Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

In speaking to this group of amendments I wish to raise many of the questions that the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, has raised. I spent the past two Sundays taking part in voluntary activities: delivering leaflets for the Liberal Democrats in Huddersfield on the first Sunday and delivering leaflets for the Liberal Democrats in Streatham on the second Sunday. I am not sure whether that is the sort of voluntary activity that counts under this provision. I can assure noble Lords that we are a non-profit organisation; we are usually loss-making. I raise the point simply to illustrate the problem of defining voluntary activities. The provision raises a huge number of issues. I have been involved in other discussions, for example on whether we can resolve the issue of students overstaying in Britain by licensing educational institutions so that we have a clearer sense of where students applying to study in Britain are going. We have consistently been told that it is far too complicated to license educational institutions, so controls on each student have to be imposed. We are talking now about licensing a huge number of charities, with full CRB checks on people on a truly vast scale. I am a trustee of two charities and, as both deal with teaching music to children, CRB checks are a major preoccupation for both. Despite the fact that as a trustee I do not usually meet the children, I had to be CRB-checked as well. This provision has a huge number of implications. We on these Benches have some sympathy with the government citizenship agenda, although we are not sure we would go all the way down the road as far as Jack Straw’s rights and responsibilities agenda. We recognise this is all part of that. We are highly doubtful, however, whether it is right to introduce one bit of this in one Bill before we have seen the entire discussion. The citizenship agenda needs active discussion across the parties on how we are going to re-define British citizenship for current citizens as well as for applicants for citizenship. It needs to be taken slowly and gently. We on these Benches, therefore, are not at all sure that this is the right place to introduce one small part of a very large number of issues. Citizenship is something we want people to engage in. References and recommendations are part of it. I have been to citizenship ceremonies. I recognise the importance of encouraging people to have a sense of identification with the United Kingdom. The danger is that a highly bureaucratic process in which compulsory volunteering, so to speak, is built in, all checked by the central state, will be a very complicated road to go down. We need to see much more than we have yet seen about how it might be implemented, how much it might cost, and how many difficulties and costs it will impose upon voluntary organisations and charities which will be engaged in this before we are happy with the direction in which it is going.