Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

That is exactly what I thought the noble Baroness was saying, and exactly where we are on the horns of a dilemma. As soon as anyone comes up with a bright idea such as saying, "Learn English", other people say that that is discriminatory. We cannot have it both ways, and we have to make progress. It is important that we have this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, who is not in his place, suggested that there ought to be some totally different mechanism for monitoring and ensuring that progress is made on social integration, and I think he added that this should be for people who were born in this country as well as for others. That may be arguable, but now we have this planning group. Incidentally, will my noble friend say a word about where trade unions fit into this? Trade unions are by far the biggest voluntary organisations in the country. The fact that we have been sniffy over the years about some aspects of volunteering is because of the suggestion in some quarters that if you volunteer and do not get paid, that can be the same sort of work that members of UNISON, the T&G or any other unions are doing in public services, so volunteering will be viewed by some with suspicion. However, thanks to the work of the trade unions with immigrants and voluntary organisations, particularly over the past 10 years, many of those shibboleths have been put to rest. Anyway, we are where we are. We are at the stage where people have more or less agreed that everyone is going to learn English and support the English cricket team—at the moment, it needs all the support it can get—although I share the misgivings that we can have a rule on the statute book that means various forms of volunteering get an advantage. We have to recognise that in this debate it is almost impossible to see the daylight at the end of the proverbial tunnel, but we might as well have the debate on this subject because it is before us. I do not know whether we need a special committee to look at this, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, mentioned, but it is here and now, so let us have a debate on this subject—let us see what can actually be done. I do not like the idea of a probationary period, but I say to those who immediately equate incentivisation with penalty: we do not do that in other walks of life, do we? If you incentivise someone to do something, you do not immediately tear it up and say, "You’re trying to impose a penalty". It might be useful if we all put into the pot one or two ideas regarding what we are talking about, because it is far too soon to categorise everything. Take trade unions, for example. Incidentally, everything trade unions do, apart from in the case of full-time officials, is volunteering—collective bargaining, the lot. If you are a learning representative working with migrant workers with regard to English language learning, that is absolutely relevant to what we are trying to do in the scope of a Bill of this kind. We all know, since Morecambe Bay, that social integration is often based on organisations that people trust giving them information—regarding health and safety and understanding the reach of the law on that, the Gangmasters Licensing Bill and all the rest of it—and getting them involved in protecting themselves. They then have more confidence to integrate with other people in the community. At this stage I am putting this probing amendment forward precisely to ensure that we have the richness of all these points in the debate. I hope that my noble friend will be able to say that the principle of this amendment is going to be looked at seriously, as with all the other matters that have been mentioned in the past half hour. I beg to move.