UK Borders Bill

I am indeed aware of that report and my contention is that the Bill may actually make things worse. To answer the first part of my hon. Friend’s question, no, these young people do not get more rights at 18. At 18 they can be deported and the Government are trying to ensure that they know where they are for the six months leading up to their 18th birthdays so that they are easier to deport. My problem with that is that I do not believe that the Government’s actions will make it any more likely that any individual will be there to be deported. Indeed, it is more likely that they will disappear earlier, putting themselves into danger. Therefore, my objection to the provision is not a principled one but a practical one. It will achieve exactly the reverse of what the Government are seeking to do. To that extent, I agree with the Refugee Children’s Consortium that such an attempt to legislate for open-ended reporting and residence requirements for these children will not work, and that the Government’s rationale is inadequate. The Children Act duties on social services are sufficient to ensure that the children are cared for and protected and that their whereabouts are known. The additional reporting and residence requirements will be counter-productive for the Government and, perhaps even more importantly, for the children themselves. Amendment No. 1 would exclude those under 16 from having to have biometric immigration documents. I suspect that there might not be much appetite for another full-scale debate on biometric documents just at the moment, but we shall certainly have such debates again and again in the coming years. The problem is that the provisions in the Bill are age-neutral. It is widely agreed, even by Ministers, that collecting and using biometric data from children is difficult and impractical. A study carried out for the Dutch Government found that the"““facial changes taking place up to the age of 12 are so marked that face recognition is not possible without highly sophisticated software and the considerable expense that goes with it.””" In relation to fingerprints, the same document goes on to state that"““the papillary ridges on the fingers are not sufficiently developed to allow biometric capture and analysis until the age of six.””" During earlier stages of the Bill, we held some very helpful evidence sessions, which were attended by experts including Professor Ross Anderson from Cambridge university. He said that"““fingerprint technology is certainly not good enough if you are matching one population against another, say 90 million people a year arriving at Heathrow versus 60 million people in the UK. You will get absolutely swamped by false matches.””––[Official Report, UK Borders Public Bill Committee, 1 March 2007; c. 96.]" So, as a subset of the general problem with using fingerprints for such recognition, there is a particular problem relating to children which makes their use even more unreliable. I hope that the Minister will be able to address the practicalities of the proposal. In particular, I hope that he will provide us with information about the cost of the software required to calculate age-related changes in biometric information, and tell us how that requirement will be funded. Will he also set out the frequency of registration to which under-16s would be subject for the purposes of maintaining a biometric immigration document? Again, I believe that the practicalities will tell against the Government’s aims in this field. I shall leave it to my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) to bring to the debate on amendment No. 36 his considerable expertise and campaigning skills in this area.