Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

If I may take the noble Baroness’s reply in reverse order, I say first how grateful I am for her assurances on consolidation. Until she told us, I was not aware that she was the Minister responsible for the Law Commission, so I am delighted to have had her ear this afternoon and to have received her assurance that she will ask the relevant Home Office Minister to see whether that can somehow be sandwiched into the Law Commission’s programme. When she does that, will she ensure that, if the Home Office says that it is an Everest too far and that, with the rest of the programme that it has under way, it cannot guarantee to undertake it immediately, that the Home Office Minister in question makes my subsidiary point that it may well be worth undertaking the partial task that we attempted in the amendment: to consolidate Schedule 2? That is constantly being amended; it has been amended several times in the Bill. If the Government were unable to undertake the full job, it would have some value at least to consider how we could bring Schedule 2 into either this Bill or, if that is too much to ask, whatever is the next government Bill. As I said, it is impossible to envisage the state of affairs projected by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, when we were last discussing the matter, where everything that one could conceivably want to do in the field of immigration, nationality and asylum had been accomplished and the Government could stand back to admire their handiwork with no intention of coming forward at the next election with a manifesto undertaking new commitments. I cannot see that ever happening, and I do not imagine that the noble Baroness can either. We cannot wait for perfection, we need the Law Commission to get on with the job now. I hope that after this afternoon’s discussion, we will be able to do that and that the note that the noble Baroness promised me, may be sent before Report, so that we can consider whether there is anything further that we need to do on the subject. We had a very useful discussion on the earlier amendments, especially on the question of fingerprints. I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, for putting her finger on this point. From what we heard, it seems that fingerprints already include scans of fingerprints and that the digitised copy of the image would come within the definition referred to by my noble friend in Clause 43 of the Identity Cards Bill. That point needed to be cleared up. We look forward to examining what the Minister said with care to see what further steps we need to take. Several Members of the Committee have asked what happens when a passport is retained beyond departure. I am not entirely happy with what the Minister said. I cannot envisage why a passport would have to be retained for criminal proceedings other than against a person who was not the departing immigrant. If that is the case, perhaps we can amend the clause to make that clear. The two instances in which the passport needs to be retained beyond his departure are, first, when the documents were fraudulent or forged and are therefore replaced by another document issued by the country of origin. The second is when they are required in proceedings against a person other than the immigrant. If those are the two cases, they should be specified in the Bill. We can think about that at our leisure but, meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 27 agreed to. Clause 28 agreed to. Clause 29 [Attendance for fingerprinting]: