Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [Lords]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman and especially to the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) for the work that they do in the all-party group on human trafficking. I am not against the idea of appointing a commissioner—the difficulty is the scale of the problem of human trafficking: it is huge. He or she would need a huge number of staff, and I do not think the Government would be prepared to fund that. My concern is that the funding for the Metropolitan police's human trafficking unit, which is vital to what the Bill proposes, is about to be cut off. The Prime Minister told me at the Dispatch Box that the funding was going to be increased. Well, we were told today that it will end on 31 March 2010. That is not an increase: zero per cent. is not an increase as far as we are concerned. I therefore ask the Minister to go back to the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister, as the Select Committee will do, and urge them to provide the Metropolitan police with the resources that they need. It is not good enough to say to the police, "Get these resources from your existing budget". The police themselves have said they will have to cut £428 million from their budget to make the savings the Home Office has asked them to make in respect of individual police authorities. We have got to deal with human trafficking with the experts who are best placed to solve this problem, so I urge the Minister to go back and look at this issue. Let me say this in absolute conclusion, to allow the hon. Member for Eastleigh the chance to speak again in the debate. We have gone along with yet another immigration Bill. We accept what the Government have said—that this is necessary for good, firm and fair immigration control. However, the warning that comes from me and other Members of the House is that we can have all the legislation in the world, but Ministers must direct their attention toward the administrative chaos that still exists in the UK Border Agency: a backlog of 440,000 cases, supported by taxpayers' money of £650 million a year. That is what Lin Homer told us last week—the cost of servicing that backlog is £650 million a year, which is far too much. I say: make a case to the Treasury, ask for additional money—the Select Committee and Members of this House will help—and get rid of that backlog, and then we can look at additional legislation that will help to achieve what the Government propose. Legislation without administrative direction and control will not work. I welcome the clauses in the Bill, but I say to the Minister that it is in his hands: he can be the first Immigration Minister in the history of this country to have cleared the backlog at the UK Border Agency. I believe he has the ability, talent and robustness to make sure this will happen.