UK Borders Bill

The Minister was helpful, because in the earlier question on Clause 5(2)(e) my noble friend raised a specific matter and the Minister did not offer the necessary clarification. He said that he would certainly write to us on this. Will he take into account the comment made in the other place by Mr Byrne in response to a question put by Damien Green? He said: "““we have been clear in our intention to designate the cards as ID cards as soon as the national identity register comes online. That is important, because doing so will provide migrants who are here legitimately with the additional protections on which Parliament rightly insisted in the Identity Cards Act 2006. The second problem is that if we accepted the amendment, migrants in this country with biometric immigration documents would have several bits of identity. That is problematic, because the whole thrust of our policy is to bleed out those documents””—[Official Report, Commons, UK Borders Bill Committee, 8/3/07; cols. 240-41]." That is contrary to what the Minister was saying. Will he look at that in responding to the question of my noble friend Lord Avebury? Perhaps he could come back to us after that.