Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

We want to ensure that there is a clear, single and unified command structure, achieving the main objective of the Cabinet Office review to provide an integrated customs and immigration service at the border. That is the aim here. The role of Director of Border Revenue needs to be very closely integrated with that of the chief executive of the UK Border Agency to provide a single line of command in the agency’s management structure. Our intention is that that will always be one and the same person, even in the future. That is what we would want. I had hoped that I had made it clear to the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham—although plainly I had not—that it was our intention that the current chief executive of the UK Border Agency should be designated as Director of Border Revenue. The chief executive will be accountable to the Home Secretary in relation to all non-revenue matters, but in respect of revenue matters she or he—at present it is she; as was mentioned, it is Lyn Homer—will act independently, subject, like HM Revenue and Customs, to the general oversight of Treasury Ministers. Therefore, to an extent, there will be a certain schizophrenic element to the role but there are other examples of that, and we believe that it is more important to have this single line of command. Under this model, we felt that a Home Office official was the most appropriate person to be appointed as Director of Border Revenue, having an understanding of the department’s wider strategic objectives and the operational and managerial command of the UK’s border forces. Of course, if the chief executive’s post were to become vacant in future, it would be possible to fill it through open competition under Civil Service rules explicitly on the basis that the postholder, the chief executive, would also be the Director of Border Revenue. I hope that on that basis the noble Baroness will agree that her amendment is unnecessary and will feel able to withdraw it.