UK Borders Bill

I do not know whether it is the right protocol for me to withdraw my amendment before the noble Baroness comes to decide what she does with hers. I was quite encouraged by what the Minister had to say, particularly his opening remark when he said that the Government retain an open mind for the longer term although they were not convinced that it was necessary to do as we suggest for the time being. I also liked what he said about unblocking the barriers to inter-agency co-operation, the cross-posting of staff between agencies and the sharing of intelligence under the e-borders programme. I ask the Minister not to think that there is too close an analogy between these agencies and the Armed Forces. As he rightly said, there is a special feature in the Armed Forces, not only in their specialisation but in their history and culture, which I respectfully suggest does not apply to the same extent. You do not have regiments, insignia and so on in the agencies that we are talking about. People owe deep loyalties to those things, as we have always seen when proposals are made to abolish a regiment. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour, will confirm what I say about the particular case of the Scottish regiments. We would not have that kind of uproar if there was a proposal to integrate the three agencies we are principally talking about into one unified management. With all the measures the Minister described, you still would not have the same economies of management, transferability and inter-operability if all of them were operating as separate entities as you would if they were operating under a single unified management. However, I am not going to pursue that this afternoon, because we will leave the Minister to reflect on the whole concept of a unified border agency. I particularly hope that, following my noble friend’s intervention, the Minister will take advice not only from ACPO but also from all the other stakeholders on whether we can proceed further down this road. This is an ongoing process in which the debate that we had this afternoon is one stage. We have not reached the end of the integration of the various agencies operating at the moment. I beg leave to withdraw—