Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [Lords]

We frequently go to Croydon, but we do not necessarily get to see what we ought to see; I have found that people are very nice to Select Committees, but we still get the information that we need from the statistics, and the statistics are poor. I know that the Minister often says that mistakes have been made, as he did in respect of bogus colleges—if he is frowning at me, he need not, because that is the best he can do. Hundreds of bogus colleges were brought into existence under this tough Government doing tough things on immigration. As one of our witnesses said this morning, people can set up a college above a fish-and-chip shop anywhere—even in Oldham—and they will be able to get someone into this country. That is what the universities told us today. Over the past 12 years, hundreds of bogus colleges have been set up and tens of thousands of bogus students have entered this country. The Minister appeared before the Committee today and said, with his usual robustness and honesty, that he knows about what has happened in the past but that we now have the points-based system, which is the great panacea, and that if we open the bottle called "the points-based system"—the most fantastic thing the world has ever seen, and certainly the most fundamental review of immigration policy since the second world war—everything will be fine and calm. We then presented him with a letter from Baroness Warwick, who represents Universities UK, which points out that the very organisations that conduct the accreditation have websites that do not list either their inspectors or the institutions they have visited. We accept that the Minister comes with good will to the House, as he came with good will to the Select Committee, and we give him the benefit of the doubt as we know he wants to sort out this problem, but we say to him that time is running out. It is not legal immigration that we are concerned about, and I do not think the people of this country are concerned about that either; they would agree with what the hon. Member for Salisbury (Robert Key) said earlier about clause 39 and those people who have come to this country legitimately with their skills—doctors and others were mentioned—to benefit our country. Of course, they have been benefited as individuals, but they have also benefited our country, and they might now be told that they cannot get citizenship or they will have to wait—I know this does not apply to those people who currently have indefinite leave—from five to eight years, and from three to five years, and in between this wait, they will have to satisfy various criteria. We even accept that, but what we cannot accept is what the Home Secretary said today about a cap being placed on citizenship. It is no good the Minister looking at me as he is now; that is precisely what she said at the Dispatch Box today, having said all along that we do not accept the notion of a cap. She was talking in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), and she said that there would be a cap on citizenship. That is something that the Minister himself originally said when he first took up his post; he talked about a certain level of population in this country, and then said that was not the case and that he had never mentioned a cap. If we are to have a new, points-based system for citizenship, the House needs to know about it. We do not need to be told, as if we are children, that this is a framework document and that some time in the future—in the summer—another consultation document will be published. The Minister must be fair to the House. In his wind-up, he needs to answer what has been put by the shadow Home Secretary, the Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesman and my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard). If there is something in a drawer in Lunar house on a new consultation on a points-based system for citizenship, we have a right to know what that is; we have a right to know what it is before we vote through this Bill on Second Reading, and certainly before Report and when it comes back in the final Session. I ask the Minister to be open and honest with the House. We know there are problems. We know that the public will not accept unlimited immigration—the kind of immigration that brought me and the people who arrived on the Windrush into this country. Those days are, of course, completely gone. I am also thinking of those of my constituents whom Idi Amin expelled from Uganda and who came here from east Africa; people will never be accepted in those numbers now. Those who have come since then have all been EU citizens who have an absolute right to come here, and some of them have, in fact, returned. People do not mention the fact that they have preferred to go back to their eastern European countries because, for the moment, their economies are doing slightly better than ours—although I am sure they will all come back again when our economy is fully repaired. That fact is that there is no mass immigration in Britain any more—the Minister knows that—but there is the illegal immigration that is so blighting our country, and we want him and this Government to do much more about that. I know that he does not like guessing the number of illegals, but he has clever officials, so he should sit them down and ensure that we get the figures. The Mayor of London has the figures and at least he has a solution to dealing with illegal immigration—the amnesty. We need to deal with this issue, and not just at the border. The Minister, as well as being responsible for immigration, is the acting entry clearance Minister, for the time being, so he knows that there is also a problem with that. I was aghast to hear of the number of students who come from Pakistan in particular, although as I said to the high commissioner last week, this is not an issue just for Pakistan because many countries are involved. The relevant numbers are 7,000 five years ago and 26,000 now. The journalist who wrote the report in The Times told us about these bogus colleges in Manchester that are supposed to admit only 50 such students but had 1,700 on the roll. These are serious issues and the Border and Immigration Agency must investigate them. We take all the Minister's tough medicine today in saying to our constituents and those who seek to come here, "I am sorry that you must wait longer to become a British citizen and you have to do all these things: you have to obey the law, of course, and you have to be able to speak English." We accept everything that is being put upon a community such as mine in Leicester, where half the population has origins abroad. We accept all that, but in return we want the Government to do more to tackle illegal immigration, so that those who come legally will be treated properly.