Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 (Juxtaposed Controls) (Amendment) Order 2006

It is obviously the case, as I said earlier, that having those contractors there means that immigration officers can concentrate on more rigorous and demanding work. In a sense, the ASOs offer and provide activity that is more in support of the way in which immigration staff work. Of course, the noble Lord is absolutely right in the sense that, if ASOs were not there, we would have to deploy immigration officers. It is a question of having the appropriate level of qualification among staff to carry out particular work. The personnel who are deployed will have already been subject to rigorous security screening in the UK and France. They will also have undergone extensive training with Centrex, the central police training authority. When it comes to efficiency, they have demonstrated their track record at the port of Dunkerque where, since January 2004, they have intercepted over 3,600 clandestines on behalf of the port authorities and prevented their entry into the UK. Non-British companies already undertake a freight-searching role for ferry companies and port operators outside the UK and have demonstrated themselves to be highly effective. The performance of the contractors will be scrutinised on a daily basis by the Immigration Service, which will examine any suggestion of underperformance or substandard behaviour. ECS personnel will also come under the scrutiny of the monitor, to which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, referred. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, asked a number of questions and, as best I can, I will respond to them today. If I cannot do so, I hope that the noble Lord will be satisfied by a written response, which I would be more than happy to share with other Members of the Committee. A copy of the training material that is used by ASOs will be put into the public domain, and I am more than happy to ensure that the noble Lord is fully advised on that. He asked about false matches on Eurodac. I find it hard to provide the noble Lord with that information this afternoon, but I undertake to prepare a written response for him as best we can. The database regulations provide a useful structure for ensuring that asylum seekers who are processed elsewhere will have been properly processed. We will ensure that we spell out more of the detail on that. I do not think that the noble Lord is right in what he said about complainants; they would not have been returned to their country of origin. It is likely that they would be refused entry to the United Kingdom, and we would ensure at that point that they were handed to the French authorities to be processed. The noble Lord asked me to name the monitor today, but I am not in a position to do that. I can tell the noble Lord that we are at an advanced stage of talks with a Crown servant, and we are confident that we will be able to appoint someone in the very near future. As soon as an agreement is reached, we will, properly, announce the name of the person who has been appointed.