Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

Amendments 120 to 123 all go together. They relate to Clause 53(5). I apologise that I am now detaining the Committee at a relatively late hour, but there is an important principle here. At the end of a great many Bills that we have in this House, there is a clause on "extent" that usually contains the highly permissive phrase, "Her Majesty may by Order in Council extend the provisions of this Bill to some or all of the Crown dependencies". We have debated some of this already with regard to Clause 46; indeed, the Minister was rather fierce about the problems we have with the Irish part of the common travel area. He said that, ""we have found that a large number of people are slipping through the hoop, with some very real risks and problems … nasty people had been moving backwards and forwards"—[Official Report, 4/3/09; col. 757.]—" and so on. He went on to say that none of that applies to the Crown dependencies; everything is fine there. He said that, ""we have no intention to introduce routine controls on routes from the Crown dependencies".—[Official Report, 4/3/09; col. 766.]" I am not sure that we should accept that without further examination. I read an interesting article on what is happening to those migrants who come in through the Mediterranean, desperate to get to Britain, and end up holed up in illegal encampments in France. Until recently they have been camped around Calais and trying to get across the Channel that way, and now, we are told, they are spreading along the coast. They come in originally through small islands in the Mediterranean, from Lampedusa to Lesbos. Because the local authorities are overwhelmed, they let them go on their way. We have some rather small islands very close to the French coast. They are called Jersey, Guernsey and Sark. The number of small boats which cross the channel and go through the Irish Sea is far greater than the border agency is able to monitor or control. There are some real issues here. I have for a long time found it puzzling that we have a Government whose attitude is that any local authority smaller than half a million people is incompetent to manage serious local services but accept that the Crown dependencies—three of which have populations of less than 100,000, while Sark has less than 1,000—are somehow competent to manage a great deal of their own affairs. Later in his speeches on Clause 46, the Minister went on to say: ""The Crown dependencies were consulted at length. Part of the problem is that, after all the consultations, they were a little surprised when they saw the legislation as it stood".—[Official Report, 4/3/09/; col. 766.]" That is not entirely surprising. These are very small bodies which do not have a large staff, and it is very easy for them to be overwhelmed. I was a little more worried when it appeared to me—perhaps I was mistaken—that the Minister confused the British-Irish Council with the Council of the Isles, which includes the Crown dependencies. It may be that the Council of the Isles no longer meets and that consultation with the Crown dependencies is therefore done only on a bilateral basis. To show how complex and full of loopholes this relationship is, I draw your Lordships’ attention to a memorandum submitted by the Ministry of Justice to the Justice Committee in the other place last December. It says: ""It is acknowledged that the constitutional relationship between the UK and the Crown Dependencies is complex and that it contains areas of uncertainty"." It goes on to say that, ""the UK Government is responsible for the external relations of the Crown Dependencies"." Border agencies are part of the external activities of the UK. If the UK represents the international interests of the Crown dependencies, we need to know who handles relations between local border authorities and their opposite number in other states. When I was chair of EU Sub-Committee F, which dealt with justice and home affairs matters, we were told very firmly by the Finns that the basic principle of good border management is close relations of mutual confidence with the authorities on the other side—good relations with the French, good relations with the Irish and good relations with those other states from whose ports the small boats which travel into the Irish Sea and the English Channel come. One of the great puzzles of the debates in Committee and of the Bill as a whole is the almost complete absence of reference in the Bill to the European and international dimensions of border management. I became aware, when I was involved in the sub-committee, of the extensive network of international co-operation among police and customs agencies within the European Union and more widely in which the British play an active part. We need to know how the Crown dependencies and their authorities fit into this. I suppose that the Metropolitan Police handle this on their behalf, but there are probably two or three people in Jersey and another two or three in Guernsey who are receiving the very important exchanges of data. I suspect that this does not work very well. There is a remarkable contrast between the concern over the abuse of the Irish border and the lack of concern regarding the Crown dependencies. Some other questions came up earlier in our debate about Customs issues regarding the Crown dependencies. I ordered through Amazon half a dozen copies of a single CD to give people as Christmas presents. They arrived in six individual packages from Jersey, thus benefiting from the small package waiver on VAT—tax avoidance of a highly developed form and a clear loss of revenue to the British state. The evidence to the Justice Committee hearing on 10 December was even more astonishing in a whole host of ways, with the noble Lord, Lord Bach, saying: ""It is not our job to nanny the Isle of Man in any sense. Our job is, in the broadest sense, to have a close relationship with them and to assist"." The official who then tried to get him out of the hole that he was digging himself into said: ""I think that it is to put it too strongly to say that we have abdicated all responsibility for them"." That is a wonderful series of double and triple negatives which say, "I think the Minister has got it wrong, but I am not quite sure how". Later on, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, was asked what would happen if the Crown dependencies’ Administrations refused to implement any proposals that the British Government made to them, to which he replied: ""We would very much hope that the Crown Dependencies … approach constructively"," the proposals made to them. He continued: ""It is absolutely up to the Crown Dependencies, as you suggest, to respond as they see fit … we do not have levers at the end of the day"," but we, ""believe that all sides will act sensibly and that the Crown Dependencies themselves will not be against … reforms"." That is not good enough when it comes to borders. There has to be a very clear sense of who is in charge and how British borders are maintained and defended. We also need to know how relations with the border agencies and customs authorities of other states within the European Union are managed. I am one of the many people who have spent time in the Channel Islands and am conscious of how close to the French coast they are. There are some important issues here which cannot be left in this clause, filled as it is with all kinds of conditions into which the Isle of Man might come but the Jersey and Guernsey authorities not, or vice versa—we leave it entirely up to them. While we wish to be much stricter with the Irish, we apparently have no leverage to insist that if, for example, there were a surge of illegal immigrants or people being trafficked who hit the Channel Islands, we would know what to do. Even at this late point, I should like to hear from the Minister how the Government are going to handle this matter, and I seek some firm assurances before we on these Benches consider whether we might wish to test the opinion of the House on Report. I beg to move.