Immigration Controls

I am going to make a bit of progress. In the space of three years, we will have doubled the enforcement budget. I seem to remember that the hon. Member for Ashford and his colleagues failed to support that doubling in Committee, so he can talk tough on enforcement, but he does not vote for the money—no change there. Last year, we removed someone from this country every eight minutes—that included more than 4,200 foreign criminals—and we carried out about 7,000 operations against illegal working, leading to more than 5,500 arrests. Since introducing new penalties for employers to combat illegal working in February, we have levied more than 850 fines—some £8 million-worth—against irresponsible and exploitative employers. Of course, Conservative Members tried to weaken those measures when they came before the House, and they continue to oppose one of the Government's key policies to prevent abuse and illegal working: identity cards. Next month, we will issue the first compulsory ID cards for foreign nationals, as the first stage of the national identity scheme. ID cards will help us to protect against identity fraud and illegal working, they will reduce the use of multiple identities in organised crime and terrorism and help us to crack down on those trying to abuse positions of trust, and they will make it easier for people to prove that they are who they say they are. ID cards for foreign nationals will replace old-fashioned and easily-forged paper documents, and they will make it easier for employers and sponsors to check a person's entitlement to work and study and for the UK Border Agency to verify someone's identity. If Conservative Members were serious about protecting Britain's borders, they would support the introduction of ID cards for foreign nationals. I am talking not only about biometric visas, but ID cards, which are an integral part of the national identity scheme that they say they will scrap. We are absolutely clear that we need to strike the correct balance in Britain's migration policy, weighing the economic benefits with impacts on communities and public services. Of course, it is vital that we take the social impact of migration into account. That is why we set up the Migration Impacts Forum to provide us with independent advice on how migration affects public services and local communities, and it is why we are also asking migrants to pay more in the future, towards a fund to help services deal with the short-term pressures of migration.