UK Borders Bill

I am extremely grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, for putting forward her amendment and to all Members of the Committee who have contributed to the debate thus far. I readily concede that this is an important debate, and certainly the issues raised are of considerable importance, not least since the events that took place towards the end of last week. No doubt, as the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour, made clear, those events have focused our minds somewhat. There have been repeated calls for the creation of a unified body such as a UK border police force and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, said, that was debated extensively in Committee in another place, and rightly so. As my honourable friend the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality, Liam Byrne, made clear, the Government certainly retain an open mind regarding the longer term but, at this point, we are not persuaded that the establishment of a UK border police force is necessary. However, I underline that recent ministerial and other changes indicate the Government’s commitment to drawing on a very broad range of talent to ensure that Ministers get the best advice on protecting the public and on other areas of government. We believe that the most effective means of strengthening our borders is to continue to have three distinct agencies focusing on their respective priorities, while working closely together to maximise the opportunities for protecting the public. My honourable friend the Minister in another place drew a comparison with the way in which the Armed Forces are organised. We would not consider merging these three distinct services with their specialisms, histories and cultures into one, but we insist that they co-ordinate their intelligence and tactical deployment. That is what we need to do here and that is the model that we have adopted for the border agencies. We already have in place a successful joint working structure in the Border Management Programme, to which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, referred. That has already delivered models for improved intelligence, joint risk assessment and more effective border controls, where each agency can act on behalf of the others to increase drug seizures, reduce people smuggling and, importantly, counter the threat from terrorism. There are many practical examples of how the current structure works well. In Gatwick, we have immigration officers using Customs powers to identity people smuggling drugs; at the port of Immingham, Customs officers are using immigration powers to search for people being smuggled in freight; and at Blackpool, police are using Customs powers to search for smuggled tobacco. I argue that those are real, tangible results which reduce harm to the UK and the public. To create a single UK border police force would require significant infrastructure changes. At the moment, I am not sure we could honestly justify that. It would carry additional and significant costs and distract attention from dealing with the real business of protecting our borders. We know that the international experience is very mixed. In the US and Canada the creation of single border entities in 2002 has not delivered the benefits that were expected. Indeed, five years later, despite changing the badges of the staff at the border, different offices continue to specialise in terrorism, drugs and illegal immigration. In Australia, Customs officers operate the primary intervention capability on behalf of the immigration department. That operates well, given the unique geographical circumstances that exist in that part of the world and the fact that everyone who travels to Australia has a visa in advance—virtual or otherwise. Those approaches have in common the fact that they do not include police in a border control capacity. A single border force may be eye-catching, but it ignores the complexity of the challenge.