UK Borders Bill

I start by echoing the thanks that the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality expressed to the staff on the Public Bill Committee. In particular, I thank the witnesses. Hearing from expert witnesses at the start of Committee is a useful innovation, and all of us learned many things from them. In fact, I would have preferred it if some of the insight that the witnesses gave us in Committee were better reflected in the changes that subsequently appeared in the Bill. The Government have indeed made some changes on the basis of amendments that we suggested in Committee, and that is entirely commendable, but I still feel that some of the things the Minister has just said, particularly about biometrics, fly in the face of the expert evidence that we heard in Committee. However, that institutional change to the way in which Bills are scrutinised should be preserved and, if possible, extended in future. The Bill, in its current state, has to be put in the right context; it is one of a plethora of immigration and asylum Bills that the Government have introduced, and it is sensible to reflect, at this stage of its progress, on whether this one will be remembered in any way and whether it will make any significant difference. On Second Reading, I described it as a rag-bag—a collection of measures with no core, central theme or guiding intellectual thrust to it. If anything, it was made even more of a rag-bag by the introduction, at a very late stage, of the inspectorate. That is an important step forward and one that, in principle, we do not oppose, but the idea has not received sufficient scrutiny as it was introduced in a series of new clauses well after Second Reading. Our wish is that the inspectorate will be properly independent. We know that public confidence in the system is rightly very low, and if recent evidence is to be believed, it is getting lower. A properly independent inspector could make some difference to that, but unfortunately that is not what is provided for in the Bill as it stands. I am sure that that will be a fruitful area for scrutiny and change in another place. From looking at the Bill as a whole, it is difficult to improve on the analysis of the Immigration Advisory Service, which makes the following point in its briefing for this debate:"““The Bill…will become the fifth piece of major immigration legislation…since the Government assumed office in…ten years, excluding the Special Immigration Appeals and Human Rights Act. The list of repeals and amendments to previous legislation (some of which was never even implemented) tells its own story and has led to confusion and complication even among the judiciary.””" That is exactly right. The Government have thought too little and legislated too often on the subject. Too often, legislating has been a displacement activity for Ministers who feel that they are not on top of the immigration and asylum process.