UK Borders Bill

Your Lordships may be pleased to know that I shall be mercifully brief. As we understand it, in due course, everyone subject to immigration control will be required to obtain the biometric document. The purpose of subsection (2)(a), which allows the Secretary of State to make regulations requiring the document to apply only to, "““a specified class of persons””," is that initially it may be convenient to get only those seeking leave to remain to apply and to take later those who already have permitted leave to remain to avoid swamping the system. A phased roll-out would enable the BIA to pilot the technology and the training of users so that any problems that arise can be dealt with progressively. We have no objection to that in principle. The Explanatory Notes say that treating differently different classes of persons who are subject to immigration control for the roll-out is not discriminatory, and that any discrimination there is justified. The determining factors will be which categories present the greatest risk to immigration control and whether the technology and resources are available for particular applicants. As I see it, this would mean deploying the technology and resources preferentially to applicants who came from east Africa because the conflicts in Sudan and Somalia, and the severe human rights problems in Eritrea and Ethiopia—