UK Borders Bill

My hon. Friend is right that there will be a major public policy issue, but I see no way of avoiding that now. We might have to put in place measures that enable people to return home, if they wish to do so. Also, there will at least be a better knowledge of what our labour market genuinely needs if people are paid a proper rate of pay, rather than the poverty pay that is paid at present. I do not pretend that I have all the answers. I have raised this issue with the Minister. There must be a strategy for dealing with such a situation. However, I say to my hon. Friend that the alternative, which is simply to regularise everybody’s position, would lead to another 320,000 people turning up within the space of a few months or a few years in the expectation that the same would happen to them. We are having a debate on this issue in this country, but it needs to be raised across the EU. Select Committee members went to Poland last week to visit Frontex, the border agency charged with co-ordinating European border activity both across the land border in eastern Europe and in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. We were interested to hear about the work that it was doing, but the fact is that the same issues arise time and again. Trying to strengthen border patrols along the Mediterranean will not work as long as there is massive use of very poorly paid and exploited labour—in the agricultural sector, for instance, as is the case in Italy. It is not possible to police a border if behind that border there are many opportunities to work—albeit in very bad conditions, but ones that, to refer to the example I have just given, are better for the many African people employed than are those in the countries from which they have come. The Government need to raise this issue in the EU, so that there is effective labour market enforcement across the EU and not only in the UK, because ultimately what happens along the European borders affects the pressure on our own borders. That is of relevance to some of the issues in the Bill.