UK Borders Bill

The hon. Gentleman has a keen eye for some of the practicalities of the debate; he will be delighted to hear that discussions are ongoing with my colleagues in the Ministry of Justice. The upshot of my argument is that to accept section 11 is not risk-free and I am not prepared to take that risk at this stage. There are a number of necessary consequences. The first is that the code must apply to BIA contractors—a point put to me forcefully by children's charities. I am happy to accept that principle, which is important because the BIA works with contractors to provide both detention and escorting facilities. I can be clearer than my noble Friend, Lord Bassam: the code will apply to BIA contractors currently on the books and it will apply to BIA contractors in the future. The reason I resist amendment (a) is fairly straightforward. The hon. Member for Ashford put his finger on the key principle—transparency. It is absolutely crucial that departures from the code are recorded. Amendment (a) is sketched in such a way that it begins, in effect, to make the Border and Immigration Agency accountable to the children's commissioner, and to extend his original role. Let us remember that his original role is carefully defined in legislation: it is to ensure that children's views are taken into account. As the House will know, I am keen to avoid such a change, because an important part of the Bill is the creation of a much more powerful regulator, and I do not wish to blur roles and responsibilities in the regulatory system. I want to make sure that there is one regulator, who is unchallengeable. However, I have asked officials to talk to the children's commissioner about how we can satisfy the ambition behind the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Ashford, and I can now tell the House that where there are deviations from the code, the BIA will be required to record them. Those departures will be reviewed by a senior member of the BIA team, as and when they occur. We will also alert the BIA's chief inspector, and if it wishes to undertake an investigation on that point, it is empowered to do so. On top of that, there will be quarterly meetings between the BIA and the children's commissioner, at which all departures from the code will be discussed. I am told that officials working with the children's commissioner believe that that is a workable and sensible mechanism. I hope that that puts some concerns to bed, but I can give the House an additional comfort: under section 2(9) of the Children Act 2004, the commissioner has the right to be supplied with any information relating to BIA functions that he may reasonably request to discharge his role. Our policy will be to disclose immediately, should the children's commissioner seek to lodge such a request. Those are important safeguards, which I am happy to read on to the record this afternoon. They underline the key point that the hon. Member for Ashford made: if the code is to be worth something, there must be transparency as regards its enforcement. I must apologise to their lordships for the late arrival of the code; that was entirely my responsibility. The code was late because I was not satisfied with the original draft. To my mind, some of the wording of the original code was ambiguous. It was not hard-edged enough in terms of the obligations that it imposed on the BIA, so I ordered a rewrite over the final weekend, and that produced a delay in making the code available in another place. I wish to resist amendment (b) to Lords amendment No. 19. I sympathise with the argument made by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), which is that we need to press on as fast as possible with the implementation of the code. The word of comfort that I can offer is straightforward: the code will be put out to a full public consultation, in line with Cabinet Office guidelines. I will work with the children's charities to help to get that right. I have met them already and I am happy to meet them again. That means a full three-month consultation period, which will take place before the code is put in place—in, I imagine, about six months' time. We will follow the Cabinet Office guideline-based process to get the code right and to put it in place, and I think that that will serve the ambitions of the hon. Member for Ashford. I urge the House to resist amendments (a) and (b), and I commend Lords amendment No. 19.