Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

Perhaps I may first answer the last question. It is quite usual for a designated official below a Secretary of State to carry out functions that are the responsibility of the Secretary of State. That is not unusual; it relates to the Carltona principle, which stems from a specific case. I shall deal with Amendments 6, 7, 8 and 10 as a group. These amendments, by restricting the Secretary of State’s ability to designate officials in her department as designated general customs officials, would effectively take away many of the advantages of the integration that Part 1 aims to achieve. I hope that I have explained why we are trying to achieve it. Significantly, they would hamper the effectiveness of individual officials exercising combined customs and immigration functions on behalf of the UK Border Agency. Therefore, I must resist these amendments. Some 4,500 existing revenue and customs officers, as I mentioned, will be transferred to the new border force to carry out customs functions. On their transfer, they will no longer be officers of HMRC and will need to be designated under the provision in Part 1 to enable them to continue exercising the customs functions that they currently carry out. Depending on his or her role, a designated general customs official will need to be able to exercise some or all of the functions in relation to a general customs matter that are currently exercised by an officer of Revenue and Customs. Amendment 6 would mean that officers who transfer from HMRC to the border force and become officials of the Secretary of State could not be designated to exercise general customs functions unless they were first appointed as immigration officers. We believe that this is unnecessary. While in the future the majority of the UK Border Agency officials at the front line will exercise immigration and customs functions, and therefore will be appointed as immigration officers, this may not be so in every case. Specialist roles and skills will also be retained by some of the agency’s officials—for example, by those exercising general customs functions at the postal hubs and by drug-detector dog handlers at airports, who are the very people that the noble Lord referred to earlier. Those officials will not require immigration powers to perform those specific functions. An officer of Revenue and Customs currently exercises two sets of functions: those that are vested directly in him or her as a customs officer and those that he or she exercises on behalf of the Commissioners for Revenue and Customs. Likewise, a designated general customs official will need to be able to exercise both sets of functions, subject to any limitations that are placed on an individual’s designation to reflect his or her particular role. Designated customs officials will, for example, need to make decisions on the return or disposal of seized goods. These are day-to-day operational decisions currently taken by officers of HMRC on behalf of the commissioners in accordance with a framework of policy and guidance laid down by the commissioners. In the future, designated customs officials will need to be able to take these decisions on behalf of the Secretary of State so that the border force can run its affairs effectively and efficiently. Amendment 7 would prevent those officials from taking those decisions and would leave all such decisions to be taken personally by the Secretary of State. Amendment 8 would remove subsection (3) from Clause 3. The purpose of that subsection is to make it clear that, notwithstanding the exercise of the Secretary of State’s general customs functions by designated general customs officials, the Carltona principle, to which I referred, is preserved. I am sure that noble Lords will appreciate the importance of the Carltona principle, in accordance with which the Secretary of State’s functions may be exercised by any of her officials. Clause 3(3) ensures that this important principle is preserved. Before designating a general customs official under Clause 3, the Secretary of State must be satisfied that the capability, training and suitability requirements set out in Clause 4 are met. This issue of training has been raised a number of times. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, has particularly emphasised it and I agree entirely about its importance. The Government are satisfied that the robust designation process established by the Bill is the appropriate one, so I must resist Amendment 10, which would add a layer of parliamentary scrutiny to this, as unnecessary and disproportionate. The amendment would place a great burden on Parliament, necessitating each designation of a general customs official to be approved by both Houses before being made. While I am sure that more of the noble Baroness’s time at the Dispatch Box would greatly please noble Lords, I doubt whether the Committee would like to be detained any more on this, as I have been going on at length. In light of this explanation, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.