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Damian Green:
I agree. Indeed, I was making the more general point that much more effective control of our borders is essential not just in itself, which it is, but as part of the general fight against serious and organised crime, which is increasingly international. Indeed, crime is being globalised as much as any other aspect of the world economy. One of the advantages that we ought to have as a country, given that we are a set of islands, is
our border, but it is an advantage that we do not exploit enough. It is because our borders are so insecure that we are a destination country for people traffickers and some of the world's most significant and unpleasant criminal gangs.
That is where I believe the Bill is a huge missed opportunity-part 1 is an aspect of that, but so are the citizenship proposals. Fascinatingly, we have heard little from the Home Office-indeed, there has been silence-about the extension of the points-based system to citizenship applications since the previous Home Secretary stood at the Dispatch Box and announced this big new idea, yet we have now had all stages of this Bill, through to Third Reading. What has happened to that proposal? We have gone through an entire Bill. The previous Home Secretary made radical proposals for changing the route to citizenship-changes that she appeared to let out of the bag to Parliament-yet the House of Commons and the House of Lords have discussed a citizenship Bill without any proposals from the Government about them.
That is significant. If those proposals are properly worked out-I assume that they had been, otherwise the then Home Secretary would not have stood at the Dispatch Box and revealed them-it seems implausible that the Government should be sitting on them. Let me warn the Minister now that if the Government produce those proposals over the summer, when Parliament is not sitting, Parliament will be right to be angry, particularly when you have made such a welcome point about announcements coming first to Parliament, Mr. Speaker. I hope that that extremely welcome rubric will apply over the summer, as well as during the day, as it were, and that when Ministers say they are about to announce something, that announcement should be made first to Parliament.
Either the Minister has until next Tuesday to announce those proposals or we will expect nothing to come out before October. [ Interruption. ] The Minister mentions the party conference. I would remind him that, for the moment, he is the Government. Therefore, he may want to make announcements at his party conference, but he still has at least a week left to give us some idea.
The ultimate verdict on the Bill must be one of severe disappointment. We have an annual immigration Bill from this Government-some are better than others, but none has faced up to the severity of the crisis in our immigration system.
Mr. Bone: Before my hon. Friend concludes his remarks, may I tell him that I am interested in the issue of when any announcement might be made? Is he suggesting that Parliament might have to be recalled to hear such an announcement?
Damian Green: I genuinely do not wish to be the first person to call for the recall of Parliament over the summer, particularly when we have not even gone into recess yet. I hope, however, that the Minister has heard my views on this interesting proposal that was dangled before Parliament and then withdrawn.
I am aware that others wish to speak, so I will end with the thought that, for the third time in three years, we have had the potential for a significant improvement of an immigration Bill to be put before the House but that, yet again, the Government have disappointed us.
Keith Vaz: I did not serve on the Committee for this Bill, although I did participate in the Second Reading debate. It is a pleasure to be called to speak now on Third Reading. I, too, would like to pay tribute to all those who served on the Committee. We should get an improved Bill out of it, and the fact that the Liberal Democrats and the official Opposition both accept that the Government have moved in some areas is a tribute to the fact that the Minister has been prepared to listen to the reasonable proposals from parties on both sides of the House. He is no doubt relieved to be out of Committee, as he will now be able to get back to the ministerial correspondence that awaits him. Until yesterday, the Government were one Minister down, but the Home Secretary told the Select Committee during his session with us today that another Minister had temporarily been appointed to the Home Office to deal with the backlog in correspondence.
Mr. Woolas: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his support during this period. For the record, may I clarify that the backlog in correspondence to which he refers is certainly not my correspondence? I believe that I am the Minister most close to target in that regard.
Keith Vaz: I do not wish to start a ministerial competition.
Mr. Simon Burns (West Chelmsford) (Con): The right hon. Gentleman has certainly told us a very interesting piece of information. Could he enlighten the House as to which Minister has been appointed?
Keith Vaz: I raised with the Home Secretary a matter that I had raised with his predecessor. Of course the Minister with responsibility for identity is entitled to her maternity leave, and we wish her well in her motherly duties. However, we felt that this was a difficult period for the Home Office, and that it was important that her job should be filled for this limited time-we are all sure that she will come back at the end of this period. We were told by the Home Secretary that it was the "substantial" figure of Lord Brett-[Hon. Members: Who?] I am not sure whether the term "substantial" means that he is very large, or that his curriculum vitae is very large-
Mr. Speaker: Order. The right hon. Gentleman's speech was absolutely on track, and he should not be diverted from the path of virtue by the intervention-however well-meaning-of the hon. Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns).
Keith Vaz: I will certainly accept your ruling, Mr. Speaker. Nevertheless, we are glad that this very important Member of the other place has been appointed.
Yes, this is another Bill, and I hope that the Government will now have the opportunity to draw a line under the plethora of immigration Bills that we have seen over the past 12 years. The hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) puts the number of such Bills at nine; the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) thinks that it is 11. I think that it is 10. Perhaps the smokescreen that has been created by all these Third Reading debates on
immigration Bills means that the three of us need to sit down, possibly with the Minister, and work out exactly how many Acts of Parliament on immigration have gone through.
This Bill has a number of important features, but I would like to draw attention to a key point, which I hope is reflected in the two reports that the Select Committee will publish next week. They are the long-awaited report on the points-based system, which has taken us a year to complete, and the report into bogus colleges, which has taken only about three weeks because we had clear evidence in front of us. The key point is that further legislation might not be the answer. What we actually need is administrative control of the Border Agency. This is point that we put to Lin Homer when she came before us last week and to the Home Secretary today.
One of my concerns about the Bill, although I welcome the fact that it clarifies what the Government expect the chief inspector of the Border Agency to do, is that it puts too much responsibility on this individual, who also came before us to give evidence earlier today. The post was created by the Government following the abolition of four other posts, including the independent monitor, the race adviser and the audit committee. That, of course, followed on from the statement of a previous Home Secretary who had said that the Home Office, and particularly the immigration and nationality directorate, was "not fit for purpose".
I thus worry about the clauses that place a greater responsibility on the chief inspector, who, as we tried to point out in our evidence session today, is actually the independent chief inspector of the UK Border Agency. The Minister himself wrote to our Committee as a result of our representations and said that from the time he wrote to us onwards he would always refer to the chief inspector of the UK Border Agency as "the independent chief inspector", yet when we look at the Bill, we find that the word "independent" is missing.
It is important for the Minister to stick by the commitments he has made to Parliament through the Select Committee. He must ensure that this individual, Mr. Vine, is independent, is given the resources he needs to complete his job and is given appropriate direction. We were told today that his first report is going to be on the visa regime in Rome-a wonderful place and a great city, but one does not need visas to come from Rome to the UK. We would much rather that the independent chief inspector of the UK Border Agency were doing the job that he is expected to do and that Parliament has asked him to do, which is independently to inspect the UK Border Agency. I hope that the clauses that place new responsibilities on this inspector will enable him to do his work effectively.
On citizenship, which is an essential part of the Bill, the Select Committee produced an interim report-we could not conduct a final analysis of the draft Bill because so much of it was missing when it came before us-and we hope that the new arrangements for earned citizenship will be monitored very carefully indeed. I am not against people earning the right to come into this country. I came as a first generation immigrant.
What the Minister will probably find-he has a large diaspora especially from Bangladesh in his Oldham constituency-is that there is excitement within communities
about gaining citizenship. We are not against provisions to give people certificates, as people feel very excited about becoming British citizens, but I worry that we are putting on people who try to acquire citizenship under the arrangements in the Bill a greater onus than we are on people born in this country who are already British citizens. After all, we expect those who come as immigrants and want to be British citizens to sit and take tests on the country's institutions, whereas many citizens from this country do not know what those institutions are.
Mr. Woolas: My right hon. Friend makes the very important point that the applicant for citizenship does not need convincing of its benefit or of the desirability of integrating and taking up opportunities. Does he agree with me that the value of the Bill is that it will help to show the indigenous population that that is also the case? Does not the fact that people can say that many ordinarily resident domestic British people could not pass the test rather prove the benefit of the immigrant to our country?
Keith Vaz: I accept that point, but I do not think that the public are desperately concerned about legal immigration and the acquisition of citizenship. What concerns them is illegal immigration, along with the fact that the Government do not have any control over the large number of people who come into this country legally. Some of my constituents tell me that it is easier to come into this country illegally than to do so legally because so many requirements are placed on people. I understand the Minister's point-it is a good point-but I do not think that we need to prove it to the citizens of this country. They accept that someone who has been here for five years will need to jump over some more hurdles in order to become a British citizen, and those hurdles are contained in the Bill.
Some of the schemes in the Bill involve volunteering, and that has been discussed. The Select Committee felt that some of the tasks being set for those who wish to acquire citizenship should be monitored. I hope that the Minister will bear that in mind, along with all the other tests that he has proposed for those who wish to become citizens.
Damian Green: Does the right hon. Gentleman he share my concern that the hurdles to citizenship which, as he says, are central to the Bill are still wrapped up at this stage? Does that not strike him as peculiar, and potentially slightly disturbing?
Keith Vaz: The hon. Gentleman is right: it is disturbing. The truth of the matter, in my view, is that the Government themselves do not know what is in the proposals. When they discussed the Bill last year-it was then the very big Bill that he described-and placed it before the Select Committee for scrutiny, many of its provisions were not put to us, and that is why we stopped our deliberations.
I do not think that the Government know what they want to do about this scheme. That is why they now have a wonderful opportunity-the Minister will be very good at this, because he is extremely good at engaging with communities-to arrange proper consultation up and down the country, especially with the groups that are most affected, on what the provisions should
be. However, the matter will have to return to Parliament so that there is adequate scrutiny of what the Government propose. I do not think that the Minister is in a position at this moment to place his proposals before Parliament, because I do not think he knows what they are. I emphasise to him that I do not mean that in a nasty way.
Keith Vaz: Does the Minister know what they are?
Mr. Woolas: I know that my right hon. Friend does not mean that in a nasty way. I think that he is right. We are developing those proposals, but we needed the law to be established before we could publish the details for consultation. That is being worked on by stakeholders, and it will come back to Parliament. I accept the good spirit in which my right hon. Friend is speaking.
Keith Vaz: We look forward to hearing the proposals.
My final point relates to human trafficking, an issue that, has been raised by the hon. Member for Ashford and others. The Bill deals with two aspects of it. When the Home Secretary appeared before the Select Committee today, he undertook to examine the very serious allegations made in The Times and The Guardian today that when people were interviewed, they stated that they had only entered this country because of the connivance-their word was "corruption"-among certain officers in the UK Border Agency. I have seen no evidence to support those serious allegations, other than the Home Office's own report. Let me say to the Minister that we accepted the Home Secretary's undertaking, and we hope that those allegations will be looked into, because this is a serious matter.
We know that the Government want to make a priority of ending human trafficking, and we know that they want to do all that they can to work with other countries to stop that evil crime. It is a modern-day example of slavery. We welcome the prospect of an investigation by the Home Secretary, but we also hope that the Minister will examine the funding regime. He cannot implement his proposals unless he gives the resources that are needed to organisations such as the Metropolitan police.
Mr. Bone: As usual, the right hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech, but when it comes to the specific issue of human trafficking into this country, is it not a good idea for an independent, arm's length commissioner to examine the whole situation, so that we can be given proper advice and information before making decisions?
Keith Vaz: I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman and especially to the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) for the work that they do in the all-party group on human trafficking. I am not against the idea of appointing a commissioner-the difficulty is the scale of the problem of human trafficking: it is huge. He or she would need a huge number of staff, and I do not think the Government would be prepared to fund that.
My concern is that the funding for the Metropolitan police's human trafficking unit, which is vital to what the Bill proposes, is about to be cut off. The Prime
Minister told me at the Dispatch Box that the funding was going to be increased. Well, we were told today that it will end on 31 March 2010. That is not an increase: zero per cent. is not an increase as far as we are concerned. I therefore ask the Minister to go back to the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister, as the Select Committee will do, and urge them to provide the Metropolitan police with the resources that they need. It is not good enough to say to the police, "Get these resources from your existing budget". The police themselves have said they will have to cut £428 million from their budget to make the savings the Home Office has asked them to make in respect of individual police authorities. We have got to deal with human trafficking with the experts who are best placed to solve this problem, so I urge the Minister to go back and look at this issue.
Let me say this in absolute conclusion, to allow the hon. Member for Eastleigh the chance to speak again in the debate: we have gone along with yet another immigration Bill. We accept what the Government have said-that this is necessary for good, firm and fair immigration control. However, the warning that comes from me and other Members of the House is that we can have all the legislation in the world, but Ministers must direct their attention toward the administrative chaos that still exists in the UK Border Agency: a backlog of 440,000 cases, supported by taxpayers' money of £650 million a year. That is what Lin Homer told us last week-the cost of servicing that backlog is £650 million a year, which is far too much.
I say: make a case to the Treasury, ask for additional money-the Select Committee and Members of this House will help-and get rid of that backlog, and then we can look at additional legislation that will help to achieve what the Government propose. Legislation without administrative direction and control will not work. I welcome the clauses in the Bill, but I say to the Minister that it is in his hands: he can be the first Immigration Minister in the history of this country to have cleared the backlog at the UK Border Agency. I believe he has the ability, talent and robustness to make sure this will happen.
Chris Huhne: As always, I am delighted to follow the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz). Any Immigration Minister should take very much to heart his wise words about the importance of administration, rather than legislation. Whether it is the ninth, ten or eleventh offering from this Government in the area of immigration law, it is simply too many Bills. When the right hon. Gentleman and I were last jousting on this topic, I think we only half in jest said that the Home Office should be attempting to re-tread some of its lawyers involved in drafting legislation into dealing with the legacy.
This latest Bill proves the old adage that quantity does not mean quality. It is as inaccessible and ill thought out as many of the other previous efforts at reform. Although we are absolutely delighted and somewhat surprised today that we can count no fewer than three victories for the Opposition-on retrospection, the common travel area and judicial review-this remains a Bill that is a pudding without a theme.
In Committee, the Minister described the Bill as
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