UK Borders Bill

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. Last summer, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary launched a comprehensive review of the immigration system. The future approach for the Home Office, in promoting good migration and tackling immigration, was subsequently set out in the Immigration and Nationality Directorate review published in July 2006. During the review, my honourable friends the Minister of State for Immigration, Nationality and Citizenship and the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State travelled extensively throughout the United Kingdom, talking and listening to staff on the front-line, as well as local businesses and public service providers. All of this very valuable work led to a fivefold strategy for reform. This includes the first ever cross-government strategy to ensure compliance with our immigration laws; secondly, new resources for enforcement; thirdly, the use of new technology to count people in and out of the country; fourthly, an international strategy to share information and build closer working relationships; and finally, this Bill. Careful consideration has been given to these measures to ensure that we achieve the Home Office’s priorities of protecting the public and creating an immigration system that is transparent for those who are eligible to remain in the United Kingdom, and that our immigration officers have the power to deal with those who flout immigration laws. There are four key principles that have determined the content of the Bill. The first is further to strengthen our borders, with additional powers for front-line staff; secondly, to deter and detect the perpetrators of immigration crime; thirdly, to deport and restrict those who abuse our hospitality; and, fourthly, to lay a foundation for the Border and Immigration Agency to improve its service to the public. The Home Office is working towards a stronger and more visible presence at the border by, for example, the introduction of uniforms for front-line immigration officers by September this year. Clauses 1 to 4 introduce a new power for designated immigration officers to detain for up to three hours any person liable to arrest, or who is the subject of an arrest warrant, until a police officer arrives. This would include British citizens liable for arrest for non immigration-related offences. Not only will this new function support police activity at ports, but it will also contribute to the objectives of the border management programme, to deliver a cohesive and integrated border security infrastructure. Further measures in the Bill designed to secure our borders include those on facilitation and trafficking. A high proportion of illegal immigration into the United Kingdom is in the hands of traffickers and people smugglers. Clauses 28 to 30 are therefore designed to strengthen our enforcement capability in respect of facilitation and trafficking offences. The provisions clarify at what point an individual will be taken to have facilitated the arrival of an asylum seeker into the United Kingdom and, most importantly, extend our powers to enable the prosecution of those who facilitate or traffic from abroad. It is essential that front-line staff have the right powers and that the effective use of those powers acts as a deterrent to potential offenders. Measures in the Bill include new powers to seize cash under the Proceeds of Crime Act where there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that it has been obtained through, or is intended for use in connection with, unlawful activity under the immigration Acts. This will target those who seek to profit from committing criminal offences and breaching immigration laws. There are also powers to dispose of property seized as part of a criminal investigation, which will have the added effect of removing forgeries and forgery-making equipment from the black market. Clauses 39 to 42 introduce a new data-sharing gateway between the Border and Immigration Agency, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office. These measures also extend the existing powers of the police and the Serious Organised Crime Agency to share information with the Border and Immigration Agency. These gateways are an essential requirement for effective cross-government working in the fight against illegal migrant working and benefit fraud and to ensure that robust immigration decisions are made. I can reassure the House that the data-sharing gateway will not allow for the unchecked exchange of confidential tax information. I am confident that we are putting in place the necessary safeguards to protect the public’s data, including a criminal sanction for any unlawful disclosure of information. The Bill also contains a power of arrest for the new offence of knowingly employing an illegal worker, which links back to the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006. That Act set out a civil penalty regime in respect of illegal working offences and, as we crack down harder on employers who flout the immigration laws, we must also provide the necessary tools and support to enable them to comply with our rules and laws. That is why the Bill introduces a new requirement for those subject to immigration control to register for a biometric immigration document. There are currently around 50 old and insecure immigration documents in circulation. It is unreasonable to expect employers and benefit providers to be able to recognise them all to a degree that would allow a clear judgment on authenticity. The biometric provisions will therefore allow us to phase-out the old, insecure documents and replace them with a single, secure, identifiable biometric document. Employers and benefit providers will be able to check this biometric document and know whether a person is here legally and is entitled to work and/or to access benefits. It is vital that the Border and Immigration Agency takes full advantage of such technological advances in order effectively to manage not only those who are here lawfully but also those who no longer have the right to be here. As my honourable friend the Minister of State for Immigration, Nationality and Citizenship, Liam Byrne, said during the Public Bill Committee in another place, "““there will never be any substitute for an immigration officer. We consistently provide immigration officers with the resources, the ""training and the powers to undertake the roles that they play with the professionalism that they bring to their job, but where there are tools that will help them to conduct that work more effectively, particularly to help establish people’s identity, we should use them””.—[Official Report, Commons UK Borders Bill Public Bill Committee, 27/2/07; col. 20.]" While I believe that the framework for the biometric registration scheme is sound, I appreciate that noble Lords will want to spend time in Committee looking at the detail of these clauses, and I look forward to listening to what I anticipate to be the many and varied views that will be expressed about them. In its recent report on the Bill, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee made several recommendations in relation to the detail of the biometric clauses, and we are seriously considering how best to address its concerns. I emphasise that the Government do not view the biometric immigration document as a tool for discrimination. A government amendment was made to these clauses in the other place to state explicitly in the Bill that it will not be compulsory for the document to be carried at all times. I will be placing in the Libraries of both Houses a draft codeof practice for the operation of the civil penalty regime. That is the code referred to in Clause 13 of the Bill. I come now to the third principle of the Bill: deporting and restricting those who have abused our hospitality. Clauses 31 to 38 introduce automatic deportation for foreign national prisoners. Under these measures, subject always to human rights considerations, the Secretary of State must make a deportation order in cases where an adult foreign national has been sentenced to 12 months or more in prison, or is handed down a custodial sentence of any length for an offence listed in the order made under Section 72 of the 2002 Act. Automatic deportation will apply toall foreign criminals who fall within the threshold, save for where one of a limited number of exceptions applies. In-country appeals will be restricted tohuman rights claims unless those claims areunfounded. For those criminals not covered by the provisions in the Bill, court-recommended and discretionary deportation will remain to allow flexibility in the system. For those who have committed serious crimes in the United Kingdom but whose removal would breach international obligations, we are introducing reporting and/or residency restrictions. Those conditions will also be used to improve contact with those former unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who have been granted discretionary leave due to poor reception arrangements in their country of origin. It will further be used to improve contact with other children who have been granted leave but who we have reason to believe may be at risk. The fourth principle behind the Bill is that of laying the foundations for the ongoing improvements of the Border and Immigration Agency. In April 2007 the Immigration and Nationality Directorate became the shadow Border and Immigration Agency. With increasing flexibility in the way the agency conducts its operations, it is vital that there is an independent monitoring mechanism in place to oversee the agency’s work. In December 2006 the Home Office launched a consultation on the proposal to establish a new single inspectorate for the Border and Immigration Agency, and responses to the consultation revealed strong support for that proposal. Therefore, Clauses 47 to 55 create a new chief inspector of the Border and Immigration Agency who will be responsible for monitoring and reporting on the efficiency and effectiveness of the agency. These provisions aim to rationalise some of the existing and somewhat disparate regulators and inspectorates, and establish a chief inspector who will primarily oversee the agency’s processes. The chief inspector will help ensure consistency of standards regionally across the Border and Immigration Agency. The provisions will provide the public with confidence that the immigration system is being overseen in a rational and independent way at all levels. Before I conclude, I should like to touch on an issue that I know noble Lords are passionate about, and which I am sure we will have the opportunity to discuss further in this and future debates. I refer to the safety of children. It was raised by Members in another place and by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. A number of your Lordships have raised questions about whether the Border and Immigration Agency should be subject to Section 11 of the Children Act 2004. I reassure the House, as have others before me, that the Border and Immigration Agency takes its responsibility towards children extremely seriously. In two weeks’ time the agency will be publishing the objectives of its framework to keep children safe, which have been developed alongside the plans of the Department for Education and Skills for the Government’s stay safe strategy. This will provide a more robust strategy to help ensure that children with whom the agency’s staff come into contact are kept safe. Our framework will provide the basis of our approach to keeping children safe, and form part of an overall package of measures. Feeding into this strategy will be the evaluation of the Section 9 pilot and findings from our review of family removals processes. My role here today is to listen to your Lordships’ concerns on keeping children safe, take them away and seek to address them in our framework and in Committee. I promise to give due consideration to all the arguments aired today. I wanted to say this at the beginning of our deliberations so that noble Lords were aware of our direction of travel. They would then be free to make their contribution, which we would be able to add to our deliberations before coming forward with the final suggestions. It is essential that the agency is in a position to manage an immigration system that is fair and effective, and that controls immigration for the benefit of Britain. The Bill is a key element in delivering this. I commend the Bill to the House. Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Baroness Scotland of Asthal.)