UK Borders Bill

moved Amendment No. 1: 1: Before Clause 1, insert the following new Clause— ““Establishment of UK Border Police Force (1) There shall be a body corporate to be known as the UK Border Police Force. (2) The UK Border Police Force shall have the functions of— (a) detecting and removing illegal overstayers; (b) protecting UK borders; (c) investigating employers of illegal immigrants; (d) preventing and detecting human trafficking; and (e) such other functions as the Secretary of State may by order determine. (3) Membership of the UK Border Police Force shall be comprised of officers from— (a) the Immigration Service; (b) HM Revenue and Customs; (c) the Serious Organised Crime Agency; (d) specialist port police forces; (e) the Metropolitan Police Security Command; (f) the Security Services; and (g) such other organisations as the Secretary of State shall by order determine. (4) Before making an order under subsection (2)(e) the Secretary of State shall— (a) publish proposals; (b) consult members of the public and stakeholders; and (c) lay a draft before each House of Parliament. (5) Bodies to be consulted under subsection (4)(b) shall include— (a) the Metropolitan Police Commissioner; (b) representatives of the Association of Chief Police Officers; (c) the Director General of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate; (d) representatives of the Serious Organised Crime Agency; (e) representatives of the Association of Police Authorities; and (f) such other people as the Secretary of State shall determine.”” The noble Baroness said: I shall speak to Amendments Nos. 49 and 62 as well. I see Amendment No. 2 in this group, which is in the name of the Liberal Democrats, as helpful to the wider debate on these matters, although I do not accept it. My amendments will create a UK border police force which we believe could more effectively police and safeguard our borders than has been the case in recent years. There are currently six agencies dealing with our borders; it is clear that the system is unsatisfactory. We seek to bring those disparate groups of people together so that they can be managed more coherently and the powers can be shared. At the moment, different people exercise different powers. It is often the case, particularly at small courts, that the degree of protection required is not always available. We would ensure that the 10,000 or so people who are currently employed in different agencies will be brought together as the basis of a new force. Specialisation of police services has proved effective elsewhere in the Home Office estate. Criminals involved in people trafficking and international terrorism are ever-more resourceful, sophisticated and pernicious. We need a unified force to detect illegal immigration, prevent the misery of the trade in human beings that we all abhor and, above all, to prevent the entry into the United Kingdom of terrorists or suspected terrorists. We are considering in some detail whether the new force should be part of SOCA. Ministers will be all too well aware that we asked the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, to look at the details of our proposals and we are very grateful to him for having undertaken that work. He said that it is essential that Britain should have secure borders and that one element of that must be a dedicated and effective border police force. Indeed, both the previous and current Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police are also in favour. So is the Home Affairs Committee of another place, which recommended in its 2001 report on border controls that, "““existing border control agencies should be combined into a single frontier force on the basis of secondment and direct employment, but with clear lines of communication back to the parent agencies. Pending the creation of a single frontier force, strategic co-direction of better joint working should be provided by a ministerial group””." That was all of six years ago. So far, the Government appear to have failed to take effective action on those recommendations. There has been a lot of talk about ID cards as the main solution. They are not. We believe that they would waste billions of pounds without performing one of the most basic tasks, that of securing the borders. Although we recognise the role of having identity cards within the immigration system, that is very different from a national identity register, which is a much wider issue. My amendments were debated in another place, but I believe that it is important to address them here so that this Committee may have the opportunity to comment upon them. This is part of a consultation process that we have initiated. On that basis alone, the amendments would be probing even if they had been debated on the Floor of the House instead of here in Grand Committee. Any country serious about its security should have properly policed borders. I beg to move.