UK Borders Bill

Let me deal with my hon. Friend’s second question first. The advice of the Attorney-General and of Scottish advocates is that the powers that we propose relate to devolved matters and would therefore require a Sewel motion. As there are only seven international ports in Scotland, compared with 44 in England, Scottish Executive colleagues have proposed an operational solution to the problem, which they have talked through with the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland and with which I am satisfied. On my hon. Friend’s first point, we obviously have to work with existing ports as they are. We will not allow arbitrary lines on a map to divert us from our intention of seeking to secure the border. We will work closely with operators when we devise solutions. The third set of provisions, clauses 20 to 27, provide us with a range of measures to shut down the exploitation of illegal migrant labour. We cannot secure our borders unless we take that on. The Bill therefore builds on the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 to make it more difficult to employ people illegally and to increase the penalties for doing so. The Bill extends existing powers of search and arrest to the new offence of knowingly employing an illegal worker. It introduces new powers for immigration officers to seize cash suspected of being gained during the commission of an offence under immigration law. We ask, too, for the power to sell assets once we have seized them as part of a criminal investigation, following the forfeiture of such property to the Secretary of State by the courts. As we toughen the regime for businesses that break the rules, we must make it easier for employers to double-check who is who and who has the right to work. At present, that is too complicated. Up to 60 different documents could be proffered as evidence of entitlement to be in this country and to work, so clauses 5 to 15 would change that situation by phasing out insecure 20th-century forms of identification and phasing in a single biometric identity card for foreign nationals. The Bill therefore introduces powers to make regulations requiring those subject to immigration control to apply for a biometric immigration document. We will start to issue those documents in 2008 and roll them out incrementally thereafter. As is right and proper, we will return to the House each time that we wish to extend the power to a new category of third-country national.