Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

I support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Shutt. The Government’s utterances on identity checks at the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic have been unclear. In truth, that reflects either muddled thinking by the Government or a reluctance to come clean about what they are planning. The Government have said that there will be no question of establishing full-scale checks on the border, which reflects the practical and political impossibility of doing so. Instead, we will see ad-hoc checks, which we have been assured will be intelligence-led and carefully targeted, a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Shutt. I do not consider that very reassuring at all. How will this work in practice? If people travelling across the border are to be stopped at random, how will they prove that they are British or Irish citizens, or otherwise have a right to be in the country? If the checks are entirely ad hoc, they will not know when these checks might take place. In other words, the Government are requiring British citizens to carry identity documents at all times in case they stray over the border to go shopping, buy petrol or countless other legitimate everyday purposes in order to prove who they are. That is a very unsatisfactory way to sneak in ID checks on British citizens by their own Government. What will happen, for instance, to those people who are stopped but have not remembered to put their identity papers in the glove box of their car or their pocket? Will they be detained on the spot, followed home, made to report to a police station later or simply waved on their way? If we swallow the argument that these stops will be carefully targeted, we must ask how that will be done. I have also seen the briefing from the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, and I agree with the point that it makes. There is a great danger that the targeted checks will focus on people who look a bit different or foreign. Is that compatible with the noble Lord’s statement on the front of this Bill that this is, ""compatible with the Convention rights"?" If the security and intelligence services have a genuine suspicion that someone is up to no good, it has ample powers at its disposal already for dealing with them. The Government have utterly failed to explain this measure, which will inconvenience thousands of people going about their lawful business and will not make the borders any more secure. That raises another point. Why are the Government proposing border checks into Northern Ireland on an ad hoc basis, but making those into Great Britain mandatory? What, exactly, is the threat posed to the people of the British mainland from which they must be protected, and why are British citizens in Northern Ireland to be deemed less at risk from that threat? Why would Northern Ireland need only ad hoc border protection if Great Britain needs stronger protection? If, as my noble friend Lord Glentoran suggested at Second Reading, this Bill is to protect the Great Britain border and not the United Kingdom border, why will the Government not at least be open about it? Bearing that in mind, will the Minister please spell out the future position of British citizens seeking to travel from Northern Ireland to Great Britain on an entirely domestic journey? Will they be subject to immigration controls to compensate for the ad hoc or non-existent controls on the land border? These government proposals are likely to be so ineffective in their stated aim that either they have not been thought through or are paving the way for an entirely different and more far-reaching measure. I will be most interested to hear the Minister defend this clause, but at this stage I support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Shutt.