Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

I now have an answer to the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke. Apparently, the Government have replied to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee on Clause 8. I have not seen that reply and clearly neither has he, but apparently they have responded. On the amendments, the clause already dictates that the director must be satisfied of the appropriate criteria, so in practice the director will be required to demonstrate an objective basis for concluding that any given person can exercise customs revenue functions appropriately. I mentioned the 4,500 who are transferring to the border force to carry out customs revenue functions. They will clearly already have been capably and appropriately trained by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Equally, those designated customs officials within the border force who have not transferred from HMRC will have been trained to the same level as the revenue and customs officers for the powers that they will be exercising and the activities that they will be carrying out. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, talked in particular about training. Training will be delivered by trainers accredited by HMRC. Trainees will be mentored by the personal training officer network, transferring from that department to the UK Border Agency. New recruits joining the border force who are deployed at the border will undertake an accredited foundation course including training to enable them to carry out customs revenue functions where that is a part of their role. The way in which we resolve the language training issue—as the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, said, there are so many languages that you cannot possibly have someone there to cover them all—is by the use of interpreters. We can rapidly get hold of people who can interpret. That is how we get round that one. We do not have a specific language course for any of these people in their training. Clause 12 already requires the director to be satisfied that a person has completed adequate training before the director may designate that person as a customs revenue official able to exercise customs revenue functions. For training to be deemed adequate, the definition is that it must provide a designated customs official with all the instruction and skills appropriate and necessary to exercise the customs revenue functions conferred on them fully and properly. As I said, that is monitored by the personal training officer network to ensure that it is done. Amendment 22 does not in practice impose any different requirement from those already imposed by the Bill. On that basis, I hope that the noble Baroness will agree that the amendment is unnecessary. It is worth adding that the requirement in the clause mirrors that imposed in conferring customs functions on officers in SOCA. We have been doing that since 2005 and it is appropriate that the same standards should be required for officials designated under the Bill.