UK Borders Bill

I know that the hon. Gentleman has long taken an interest in these matters. We have to try to stop the trade in the first place, so the Bill, which introduces new offences to tackle people trafficking, is an important step forward. Issuing biometric visas helps us to lock down an identity to an individual. All that we are doing in the Bill, through our provisions for biometric immigration documents, is making sure that when a child applies for further leave to remain, or if a child is going to be here for some time, there is a cross-check against the original biometric information. That provides us not with a complete answer, but with another tool to help us discover where things are going wrong. The argument against the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Ashford is: why would we throw that alarm system away? Surely it is better to build tools up over time, rather than to lose them. Before I come on to the debate about section 11 of the Children Act 2004 and contact management, I should say that I understand the argument that the Refugee Children’s Consortium has put forward, but it sounds a little strange for people to say that an insistence on contact may drive people underground, when at the moment we have no legal means of establishing contact at all. It is important to be able to contact children at regular intervals in order to know whether they are still in the country, where they are, whether they are being looked after properly, and, often, to acquaint them with the prospect that they will be going home again soon. I do not pretend that this is a complete answer, but it is another important tool that the immigration service would find useful.