My Lords, in moving Amendment 56YG I shall speak also to Amendment 56YH. I have to say that I am amazed by the influence of my noble friend the Chief Whip, who just by sitting there has prevented anyone walking in front of me.
Schedule 7 deals with the powers to seize invalid passports, and these are two quite small, probing amendments, although they are serious. The first amendment would leave out the provision for a constable, who has various powers of search and seizure, to authorise a person—any person,
“to carry out on the constable’s behalf a search under this paragraph”.
That is a search which may involve the use of force—reasonable force, but nevertheless force. I question whether it is right for such powers to be authorised—perhaps not technically delegated, but to the outside world they would seem to be delegated.
My second amendment would leave out the requirement to return an expired travel document, but not where it is thought that it might be intended to be used for purposes for which it is no longer valid. My question, of course, is: why not? If the document has expired, what harm is there? Are there no other systems that are sophisticated and efficient enough to pick up whether an expired travel document is, in fact, expired? This seems an odd sanction, merely on the basis of reasonable belief. My particular reason for questioning it is that it might really irritate people quite unnecessarily. I have written “unnecessary aggro” against this, and I genuinely think that we should avoid causing unnecessary aggro, because there are enough sensitivities around passport and immigration controls and so on without adding one which, to my mind at any rate, is not necessary. I beg to move.