UK Borders Bill

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time. Before I come to my substantive remarks, I want to thank the members of the Public Bill Committee, who ensured that the Bill received the right level of scrutiny and deliberation. The changes that we have brought forward this afternoon demonstrate that the Committee was an important and useful part of the process. I also thank the witnesses who were summoned to give evidence to the Public Bill Committee. Often the evidence became a foundation for a lot of the debate that followed. That is the kind of constitutional innovation for which the Leader of the House deserves some credit. The Bill shows how important the changes to Committees have become. I also thank the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, North (Joan Ryan) for the work that she has done on the Bill, and the work that she did in Committee and during the deliberations leading up to the Bill. I would have been lost without her. On Second Reading, I said that the Bill is one of five reforms that we are making to the immigration system on the back of the changes announced by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary last year. The changes are already bearing fruit. At our overseas border we now turn back something like two jumbo jets-worth of potential illegal immigrants each week. Some 17,000 people were stopped on the other side of the channel last year alone. The number of asylum seekers is now at its lowest level since 1991. Last year, for the first time, we removed more failed asylum seekers than came into the country. As the Prime Minister said this afternoon, the number of foreign national prisoners being deported is now up, and up substantially. Last year, we tracked down and deported somebody every eight minutes who had no right to be in this country. These changes are important, but they are not enough and they will not be enough for the future. In the future, we will need to do more. As we enter an era in which global migration will become faster and faster, our border defences and border security will need to be still more robust. That is why we are bringing forward such a radical overhaul of the immigration system. A cross-Government strategy brings together all aspects of public services to sharpen our attack on illegal immigration at home and abroad. Up to £100 million extra in resources is going into immigration policing. New technology is being put in place to allow the biometric screening of visa applicants to be carried out in 67 posts. By the beginning of next year, that technology will be in place in border posts covering three quarters of the world’s population. New international alliances are being negotiated to help to develop stronger global co-operation on this global issue. The Bill is designed to ensure that having doubled the number of our warranted staff, they will have the right powers to do their job, to keep our borders secure and to remove those who have no right to be here. At the heart of the Bill is a series of measures to help us to deter, detect, detain, restrict and deport illegal immigrants. To deter more, we propose to strengthen our borders and to give our border security officers new powers. We propose new powers to prosecute human smugglers and people traffickers wherever on earth they perpetrate the offence. We propose new powers to confiscate the proceeds of organised immigration crime, which is responsible for about three quarters of the illegal immigration into this country. To detect more of those who are here illegally, we propose compulsory biometric identity cards for foreign nationals, so that those who exploit fake documents can be uncovered and denied access to the labour market and public services. However, we are providing important protections. We listened to the concerns of hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard), and introduced prohibitions on any regulations that might require someone to carry a card at all times. Nevertheless, the measures that we propose will allow us to eliminate the insecure 20th-century documents that are used to provide evidence of a person’s eligibility to work or benefits. We will phase in new secure documents that are easier to check and harder to forge. We also propose new powers of search and the ability to share information with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to find those who are here illegally or who employ people illegally. To detain and restrict more people, we propose new powers to put those whom we are unable to remove on limited leave subject to reporting and residency restrictions. To deport more people, we propose new powers to deport automatically people who have committed offences in this country and breached our bond of trust. Foreign nationals that abuse our hospitality by seriously breaking the law will not be allowed to stay in the UK. The Bill also includes important measures that are designed to underpin the long-term improvement of the Border and Immigration Agency. It will give the agency new flexibility to raise resources from abroad so that it can do the job with which it has been tasked. There are also new provisions to provide stronger and more independent oversight to ensure that those resources are used as effectively as possible to keep our borders secure. The cornerstone of our strategy to combat illegal immigration is simple: a plan to stop illegal journeys and illegal jobs. At the heart of our endeavour is the simple ambition of using new biometric technology that will allow us to lock down with confidence the identity of an individual. The technology will be used first when we issue a visa; secondly, when an individual boards a plane, train or boat for Britain; thirdly, at our border; and, fourthly, when people go about their business in Britain. That is why we have consistently argued that it would be an error to shut down the national identity infrastructure. It was unfortunate that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden, who is not in the Chamber, wrote a letter to the Cabinet Secretary in which he promised to shut down that system, because that will be a vital defence against illegal immigration. We think that migration will grow, which means that the risk of illegal immigration will surely not decrease, but increase. In the face of such future pressure, a plan simply to restructure managers here at home would be about as robust as sandcastles on the seashore. If Conservative Members support the Bill, I hope that they will take the logical next step by revoking their commitment to shutting down the UK’s identity system. If they do not, people who are being kind will accuse them of having a muddled policy, while their critics will say that they are voting for one thing, but committing themselves to another. They would leave themselves open to the accusation that their immigration policy had become a shambles. I hope that the House will pass this important Bill, which has benefited from the scrutiny that hon. Members have given it over the past few months. Let me finish with a word of warning: the pressure on our borders will grow unless we take steps to secure them today. That is why the Bill and the changes that the Home Secretary is putting through are important. We need to ensure that our front-line staff have the powers that they need to do the job that they love. I commend the Bill to the House and wish it a speedy passage in another place.