UK Borders Bill

We all want an immigration system that works. We want a system that is fair to everyone, firm where it needs to be firm, properly resourced, and conducted in a measured political climate where judgments are made in the interests of the nation, not in response to fevered headlines. It is therefore deeply worrying that the Bill’s contents have led Liberty to describe it as"““one of the worst examples of cynical legislation””" that it has seen. This is the Government’s third immigration Bill in as many years and their fifth since they were first elected. It is their fifth attempt to get a handle on the system by making extra laws, but by also providing limited enactment and enforcement of existing legislation and rules. The real problems with immigration are administrative, not legislative, and can be blamed on the Government’s use of migration as a political football. Gimmicks, headlines and targets have destroyed any semblance of a managed migration system, and yet another law will not solve it. The introduction of automatic deportation is emblematic of the Government’s whole approach to home affairs. Headline-driven targets and gimmicks push the system to breaking point. Administrative breakdown causes a scandal—in this case, more than 1,000 foreign prisoners being released after completion of their sentences without being considered for deportation. The Government overreact with ““tough”” new laws and offences and ““tough”” new targets that, instead of solving the problem, put even greater burdens on the administrators. The Department is in crisis and Ministers who think that legislation is a substitute for real action are not living in the real world. The issues that affect our constituents are not dealt with by this Bill. For example, I have written to the Minister about the failure in my constituency to remove five husbands whose arranged marriages have broken down. All the information has been provided, but the men have not been removed and continue to harass and harangue their former wives. The Bill does not even begin to address such problems. Nor does it address the length of time taken by the IND to process applications for the right to remain. There is no need for additional powers, but there is a real need for administrative systems to be made to work—to become, in the Home Secretary’s words, ““fit for purpose””. Nonetheless, some elements of the Bill have merit, including turning the immigration and nationality directorate into an independent agency. We will seek to amend some of the proposals in the Bill in Committee, but we must not pretend that extra powers alone will be enough. Immigration chaos will end only when the Government start doing less to do it better. The first four clauses give immigration officers at ports new powers to detain people suspected of non-immigration offences. They do not contain any suggestion for an integrated border force. Instead, it is intended to allow the existing border control authorities to work more closely together. A truly integrated force would require new, not just redeployed resources. It is not enough simply to shift police officers away from their current duties or put existing customs officials in new uniforms. We believe that there should be a unified border force and that the level of integration in the Bill is not enough. For example, at Heathrow airport, four police forces operate in addition to immigration officers, revenue and customs officers and security forces. A unified force would secure our borders more effectively and efficiently. The Government have stated that 24-hour security at all ports of entry would cost only £105 million a year, but they are spending nearly £100,000 a day on unworkable, illiberal ID cards. The powers seem generally appropriate, though we want to ensure that comprehensive training will be given to immigration officers who are designated in that way. As other hon. Members have said, the powers need also to be exercised in accordance with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 codes of practice, which provide the framework within which the police operate. Were children to be detained, for example, the immigration officer should have a duty to request the attendance of an appropriate adult. The proposals for biometric registration seem driven by the need for a dry run for ID cards rather than being solely for the purpose of better immigration management. While the increased use of biometrics on visas and immigration documents has clear advantages, we have serious concerns about the practicalities of the proposals. First, issuing documents to the 3.9 million people already in the UK, many of whom have indefinite leave to remain and therefore no contact with immigration services, will be an administrative nightmare. There is no indication of how much that will cost, where the processing will happen and what provision will be made for those who cannot travel. I could list many more such concerns. For those coming into the country for the first time, there will be a major problem in processing the extra information at our struggling consulates. What additional resources will be provided at, say, the high commission in Islamabad to cope with the extra work? At the moment, the high commission there is issuing visas for appeals granted last September. One can only imagine what additional delays will be caused to applications for visas for normal and ordinary events such as family weddings. Because the information to be included in the biometric immigration document is to be provided by regulations, we have no idea of the scope of that, or of what will be demanded. What will happen to the BID of those who are subsequently granted British citizenship? Will the BID be an effective enforcement tool against those who are illegally in the UK? It is clear that the problem is not in finding those who are working or living illegally in the UK, but in enforcing action against them. For example, in 2004-05, raids found nearly 4,000 illegal workers, but only eight employers were taken to court and found guilty. That is the problem with many of the proposals in the Bill. There are already plenty of powers, but we are not seeing any action. The Bill also states that the use of BIDs can be specified not just for immigration purposes, but in employment, access to benefits and NHS funding. Can the Minister explain why, for example, the requirement for employers to check biometric information is being introduced without the public consultation that the Department promised last year? Why has there been no published assessment of the financial impact on the public or private sectors of compulsory checking of BIDs? The proposals on conditional leave to remain pick up on suggestions made by the Liberal Democrats for handling the difficult situation of people who have been ordered by a court to be deported, but who cannot actually be deported for human rights reasons. It is wholly right that people should not be deported to places where they face torture. We suggested developing a way to better monitor those few individuals in the UK who cannot be detained or deported. The proposals in the Bill seem a workable solution, although appropriate protections of proportionality should be built in, especially where they are used for children. We welcome clause 17, which will ensure that an asylum seeker can continue to be supported at all stages up to an appeal being determined. However, the Bill does not address what happens when asylum seekers go underground and a local authority has to put their children into care. For enforcement operations, the police will have the power to seize cash in illegal working cases. They will have powers to dispose of seized property. They already have the power to seize it; apparently it is sitting in warehouses. They want to be able to extradite people who are committing UK immigration offences from abroad. Those powers are all welcome, although again we warn that the real problem is enforcement, not a lack of powers. There have been only 15 successful prosecutions of employers of illegal migrants in the last five years. It is also a measure of how badly the Government’s rushed approach to legislation serves us that they took powers to seize goods but not to dispose of them, so that they have warehouses full of things that they cannot dispose of. If matters were more considered, perhaps such holes would not appear. The provisions on automatic deportation raise the most concerns. Although people who seriously breach the trust under which they are in this country should be deported, automatic deportation, without consideration of other factors, could cause serious problems. That decision has clearly been taken to satisfy the Prime Minister’s rhetoric during the foreign prisoners crisis in April and May last year and his reckless pledge to deport everyone, regardless of human rights or any other considerations. Rules are being changed even though the problem was not the lack of power to deport, but the failure to get around to deporting people. The Home Secretary has already removed from the immigration rules the capacity to consider factors such as length of residence in the United Kingdom; strength of connections with the United Kingdom; personal history, including character, conduct and employment record; domestic circumstances; previous criminal record and the nature of any offence of which the person has been convicted; compassionate circumstances; and any representations received on the person’s behalf. What can be the harm in considering those factors? The overreaction to the foreign prisoners scandal caught up many people who had a strong case for staying in the UK, despite having made a mistake. Deporting every person who commits a crime, even if they have been in the UK for decades and have children and other family in this country, cannot be right, fair or proper.