Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

This first part of the Bill is one of its most important aspects and my amendments make it clear that we intend to probe the Government’s proposals carefully. I am bound to say that this is one of the most opaque bits of legislation that I have read for some time. Before we come to the purposes of Part 1 and of the Government’s legislation, our Amendment 1 proposes to amplify further what procedures we believe there should be for protecting our borders. At Second Reading, I told the House that I intended to, "““table an amendment in Committee to have a border police force that will have all the necessary powers to arrest, detain and prosecute offenders””.—[Official Report, 11/2/09; col. 1134.]" This is not a new line for my party to take. For several years now, we have proposed and recommended that the force at the border should be unified, and I make no apology for returning to that attack. Part 1 of the Bill proposes—I am sure that the Minister will say more about this—to bring together immigration and Customs and Revenue. The gaping hole left is that the police, and thereby the security forces, are not involved in this force or in protecting our borders. It seems to us inconceivable that that should happen and that the Government should go to all the trouble of producing this rather miserable little Bill to try to do something that does not complete the whole circle. In 2007, my noble friend Lady Anelay introduced a similar clause. To save me having to think about it, I shall just quote what she said, which lays out quite clearly what we are trying to do. She said: "““My amendments will create a UK border police force which we believe could more effectively police and safeguard our borders than has been the case in recent years. There are currently six agencies dealing with our borders; it is clear that the system is unsatisfactory. We seek to bring those disparate groups of people together so that they can be managed more coherently and the powers can be shared””.—[Official Report, 2/7/07; col. GC 32.]" It is not only members of my party who believe that the police are a major absence from such a force; that position is supported by others. The noble Lord, Lord Stevens, conducted an inquiry for my party some time ago—its findings have been published—in which he supported the involvement of the police. What is the Government’s objection? Why are we going to spend this afternoon going through 36 convoluted clauses to come out at the end with a force that combines Customs, immigration and Revenue but leaves those officers having to contact or bring in the police at any stage of their inquiries, rather than having the police as an integral part of what they do? The Government have made great play of the fact that our borders need to be secure; we support that. It is essential that we have borders that are not porous to crime, drug trafficking and trafficking of people or illegal immigrants and that there are proper regimes to deal with that. Given that those measures are not there as a whole, we will waste three days or so putting together something that is inadequate. It is essential that we discuss this clearly and cogently today and find out from the Government why they are not prepared to commit themselves to a dedicated border police. It is beyond peradventure that this will have to be revisited and that yet another piece of borders and immigration legislation will be required, which would be the ninth or 10th that we have had since 1997. A border police force would be able to combine the powers of the police, Customs and immigration in a single dedicated force. We have also included with our amendments stand part debates on the other clauses in Part 1. That is to give Members of the Committee the opportunity today also to discuss the proposals for what the Government are pleased to call their integrated force. I beg to move.