Identity Cards Bill

The noble Lord has raised an important issue. I am only slightly put off by the horrid word ““regularisation””, which comes a little out of 1984. I suppose that some would say that regularisation in this context means that illegal immigrants, whatever their circumstances, must be immediately booted out. However, the noble Baroness rightly suggested that there is another possible approach. I, too, have in front of me the figures cited by the noble Lord when he moved the amendment. One of my noble friends who is not in the House tonight suggested to me during one of our earlier debates that we may well have a situation in which rather more—perhaps three quarters of a million or so—might suddenly have to leave the country. Of course, some of those people we probably want out of the country pretty quickly. Some of them obviously should not be here and I should not argue that they should stay. However, I suspect that, apart from those working in Chinese restaurants and the others to whom reference has been made, there are probably a good many people working for families as nurses, doing domestic work or working in essential public services whose position is not straightforward. We would face some severe social problems and economic disruption if, suddenly, we had a mass exodus. That would cause a great deal of tension and a lot of ill will. Some of those people have come here perfectly legitimately and then been either careless about renewing their permits or scared out of their wits that they might have to leave the country and go somewhere that they thought was dangerous and, somehow, have stayed on. The noble Lord is right to say that that issue must be studied with understanding and sympathy. A number of other countries introducing legislation of this kind have, with it, introduced an amnesty. They have found it necessary to provide an amnesty to cover the kind of situation that has been referred to. I do not know what the Government’s intentions are, but it is an important issue; it ought to be considered sooner, rather than later; we should know what the Government’s feelings about it are.