UK Borders Bill

My Lords, as ever, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour, for her very subtle and well informed interventions in this Bill and in other Bills. She always makes useful and constructive contributions to our debates. I am grateful to her for providing me with a bit of time and advance knowledge of some of the questions that she has quite rightly and properly asked this afternoon. I know that she and the noble Duke have a keen interest in ensuring that there is no compromise in border security in Scotland as a result of the measures in the Bill, and I assure the House that the Government are more than equally committed to that objective. The amendment would extend the provisions in Clauses 1 to 4 on detention at ports to Scotland. This matter has been aired in this House and in the other place on more than one occasion. Before dealing with the substance of the amendment, I stress that Clauses 1 to 4 do not change any arrangements for controlling immigration or for regulating our borders. Immigration officers in Scotland have the same immigration powers as those elsewhere in the United Kingdom, and the clauses do not alter that. The provisions in this Bill, in substance, deal with criminal justice matters and not the control of immigration, which is, of course, a reserved matter. The Sewel convention states that the UK Parliament will not legislate in a devolved area without the consent of the Scottish Parliament. That is quite proper. The Government remain fully committed to respecting the devolution settlement. We have discussed in some detail, during debates in Grand Committee and at Report stage, the detention at ports provisions and their non-application to Scotland. I am sorry that I have not yet been able to allay all the concerns expressed on this issue. In seeking to do so now, I will address the fact that, during our previous discussions, some of the debate—