UK Borders Bill

I shall speak to Amendment No. 6 and in doing so should draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that I am a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I do that because that committee gave serious consideration to the Bill and has published its observations in its report of 14 May 2007. Some of my amendments will be very closely related to the recommendations of that report. I therefore hope that my noble friends will agree that I should not go through all the arguments we cover, because they are there to be read, but I may refer to some of them. I say at the outset that much of what I say on this amendment will overlap with what was so well said—characteristically well said—by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. We noted that the power of a constable to arrest under Section 24 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, to which the noble Lord has returned, is closely regulated by Code G of that Act’s codes of practice. This code prescribes a number of important requirements regulating the way in which the power is exercised, concerning, for example, the information to be given to a person on arrest and the making of a record for the reasons of the arrest. Police powers to search and seize are also subjected to rigorous controls contained in the relevant PACE code of practice, Code A. The Joint Committee in its considerations recognised that immigration officers’ existing powers to detain, search and seize for immigration purposes are not subject to PACE codes of practice. The committee noted, however, that, on the Government’s own account, the very purpose of conferring the new powers on immigration officers in the Bill is to provide them with powers which are exercisable in connection with criminal offences rather than immigration offences. Such a role in support of the police appeared to the committee to be in the nature of a general policing function, and it therefore thought it appropriate that the Police and Criminal Evidence Act codes of practices should apply to regulate the use of these powers to detain, search and seize in view of their impact on the European convention rights. The committee noted that the standard operating procedures, which it is said will regulate the exercise of the powers, have yet to be drawn up—the noble Lord referred to that and emphasised the importance of parliamentary scrutiny—and will not be subject to any parliamentary scrutiny nor to any requirement that they be publicly accessible. The committee was therefore concerned that the standard operating procedures on a number of accounts were inadequate. It asked, for example, whether they will be sufficiently accessible by the public to satisfy the principle of legal certainty, whether they will have received sufficient public scrutiny when being devised and whether their content will be sufficient to make it unlikely that the powers will be used in a way which interferes with the various European convention rights affected. The committee therefore recommended that the Bill should be amended to provide that the relevant PACE codes of practice apply to the new powers of immigration officers to detain, search and seize pending the arrival of a police constable. My amendment would give effect to that recommendation by the Joint Committee.