Immigration Service

I think that the word should have been ““commend””. Perhaps the Home Secretary thinks that he is still at the Ministry of Defence. I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of his statement. Much of what he announced is very sensible: it is also not new. The new asylum model, for example, was announced in February 2005. I also welcomed his intention to challenge the Chahal judgment last week. Indeed, can he now answer the question he twice failed to answer then, which was what he will do if the Chahal challenge fails? Most particularly, what will happen with the Prime Minister’s comment, which the Home Secretary repeated today, that foreign prisoners will face automatic deportation? What will happen to that if the Chahal challenge fails? I have sat opposite three Home Secretaries, and each has talked tougher than the one before. However, they all discovered that tough talk was not enough—and they were the ones who created the system that the right hon. Gentleman called ““not fit for purpose””. So what does the rest of today’s announcement consist of? The Home Secretary has announced yet another restructuring of the immigration and nationality directorate. There is nothing new in that—we have been here before as well. Over the past few years, I have sat here and listened time after time to talk of crackdowns, consultations, initiatives and action plans on matters ranging from bogus language schools to sham marriages, yet still we are faced with the current shambles. As I said, the Home Secretary said that the IND was not fit for purpose, but the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality said that it was not fit for the future. The truth is that the Government cannot cope with their own past. The serious problems faced by the IND will not be solved by yet another reshuffling of the deck. They will certainly not be solved by Ministers implicitly blaming civil servants. The IND has been overwhelmed by the sheer scale of immigration into this country. In 2004, net immigration into the UK from outside the EU totalled almost 270,000 people. In addition, in the 18 months since EU enlargement, some 600,000 people have arrived from the accession states, 580,000 more than the Government estimated at the time. Moreover, 660,000 foreign workers were issued with national insurance numbers. That is interesting, given what the Home Secretary said about actions to be taken against employers, most of whom take ownership of an NI number as proof of a person’s right to be here. The problem is squarely the Government’s. Only last week, the Home Secretary said that we might have 450,000 failed asylum seekers, but that was just months after the Government denied that there were as many as 250,000 here. All those core problems arose as a direct result of deliberate and explicit Government policy decisions. To deal with them, the Home Secretary said that he will double the IND’s removals budget. That is welcome, although it would be overdue even if it were to happen today, yet it is not due to happen until 2010. When will the extra funding begin? What will the increase be this year, and what will it be next year? Spending on the IND has increased by more than 400 per cent. since 1998, and the number of staff has almost trebled, although all the transfers that have been going on makes that figure hard to work out. What has been the result? A massive growth in immigration, both legal and illegal—a growth so big that the social consequences are beginning to worry even Labour Back Benchers. The Government do not have any clue about how many illegal immigrants are here, hundreds of foreign prisoners have been released onto our streets, and all of the problems result from a policy failure so huge that it has overwhelmed the system. The Government’s policy is wrong, not just their administration. However, the most oppressed victims of the Government’s policy are some of the immigrants themselves. They include the lorry load of Chinese immigrants who tragically died in Folkestone en route into the UK, or the 23 cockle pickers who died on the sands of Morecambe Bay, or the illegal immigrants who live and work in often inhumane and dangerous conditions in our supposedly civilised country. Before the Morecambe Bay tragedy, this Government had successfully prosecuted only 10 employers of illegal immigrants in seven years, even though the relevant laws were put in place in 1996. It took Morecambe Bay and the resignation of the then Immigration Minister to end the Government’s habit of turning a blind eye to the explosion of people trafficking and the massive trade in human misery that had blown up on their watch. I welcome any measures that will cut the amount of illegal working going on in this country, but we must understand that the powers will work only if they are used. They will be used only if the Government have the determination to deliver more than rhetoric on the issue, and are prepared to commit the necessary resources. If they do that, it will be a first. What other proposals have the Government made to deal with these problems? They are introducing embarkation controls, for which the Opposition have been calling for at least as long as I have been shadow Home Secretary. The Government eventually agreed to institute e-borders embarkation control in 2008, but we now understand that the process will not be concluded until 2014. That is too late. What is more, the system relies on a computer database and we all know how reliable Home Office computer databases are in terms of the speed with which they come into effect. Will the Home Secretary explain why we cannot simply reinstate a manual embarkation control system immediately? His proposal will not be in place to cope with the next EU enlargement and the large numbers of Romanians and Bulgarians who will come to this country, including, in the words of his own Minister, 45,000 ““undesirables””—the Government’s word, not mine. Can the Home Secretary give the House an undertaking that his Government will not repeat their disastrous mistake over the first enlargements, and allow vast numbers of Romanians and Bulgarians immediate access to this country? No immigration policy will work as long as we have ““porous borders””—the words of the past Metropolitan Police Commissioner. That porous border is a contributor to illegal immigration, drugs trafficking, people trafficking, terrorism and a host of other crimes. That is why we have long called for border police, bringing together Customs, immigration, special branch and ports police, and giving them all wider powers. Along with the present and former heads of the Metropolitan police, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers and others, we urged the Government to include those powers in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill. Why did not the Government do that? Instead, the Home Secretary offers us uniforms for immigration officers: no identified extra powers and no amalgamation of resources—just a new uniform. Frankly, this is a ludicrous piece of window dressing. It will not reinforce the immigration system. It will not seal our porous borders and it will certainly not shut down the hideous traffic in human beings that is still going on in the 10th year of the Government’s tenure. This morning, I listened with interest to the latest Minister for immigration patter out the same old line, used by his many predecessors, that it was all the fault of the Opposition parties. No doubt the Home Secretary will repeat that line today, but let me tell him this: nine years, three big majorities, four Home Secretaries and 54 Acts of Parliament lead to one conclusion—this situation is this Government’s responsibility and it is long past time they dealt with it.