrics of foreign nationals under the age of 16; indeed, biometric
visas must be taken up by everybody over the age of five. There is a
debate among the expertscurrently going on over EC
regulationsabout whether the right age for introducing
biometric resident permits should be five or six. Obviouslyin a
way this is my direct answer to the hon. Member for Ashfordour
provisions will be in line with that EC regulation; whether the age
will be five or six I am not yet in a position to
say.
The
hon. Member for Ashford also raised the question whether there was an
inconsistency between the sort of debate that we had over the national
identity scheme, to which the hon. Member for Rochdale alluded, and
biometric immigration documents. The tension is resolved with the
answer that we will not be designating biometric immigration documents
under the terms of the national identity scheme if the card holder is
under the age of 16. However, it is important that immigration control
is retained for those under 18 and that the most secure possible
documentation is used; if it is good enough for biometric passports, I
think it is good enough for biometric immigration documents for foreign
nationals. With that clarification on the record, I hope that hon.
Members will feel able to withdraw the
amendments.
Paul
Rowen:
My amendment is slightly different from those of
the hon. Member for Ashford, so I am being consistent with what my hon.
Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey said.
We are in favour of the use of biometric data, and in my amendment I
have suggested the use of the iris, which at least does not change with
time. Will the Minister respond to that?
Mr.
Byrne:
The hon. Gentleman is quite right not to let me sit
down before answering that question, which I apologise for not picking
up in my earlier remarks. My concern with eliminating the capture of
all biometric information save for the iris is that it will be some
time yet before we can have tried, tested and robust systems in place
so as to make iris capture possible all over the world.
We should remember that because
we have a created a unity of systems, the system that we
haveone which the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden
would shut downwould be the one underpinning biometric visas.
So, the biometric information captured on that system when people apply
for such a visa can conveniently be reused for biometric immigration
documents should people secure, in-country, their leave to remain for
more than six months. That saves them from going through the rigmarole
of applying for it again.
Now, if we were taking the
approach that the hon. Member for Rochdale sets out, we would have to
introduce iris capture technology in countries covering three quarters
of the worlds population. That is a big task, which would delay
the opportunity to introduce biometric immigration documents at the
speed that we could do that. So, while I have no problem with a future
that includes the capture of iris data, my concern is: how do we move
quickly now, to render immigration documents for foreign nationals more
secure? The Liberal Democrat position is that biometric information can
make the difference, and I agree. We should implement it for
immigration documents for those who are over 18, and under 18 as soon
as possible.
Chris
Mole (Ipswich) (Lab): I thank my hon. Friend for giving
way. In the context of the comments made by the hon. Member for
Rochdale, would he not agreeagainst the contexts of comments
made by other Committee members about the difficulties that could be
encountered with large-scale information technology
solutionsthat rushing too quickly to a more complex biometric,
such as iris, could be a mistake in terms of achieving platform
stability and effectiveness as soon as possible? That is so, even
though it would give us the long-term confidence that we all
seek.
Mr.
Byrne:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who makes a good
point extremely well. I would fear any proposal that puts off into the
distant future the opportunity to secure better immigration documents,
whether that is for over-18s or under-18s.
Paul
Rowen:
Does the Minister not accept that we heard about
the use of biometric iris data in, for example, the United Arab
Emirates when we were viewing evidence? If I travel down here by plane
from ManchesterI do not usually do that, but if I care to do
itthen at Manchester Airport there is a camera taking my iris
data. The system and technology is there; it works, and experts have
told us that it is accurate.
Mr.
Byrne:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for pointing
out Project Iris, which is certainly the fastest-growing trusted
traveller scheme in western Europe, and possibly in the world. It is
extremely successful and an example of an IT project that is, by and
large, working. However, it is currently constructed only as a trial,
so I return to this point: perhaps I did not study the Liberal
Democrats website closely enoughindeed, some of the
font is quite smallbut I cannot remember seeing a proposal to
introduce
iris-only passports. The hon. Gentleman will be able to correct me if I
am wrong, but I think that it was termed more widely than that and
posed in terms of biometric
capture.
3.45
pm
My own view is
that biometric information in an immigration document is an advance on
the securityof paper-based documents. These systems will be
important in rendering more control of immigration documents and will
make immigration control easier, not harder. The sooner we get on with
securing them, the faster we will render our borders as secure as the
British public demand and deserve.
Damian
Green:
I should like to make a few brief remarks in
response to the Minister. I thought that the last 10 minutes clarified
quite a lot. This Committee has been told by its expert witnesses that
iris technology is better than fingerprint technology. The Minister
cannot give any kind of time scale for introducing the better of the
two main biometric recognitions, but is prepared to go ahead with one
which we have been told will create huge numbers of false results. I am
storing this away for some years hence when those results start coming
in. Indeed, if the professor who gave evidence is right, and the
accuracy levels are at his calculation and not at the calculation of
the Metropolitan police, the system will be swamped. I am sure that the
Minister hopes that the professor is wrong and that the Met is right
about that.
Even so,
the issue gives rise to the prospect that if the Minister has his way,
we will introduce a very expensive, all-embracing fingerprint system
and then have to replace it some years later with an even more
expensive all-embracing iris recognition system, because we will
discover that it is not accurate enough. One of the debates that he and
I have had recently is about the Governments latest guess in
their rising set of guesses as to how much the whole thing will cost,
which is £6 billion. Others have estimated that it will cost up
to £20 billion. The evidence that we have heard from the
Minister over the past 15 minutes has made me even more convinced that
the higher figure will be the real figure, not the lower
one.
Mr.
Byrne:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way.
He is being very generous. When more robust technology becomes
commercially available over the years and decades to come, surely he
would agree that we should exploit it, wherever practical, to render
our borders more secure, rather than blindly cancel contracts, which
will render us defenceless against tackling illegal immigration in the
future.
Damian
Green:
The basic false premise at the heart of the
Ministers whole argument, but particularly that argument, is
that it will make our borders more secure. If he is introducing a
biometric system that we have been told will create huge numbers of
wrong results, he will not be making our borders more secure. He will
just end up accusing large numbers of innocent people of offences they
have not committed, about which there will be much public outrage, and
he will let through large numbers of people whom he should be
stopping.
Effectively, the situation will
be just the same as it is now, where the right people are sent away
unnecessarily and the wrong people are let through. The only difference
will be that the Minister will have wasted billions and billions of
pounds of taxpayers money achieving the same rotten result that
we have at the moment. I am afraid that that does not give me any great
confidence about the long term.
As I said in my introductory
remarks on the amendments, I was seeking to probe the Ministers
attitude on the practical and international issues involved. He has
addressed all those individual issues very fully and very
enlighteningly. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
amendment.
Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn.
The
Chairman,
being of the opinion that the principle of the
clause and any matters arising thereon had been adequately discussed in
the course of debate on the amendments proposed thereto, forthwith put
the Question, pursuant to Standing Order
s
Nos. 68 and 89,
That the clause, as amended, stand part of the
Bill.
Question
agreed
to.
Clause
5, as amended, ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
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