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Lord Hylton: I welcome the Government's willingness to reflect. It is perhaps the first time it has happened during the course of the Bill.

Lord Bassam of Brighton: No, it is not.

Lord Hylton: No? I accept that. The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, rightly pointed to the logistical difficulties implicit in the text of the amendment. However, the Government's problems would be enormously reduced if the tape-recording experiment started only with first interviews in asylum cases.

Lord Bassam of Brighton: I take the noble Lord's point. If the focus of the amendment was narrower, it might have some greater potential benefit in those kinds of cases. The amendment is broadly constructed as it stands and its remit would be to place on the service considerable administrative burdens, delays, costs, and so on. Despite its initial attractiveness, there is a fundamental problem with the amendment.

Earl Russell: The report Deciding to Detain to which I referred was not volume one, which was issued a little

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while ago, but volume two, which is this year's report. Although I recognise that situations change, if the proportion between asylum and immigration has changed in favour of immigration and against asylum, why do we have the Bill?

Lord Bassam of Brighton: I thank the noble Lord for his clarification.

Lord Avebury: I am enormously grateful to my noble friend Lord Russell and to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew of Twysden, and the noble Lords, Lord Hylton and Lord Kingsland.

Everyone who has spoken in the debate is in favour of the principle of tape recording. The only objection came from the Minister who said that it was administratively impracticable. He gave a sort of undertaking. I am not sure whether it was to review the position over the summer or to think about what has been said in the debate. He dropped a hint towards the end of this remarks that he might have looked more favourably on the amendment had it been confined to the interviews with asylum applicants because that would cut the numbers from a potential 12 million to something less than 76,000. We shall think about the matter during the summer and decide whether to table an amendment which is limited to asylum applicants, as the Minister suggested.

My noble friend Lord Russell referred to decisions to detain. The Committee may remember the case of the Afghans who arrived on Ariana Airlines and were segregated in the fire service college over a weekend when interviews were held. They were reported on by an interpreter and showed the enormous pressures that were brought to bear on those people not to make an application for asylum but to return to Afghanistan. That followed an undertaking by the then Home Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, now Foreign Secretary, that he would get rid of these people as rapidly as possible.

That is what happens when there are no proper recordings of interviews. It is possible for serious pressure to be brought to bear on applicants for asylum not to pursue that intention but to go back to their countries of origin. That could be avoided if interviews were tape-recorded.

I refer the Minister to a report by the Home Office Immigration and Nationality Directorate dated July 1999 on the asylum decision process consultancy. There are several paragraphs relating to taping all substantive interviews. Paragraph 6.34 states that,

"taping interviews reduces the opportunity to dispute what was said during an interview . . . may encourage greater professionalism by the interviewer and interpreter and . . . the trial"—

which was undertaken by the Home Office, so we need not start again from scratch—

"has apparently indicated that applicants and their advisers have also behaved more professionally during the interview".

The saving in time and costs compared with the conventional process was threefold. Therefore, it is not a matter of enormous cost to accept the spirit of the

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amendment. It would be a saving as well as an enormous benefit to practitioners and their clients. We shall return to the matter on Report with the modification that the Minister has suggested limiting it to asylum applicants. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

On Question, Whether Clause 53 shall stand part of the Bill?

Lord Avebury: I oppose Clause 53 stand part in order to pave the way for Amendments Nos. 171 and 172, the purpose of which is to consolidate the amendments made to the all-important Schedule 2 to the Immigration Act 1971 in this Bill with the schedule as amended. Technically it is not a true consolidation because, in addition to the task of reordering and renumbering the schedule itself to incorporate all the changes made to it since 1971, we would have to amend all the references made to the schedule in other legislation, and the matter would have to be referred to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills and the Law Commission to justify the term.

I am greatly indebted to the Public Bill Office for the assistance that it has given me in accomplishing part of the task and I hope that between us we shall have done enough to demonstrate the usefulness of the exercise and convince your Lordships that it should be completed.

We have taken Schedule 2, as amended, and inserted in it the words specified in Clauses 53 and 54. We should also have dealt with Clause 62(1) in the same way, but unfortunately through an error of mine, it was transformed into Amendment No. 179. But the wording of Clause 53 now appears as paragraph 18(2) of the revised schedule, and the wording of Clause 54 as new sub-paragraphs (3), (4) and (5) of that paragraph. The further tidying up still necessary would be to insert the words of Clause 62(1) after what becomes paragraph 11 in the renumbered schedule, and to renumber all the following paragraphs.

The effect of these amendments would be to enable practitioners, IND staff and clients to read the whole schedule as amended, instead of having to refer back to all the legislation that has been passed since 1971 to get the complete picture. I appreciate that it is possible to buy reference books that show how the 1971 Act appears with all the amendments, such as Margaret Phelan's excellent Immigration Law Handbook. But as fast as these tomes appear, Parliament comes along with fresh legislation and one has to spend another £40 on keeping up to date. This Government seem to have lost interest in consolidation, so let Parliament take a small step towards making the statutes easier to read, as an example that we should like all departments, but particularly the Home Office, to follow. I commend my amendments to the Committee.

Lord Bassam of Brighton: In keeping with earlier debates, I was expecting views to be expressed on all sides of the Committee, but plainly that has not happened. I have quite a long briefing note on this

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matter. However, I am mindful of the hour and am thinking that the several pages of justification for the current situation are not something that Members of the Committee will want to hear.

We are grateful for the thought that lies behind the amendments in this group. I cannot accept the noble Lord's point that the Government are not interested in consolidation. My recollection is that we recently had a mini-debate on the subject. I believe it was my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer who made the point that there had been some consolidation during this Government's period of office and that further consolidation was very much in our minds.

We recognise the case that has been made for consolidating the Acts relating to immigration and asylum. The noble Lord made a fair point. But we cannot practically do that before the whole reform package has been perfected and put together. However, we are committed to consulting the Law Commission about consolidation in due course.

I recognise that "in due course" can mean "as long as a piece of string". But we are committed to this. It makes good and apparent sense. So although we do not intend to include consolidation measures in the Bill—and for that reason I cannot accept the amendments—we recognise it as important and significant. We are grateful to the noble Lord for raising this matter. It is right that he does so.

I hope that the noble Lord will take some encouragement from my response. I ask him not to press the amendments that he has tabled.

Lord Avebury: As St Augustine said:

"Da mihi castitatem, sed noli modo"—

"Give me chastity, but not yet". The noble Lord expects me to be satisfied with an assurance that consolidation of the immigration Acts will happen at some time in the future. I suppose that I have to be pleased that he has given me that assurance, because I cannot expect anything more this evening. I hope that at least this debate has shown that the task is not so enormous. If the Public Bill Office can manage to supply half the work of consolidating the most important schedule of the 1971 Act, I am sure that it is not beyond the resources of the department to carry on and do the rest of the work.

So I hope that the Government will take this matter seriously and that we shall not have to wait indefinitely for consolidation when so much depends on it for immigration practitioners, for clients and for the IND. In the meantime, I shall not oppose the Question and I shall not press my amendments.

On Question, Clause 53 agreed to.

10.15 p.m.

Clause 54 [Escorts]:

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