UK Borders Bill

moved Amendment No. 71: 71: After Clause 57, insert the following new Clause— ““Consolidation For paragraph 1 of Schedule 2 to the Immigration Act 1971 (c. 77) substitute— ““1 (1) Immigration officers for the purposes of this Act shall be appointed by the Secretary of State, and he may arrange with the Commissioners of Customs and Excise for the employment of officers of customs and excise as immigration officers under this Act. (2) Medical inspectors for the purposes of this Act may be appointed by the Secretary of State or, in Northern Ireland, by the Minister of Health and Social Services or other appropriate Minister of the Government of Northern Ireland in pursuance of arrangements made between that Minister and the Secretary of State, and shall be fully qualified medical practitioners. (3) The Secretary of State may direct that his function of appointing medical inspectors under sub-paragraph (2) is also to be exercisable by such persons specified in the direction who exercise functions relating to health in England or Wales. (4) In the exercise of their functions under this Act immigration officers shall act in accordance with such instructions (not inconsistent with the immigration rules) as may be given them by the Secretary of State, and medical inspectors shall act in accordance with such instructions as may be given them by the Secretary of State or, in Northern Ireland, as may be given in pursuance of the arrangements mentioned in sub-paragraph (2) above by the Minister making appointments of medical inspectors in Northern Ireland. (5) An immigration officer or medical inspector may board any ship or aircraft for the purpose of exercising his functions under this Act. (6) An immigration officer, for the purpose of satisfying himself whether there are persons he may wish to examine under paragraph 2 below, may search any ship or aircraft and anything on board it, or any vehicle taken off a ship or aircraft in which it has been brought to the United Kingdom.””.”” The noble Lord said: In the debate on the Queen’s Speech at the beginning of this Session, I regretted that there had been no progress on consolidation of immigration and asylum legislation. That was four years after we first raised the matter and despite the assurance we had been given by the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton of Upholland, in January of last year when she said that we would see whether it could be taken forward with the Law Commission. No doubt the noble Baroness has more influence now as the Leader of the House and as a member of the Cabinet to move these issues on, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, said at the Second Reading of this Bill: "““We await with bated breath the publication of the consolidation Bill next year””.—[Official Report, 13/6/07; col. 1712.]" In spite of the fact that consolidation was raised by the noble Baroness, her noble friend Lord Henley, my noble friend Lord Dholakia and myself during that debate, the Minister who replied, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, had nothing further to say on the subject in her wind-up. All we have to go on is a half-promise of a consolidation measure in the next Queen’s Speech. But yet another Bill amending the law on immigration is coming down the track, which clearly is not going to get through all its stages in the current Session. Will it continue in parallel with the consolidation measure, and will that measure incorporate the immigration clauses of the Criminal Law and Immigration Bill? What this amendment does is to consolidate only part of Schedule 2 of the Immigration Act 1971. We decided not to propose to consolidate the whole schedule so as not to waste paper on an exercise that is doomed to failure, but, as we have shown previously, is easily done. To complete the task, one would have to amend the references in other legislation, but even that is manageable because all the public legislation since 1988 is available in electronic form, and therefore is readily searchable. In any case, the references to every amendment since 1971 are given in the Immigration Law Handbook by Margaret Phelan and James Gillespie. So far as I know, their meticulous work has always been relied on by officials, legal practitioners, immigration judges and members of the public without the discovery of any errors. I suppose it may be argued that the regular publication of the handbook after every new Act comes into force diminishes the need for consolidation, because at least the whole of the primary and secondary legislation is brought together in one volume—all 1,232 pages of it. It is still necessary to look in several different places to make sure that one understands what the law actually does, as we saw on the last amendment. But the people who are immediately affected by these many hundreds of pages—asylum seekers, elderly dependent relatives coming to join their families in the UK, or one of the three varieties of foreign criminal as described in three different Acts, as we discussed on the last occasion—have no access to Phelan, which now costs £100, and I suspect that not all their advisers do either. It would be interesting to know, for example, whether copies are available in all the immigration removal centres. What we are proposing here is intended to prod the Government towards a commitment on consolidation and to make a more general point for the future. Since major consolidation of the law on immigration, asylum and nationality is only to be expected every 40 years, judging from our current experience, there ought to be a mechanism for partial consolidation on the lines of this amendment. We have a Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills, to which the question could be referred of whether it would be expedient to depart from the principle that all consolidation should be dealt with in Bills for that purpose only, enacting only new proposals recommended by the Law Commission or including corrections and minor improvements to existing law. The rule that in practice we separate consolidation entirely from new legislation may not be necessary, and in any case should be reviewed by that committee. I beg to move.