UK Borders Bill

I will have to take advice from the TGWU and the JCWI to see what they think of the pilots. I am not sure that the Minister actually said there would be any consultation before the pilots are to be rolled out throughout the country. It would be useful to know whether the Government have it in mind at least to share the results with organisations such as those I have mentioned. Obviously ILPA would have to come into the picture to see whether it agreed with the Minister that the pilots are an effective first line of defence, although I do not think they can be a substitute for face-to-face legal advice by a qualified immigration lawyer. I fully take the point the Minister makes about the necessity of confining the giving of advice to recognised immigration lawyers, but I wonder whether a first line of defence might not be that the duty solicitor, who is there in the police station anyway, could at least listen to the case and pass on the details when a qualified immigration solicitor becomes available. At least he would have the basic knowledge of the law that would enable him to offer the sort of preliminary advice that people in that situation normally need and he would be doing it face to face, instead of through a telephone. I foresee another difficulty with the provision of telephone advice. There will not always be an accredited solicitor available who can speak the language of the individual being detained. I do not quite know how Language Line or any of the other interpreting facilities normally used on such occasions can be brought into such telephone conversations. Can the noble Lord can tell me whether it is possible to set up three-way conversations between a police station, an accredited immigration solicitor and someone from Language Line so that the interpretation can be done live, as it were? We should implement what the noble Lord said right at the start, which is that everyone should have access to proper advice on his situation within 24 hours of his detention. If that can be brought about, I shall be extremely happy, but the examples that we have had from the TGWU and the JCWI indicate that that has certainly not been the case in the past.