UK Borders Bill

As we begin the third day in Committee on this Bill, as the Minister introduces yet more amendments to the Government’s own Bill on biometric registration documents, it is right to reflect that Government’s policy over security has been in some disarray over the past week or so. That has been revealed by such issues as the progress, or egress perhaps, of Muktar Ibrahim, the leader of the gang that brought fresh terror to our streets just a fortnight after bombs killed the 52 travellers in July two years ago. At the beginning of the debates on Second Reading and in Committee, we put on record our concern that the Government were trying to fiddle around at the edges while not approaching security in the right way. Muktar Ibrahim was able to leave the country to travel to Pakistan, having been stopped and questioned by Special Branch officers at Heathrow. They were acting on a request from MI5, which had followed a car in which Ibrahim was a passenger to the airport. He was allowed on his way, even though he aroused suspicion, because he had £2,000 in cash, claimed to be attending a wedding—although he did not know whose wedding—and had cold-weather mountain gear in his luggage. It also emerged that Hussain Osman, another of the convicted plotters who came to Britain in 1996, claiming to be a Somalian, was in fact an Ethiopian who had been living in Italy. When he came to the UK, when his Italian visa ran out and he claimed asylum, his application was turned down; but in 2004 he was given discretionary leave to remain. After his failed bomb attack on the underground, he fled to Italy, travelling unchallenged through the Waterloo Eurostar terminus despite the biggest manhunt in British history. In the same week, we have seen reports that the head of Interpol has complained that the UK was failing to check visitors against a database of stolen passports. We appreciate that the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, told Sky News last Sunday that the Government were looking at the issue as a matter of urgency. They should be not only looking at the matter but doing something about it. It behoves the Government to have dealt with those matters before they considered bringing forward this Bill. We shall continue to scrutinise the Bill with great care but we continue to be of the mind that a lot of its proposals will not provide the solution. I am sure that at Report we shall have to come back to some of the major issues about other ways in which to deal with these matters. In the mean time, we do not oppose the government amendments. I merely observe wryly that at this late stage they have sought to make what appear to be rather basic practical amendments.