UK Borders Bill

My hon. Friend is right. This situation has been made worse by the cuts in legal aid, which mean that good practitioners are coming out of legal aid, leaving citizens at the mercy of unscrupulous immigration advisers. People then come to our surgeries and expect us to sort out the problems. There are people of talent in the system. I urge the Minister to look at the way in which UK Visas is run. It has a better system than the Home Office: one writes a letter about a constituency case, which goes to the post abroad, and one gets a reply. One might not be happy with that reply but at least one gets a reply with information on which one can act As for the Home Office, one gets a reply from a deputy director saying that one must wait another six months or even longer for the case to be considered. For example, the family reunion cases, which the Minister’s predecessor agreed to years ago, are still going through the system, and have not been dealt with. The Minister has the capacity, ability and personal charm to persuade people to make a difference in the way that they do their jobs. That takes resources, however, and it requires the right people. I urge him to consider some of the senior officials such as Carol Doughty in New Delhi or Mandy Ivemy in Bombay—directors of visa services who must deal with thousands of visa cases, and who are able to sort out the problems that are put before them and make decisions immediately. When one is operating on the basis of a right of appeal, that is so much better. I will concede to the Minister all that he is doing on border controls. I do not know the answer—I do not have a coastline surrounding Leicester, so I cannot say what that is like. He has done the research, and he tells me that we need the provisions. On customer service and the ability to deal with cases, however, he has lost me. To regain me, he must provide a better system that works. My next point is on liaison between Departments. In an Adjournment debate a few years ago, I raised the case of a constituent of mine who was killed by a foreign national who, before he went to court for the hearing, was given his passport back and allowed to return voluntarily to China. My constituent’s parents were told about that after it had happened. They have therefore never had closure. The person who killed their son has never been tried in this country, and for all I know is back in this country as a visitor. The lack of liaison even between parts of the same Department is lamentable. If the Bill means better liaison, I support it. When my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary replies, I want her to assure me that the Bill will have that effect and that there is not another Bill coming to solve the problems that we have seen. My last point is on the European Union. We are an island—the hon. Member for Shipley would probably like to close the channel tunnel and stop direct flights from London to Paris, because he thinks that we can survive on our own; he is a Conservative MP, but that is not, of course, Conservative party policy. The fact is, however, that we need to work with our partners in Europe to combat illegal immigration. The whole Tampere II agenda, which became the Hague programme following European summit meetings, has been about countries working together. Of course, the Opposition and tabloid papers scream when we talk about giving up the veto on immigration, and the Government have not done that. The fact remains, however, that we can work with our European partners—short of giving up the veto, to make my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, South-West (Mr. Davidson) happy—to ensure proper and adequate co-operation to prevent illegal immigration and the other problems addressed by the Bill. That will mean our Ministers going to European summit meetings and taking forward the Tampere agenda, which has lain dormant for far too long. Justice and Home Affairs is just as important as ECOFIN and all the other work in the European Union, as it is so complicated and it requires co-operation. I am not suggesting that we should have a European police force. We have Interpol, but are we using it as effectively as we should to do the kinds of things that it should do? I believe that my hon. Friends the Minister and the Under-Secretary have a willingness to sort this matter out. Both they and the Home Secretary are people of real talent. I believe that they want to make sure that the situation is improved. I plead with them not to come back to the House in six months’ time to say that they need another Bill; they do not. What this Government need to do is to take a grip on the operation of the system to ensure that when the Immigration Minister starts to devolve IND, he consults right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House, and the community, so that he does not just move from Lunar house to Mars house in Birmingham, or from Apollo house to Jupiter house somewhere in the north of England, and the same problems go elsewhere. Let us try to solve the problems. It is about customer service and providing a good service for our constituents. If he does that, he will have done a real service to this country in his term as Immigration Minister.