Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

I very much support the establishment of a UK border police force and in particular I support the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Dear. Taking up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, I should have thought that there would not be a great deal of difficulty in dealing with the preventing and detecting of human trafficking by agreement between police forces, because, as he says, they are to be found from time to time in different parts of the country. One of the major concerns of course is at the ports, particularly at the airports. There is currently very good work being done by small groups of police. I am happy to say the Metropolitan Police are doing very good work with Romania that is funded by the European Commission. That is excellent work and I cannot see that it would be very difficult if that went either to the border police force or stayed with the special group of the Metropolitan Police by agreement. Work is done across police forces already and to have it in this UK border police force would not seem to me to prevent existing police forces from doing this work. I ought to declare an interest, which I have declared before, as a vice-president of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Trafficking of Women and Children. One of the reasons why I support this UK border police force is to have a police force which is, as part of its work, committed to dealing with this very evil trade of trafficking. It does cross my mind that the Government have created a very serious omission by not having a border police force. I find it very sad that it is not in the Bill, but it may be that it will be said that it will take some time to achieve. The fact that it may take some time for it to be set up and be operational does not seem to be a good reason for not having it in place as part of the law, although it may take time for it actually to be up and working. What is sad about the Bill is that it does not even contemplate the possibility. That is a sad reflection on an aspiration that should be up front at this moment. I am not sure whether I support Amendment 1 or Amendment 2. It is rather sad that the two parties opposite have not got together to put forward a composite arrangement for the UK border police force, because what comes in each of them seems to be very good common sense. What is necessary is to have the police force. I find it sad that the Government have not thought it necessary to do so.