UK Borders Bill

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, on using a convenient amendment that happens to be passing by to give the Committee the benefit of her party piece, and I understand why she is doing that. She is quite entitled to do so. One can have the best border police service in the world, but there is always a likelihood or possibility that something will be missed. My guess is that our friends in America would think that they have a fairly robust system, yet they suffered one of the worst terrorist outrages that has ever been visited upon any country in the world—9/11. I am sure that they have improved their processes since then. I am confident that we have done so, and that what we are putting in place through this legislation will improve matters. I have greatly enjoyed some of the support that we have received from the noble Baroness’s party and from other parties to improve the way in which Customs, police and immigration services can work together through the Border and Immigration Agency and the border management programme to ensure that we have more robust procedures in place. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister made it plain the other day that he was less than satisfied with what had happened with regard to the convicted terrorists and the movement of some of them. He was right to draw attention to that in the way that he did. We will have to ensure that vigilance is maintained. Some of the errors were perhaps of an operational nature. Even if some of the measures proposed here had been in place, there may well have been some gaps—who can be absolutely sure? For that reason, the Prime Minister quite rightly wanted to ensure that matters were properly reviewed. We try and make progress. We try to ensure that that law is right. We think that these measures are right and proportionate. We keep things under review and, no doubt, we will return to the issues raised by the noble Baroness, not just today, but on other occasions. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, asked about the use of powers allowing the retention and destruction of biometric information. Clause 8(4) enables biometric information to be used or retained under the Identity Cards Act, even when a person becomes a British citizen. I know that the noble Lord was concerned about those issues and, no doubt, he will continue to be concerned, but it is right that we have those powers so that we can act on the information that they obtain. The noble Lord, Lord Roberts, asked how confident we are that biometric information can be collected. We are entirely confident, as I have explained on a number of occasions. We have already had successful experience of collecting biometrics from visa applicants. We will make use of the possibility for the incremental rollout of bids to pilot and test the process to ensure that the project is implemented as successfully as the fingerprinting of visa applicants. The noble Lord asked how confident we could be of access to interview centres. We are looking at the best options to achieve a target of reasonable travel to these centres. The noble Lord will be well aware that I have explained on a few occasions that we continue to look at the possibility of mobile units. I think that that system will work well. I congratulate the noble Lord on raising the issue at every opportunity. The rollout programme has been explained to him in the past and we have placed in the Library of the House some of the more refined details. I hope that that answers the noble Lord’s points. I am grateful for the comments made in this debate.