UK Borders Bill

My Lords, I am going to take the responses to this amendment as a compliment. I have been accused of not giving too much away; if that is the case, I take that as a measure of success from the Government’s perspective. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, for his observations. He tempted me with the question, ““What are the Liberal Democrats for?””. I am not going to provide an answer from the Dispatch Box. With the current state of play, it would be too much of an open goal to punt towards. I will try to respond to some of the points that have been made. As regards whether the code of practice can apply retrospectively, the advice that we have received is that it can be applied to existing contracts through the notice of change procedures already in place. We intend to ensure that the Border and Immigration Agency has a system of monitoring contractors’ performance by measuring them against a set of standards devised for the specific activities that they carry out for the agency. There is already a set of standards for activities involving families, but we will also consider whether new standards for children are needed when the code is formally introduced. Noble Lords should be reassured by that because it goes back to the issue that we discussed earlier about standards. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, asked about private fostering. The draft code states that local authorities will be notified of private fostering arrangements, so there is ample scope for dialogue on that issue. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester invited me to comment on the current position with regard to the code of practice. We intend to issue a formal version for full public consultation. We are extremely grateful to noble Lords and to the various organisations that have contributed during its iteration for helping us to perfect a code which will be worthy of the name. We intend to involve children’s charities and NGOs in a further round of consultation. We fully recognise and appreciate the value of their work and their input in perfecting the way in which we perform. The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York said that there was no reference in the code to the Children Act. As I said, we are consulting NGOs about incorporating some of the concepts and policy intentions behind the Children Act, including those in Every Child Matters. The consultation is directed less at the legislation itself than at its spirit, which we are trying to incorporate. That is the most important thing and is urgently needed. We need to ensure that we carry on raising the threshold and the standards. I am grateful to noble Lords for their generally supportive comments. On Question, amendment agreed to.