Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [Lords]

I am tempted to go down the route set by the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay), but I will resist that temptation and leave the Minister to respond to his points, because there are many very important amendments and new clauses in this group. I want to address three of them—and to do so fairly briefly, as there are further important groups to come. In the current group, Government amendment 17 is key. The Minister needs to be able to answer the question whether it gives satisfactory treatment to all those who were affected over the past few years by the High Court rulings, which the Government have lost, on the matter of retrospection, and in particular satisfy the House that he is being fair to those who have not yet applied for indefinite leave to remain on their route to citizenship, because that is what a lot of the amendment is about. It is worth while setting out the Conservatives' attitude to citizenship in principle. We believe that UK citizenship is a privilege, not a right. Anyone who is here on temporary leave to remain should not assume that that gives them the right to remain here permanently or to become a British citizen. However, we need to be fair and reasonable. We also need to recognise that our country is competing with others around the world for highly skilled migrants who will benefit our economy—we all agree that Britain benefits from highly skilled migrants. The Government's previous decision to change the rules so that highly skilled migrants who are already here and who want to stay are now disqualified from doing so is both unfair and wrong-headed. It is unfair because those people have made a commitment to this country but are having that flung back in their faces, and it is wrong-headed because it sends a signal to highly skilled people around the world that Britain is an unreliable place. It is an indictment of the current Government that precisely the people whom we should be encouraging and supporting to come to this country are disillusioned by their efforts. As the Minister is aware, the Conservatives have consistently opposed the retrospective elements of the changes to the rules affecting highly skilled migrants. In 2006, his predecessor attempted to change the rules regarding indefinite leave to remain, citing the introduction of the points-based system. At the time, I helped deliver a petition to the then Prime Minister with 4,000 signatures of those opposing the rule change. Since those changes came into force, the highly skilled migrants programme forum has successfully challenged the Home Office in the courts. That was a three-year battle with massive and unnecessary attendant legal costs, but, in the end, the Home Office lost in the courts.