Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

I should make clear at the outset that in speaking to this group I do not regard the decisions on the various clauses in this part to be consequential on any decision on Amendment 1. I am, however, sure that it has been helpful for the Committee to allow a wide debate on the issues contained in Part 1 by having them grouped together in this way. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, for her explanation of why the Opposition have tabled this amendment, and to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury for his useful contribution. It is good for us to make our position clear from the start as the Government did in advance of Second Reading debate. There is a wide range of options from a gargantuan organisation that combines the UK Border Agency with thousands of police officers and parts of other agencies to an entirely police-based body which will work in parallel with the UK Border Agency. The amendment tabled by the Opposition is similar to the one spoken to on 9 October 2007, for what was then the UK Borders Bill. From a brief comparison between the two, I can see that the Opposition’s thinking has not been spelt out in any greater detail. That is a shame when the Government have put forward solid and reasoned proposals for the functional and management changes that we need to strengthen the arrangements for immigration and customs at our borders. These changes are ready to be implemented as soon as the Bill is passed. The new border force has already been stood up and started in its shadow form since April 2008 and is waiting for these things to be put properly into force. I am sure that the House will want to weigh the benefits of immediate, well-grounded and well-planned change against a much more generalised aspiration for a long-term future. I know that the House will agree that the protection of this country’s borders is of vital importance to our national security and the well-being of our citizens. That is why the Government have already taken steps to strengthen and integrate operational activity at the border, bringing immigration and customs functions together in a way which is properly connected to local policing. This work started out as a discussion in July 2007, in a Statement by the Prime Minister, just after the attacks on Tiger Tiger and Glasgow airport. One issue that I looked at was border security, with a resultant Cabinet Office study, Security in a Global Hub. Abroad and at ports and airports up and down the country, border force operational staff are working on a daily basis to protect this country from those who traffic people. Trafficking of drugs, the import of dangerous guns, knives and wild animal meats—and I have some statistics on that—were also discussed this morning. At the same time, those staff provide a welcome to tourists and business travellers and a service to businesses that import goods and drive our economy. Far from what the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, has said, the police are already fully involved. I will come onto that in more detail later. It might be useful initially to provide some examples of the way in which the agency is already delivering real and practical improvements, making our nation and its people safer, since it was stood up, in shadow form, in April 2008. There has been flexible deployment of our 9,000 border guards to search for and seize record quantities of Class A drugs, dangerous weapons, people hidden in trucks and trailers, and an estimated saving of about £150 million to tax revenue. We have begun cross-training 2,600 frontline officers in screening more passengers travelling to and from the United Kingdom to reduce waiting times over peak summer periods. There is a new deal for port operators through service level agreements that reduce duplication, improve the experience of customers and make us more effective. Police expertise has been embedded at both the strategic level—and Chief Constable, Roger Baker, is a member of the executive board of UKBA—and at the operational level, with more than 280 police officers seconded to UKBA in local immigration teams up and down our country. Similarly, UKBA staff are embedded in police countertrafficking teams at Heathrow and Sheffield. Our intelligence capability has been linked through the national border targeting centre—where police and UKBA staff screen passenger information—and in police counterterrorism and organised crime units. Our enhanced port security teams have increased significantly the number of referrals to the Security Service following the delivery of counterterrorist training and online updates. Cutting-edge technology has been used to screen more than 3.5 million vehicles for the illegal importation of nuclear and radiological materials. The Government are not against making structural change in the area of law enforcement and policing where there is a compelling case to do so. Take the example of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, which brought together the four agencies which had hitherto dealt with organised crime—the National Crime Squad, the National Criminal Intelligence Service, part of HMRC and part of the Immigration Service. A Cabinet Office review had identified some overlap of functions and unclear lines of accountability between these agencies. A White Paper and a substantial Bill followed, leading to the establishment of SOCA in April 2006, which was designed to be more than the sum of its parts. This is relevant to the present debate. The establishment of SOCA involved a huge amount of work, but it was a much more straightforward process than establishing a single UK border police force. SOCA was about drawing together four national agencies. The border policing picture is significantly more complicated; I will return to this complexity point shortly. In other important areas relating to public protection, we have not pursued major structural change. Take, for example, counterterrorism policing. We have not established a national counterterrorism police force, nor do we intend to. Our approach is different: working with the leadership of the police service, we have supported and underpinned, with record investment, the development of what has become known as the police counterterrorism network. This comprises regionally based specialised police units, known as counterterrorism units and counterterrorism intelligence units, which are increasingly integrated and co-ordinated at a national level. The network is providing the benefits of a national enterprise without, crucially, this becoming dislocated from local policing or disturbing the critical settlement of accountability for policing in this country. Last year’s Green Paper on police reform consulted on what model of policing, working alongside the UK Border Agency, would work best in terms of increasing security at our borders and improving public protection. That consultation did not throw up a consensus view among the key stakeholders on a preferred model for policing at the border. The formal stated position of the Association of Chief Police Officers was in favour of a single national border police service. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, asked that question, and the noble Lord, Lord Dear, referred to it. But ACPO acknowledged that this would need considerable further planning and development as a model and would have the potential to bring with it significant additional costs. The noble Lord, Lord Dear, was wrong about it being an all-embracing agency. ACPO’s formal response favoured a single national police service, working alongside the border service. The Association of Police Authorities took a completely different view. It was very strongly opposed to the creation of a single national border force. In my brief period as a Minister, I find it interesting how often the views of ACPO and others differ on these issues. We have reflected very carefully on the thoughtful engagement on this issue from our key stakeholders. As I have said, the police are already fully involved and I have referred to a number of areas where they are. We acknowledge that more can be done to improve our border security—as always, more can be done. We are therefore working with the leadership of the police service to develop an even greater enhancement of our already close working arrangements, of the collaboration between police forces and between the police and the border force. There is, coincidentally, a day-long workshop happening today, involving the police service, the border force, Home Office officials and others to work on proposals for making even more practical improvements. Our intention is to pursue a phased approach to this significant enhancement of our border security, concentrating first on counterterrorism. There are three elements to this: first, exploiting the increasingly integrated approach being brought about through the development of the police counterterrorism network, about which I spoke a little earlier, and its links with local Special Branch; secondly, the enhanced national co-ordination of specialist policing assets; and, thirdly, strengthening even further the increasingly good working relationship between the border force and the police service, including through more joint working on operations and intelligence sharing.