Immigration Controls

Before the hon. Gentleman completely wipes the slate clean about how these matters were handled in the past and praises the fact that we are now able to talk about them in a responsible atmosphere, will he concede that when my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) and I introduced regulations to control asylum benefits and made many of the same arguments about the difficulties of controlling asylum and immigration when we were in office, we did not get the same considered reception from the Opposition Benches? The undercurrent from the Opposition was that our motives were wrong, which is not how the current Opposition are prepared to handle the debate. We would have been able to have much better discussions had the Opposition at the time handled the matter differently.