UK Borders Bill

I should like to thank the Minister for the kind remarks that she made at the beginning of her speech. We welcome the thrust of the new clauses and amendments. We made an effort in Committee to ensure that the Bill would have a practical effect and make a significant difference to the practice of immigration control, and to the enforcement of the important laws in this area. That was the intention behind our various amendments to that part of the Bill. I am glad that Ministers have reflected further and turned our amendments into the new clauses under consideration this afternoon. Not only is that good for the Bill and for the practice and enforcement of immigration control, but it represents a small victory for scrutiny by the House of Commons, which is much abused. It is a textbook example of how scrutiny can work, and of how the Committee stage can improve a Bill in small but important ways, if Ministers are flexible enough to take on board arguments made in good faith by Opposition parties. I would like the Minister to return to one detail. Although she has rightly emphasised the issue of proportionality of response—and she has talked a lot about the safeguards over the past few minutes—she said previously that our amendment was unnecessary and potentially disproportionate under article 8 of the European convention on human rights, especially in relation to widening the power to enter and search premises for relevant documents. We suggested expanding the scope of the provision to cover ““any other premises””, to ensure that those searches were as effective as possible. Clearly, that is an extremely serious consideration for Ministers to take on board. Will she therefore reassure the House that the powers in the new clauses do not in any way breach article 8 of the ECHR, and explain why they do not? With that one potential caveat about the new clauses—as I said, they grew out of amendments that we tabled in Committee—we welcome their inclusion in the Bill.