Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

I should make it clear at the outset that there is absolutely no intention to abolish the CTA. Indeed, we do not believe that anything in the Bill goes anywhere near to doing that. The CTA has been important and valuable to us in the past and will be in the future. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, mentioned, we are coming on to a series of other amendments on this clause, so I might not go into as much detail on this amendment as on them. There is also a clause stand part question as well. The Bill looks at the common travel area because we have found that a large number of people are slipping through the hoop, with some very real risks and problems. Therefore, when I was asked after the attacks on Tiger Tiger and Glasgow Airport in 2007 to look at a number of issues, I flagged up elements of border control. We were able to draw on work that had gone on in dealing with loopholes in the arrangements with the Republic of Ireland whereby some unpleasant and nasty people had been moving backwards and forwards, and problems relating to crime, trafficking, immigration and terrorism had arisen. That is why we have come up with various amendments to the 1971 Act. Amendment 108ZA would restrict the power to control persons travelling across the land border, which would undermine the purpose of the CTA reforms—as I said, we have gone to great length to discuss that with the Republic of Ireland—and prevent the UK Border Agency carrying out effective controls on this route. That would prevent important improvements in our ability and flexibility to combat illegal immigration, terrorism and wider crime. As has been stated by noble Lords, political and practical considerations—we all know this—mean that fixed controls on the land border are not a viable option. It is clear that they are impractical. I have been on patrol there enough times. It is quite easy to get lost and end up drinking in a pub in the Republic of Ireland rather than Northern Ireland because it is such a difficult border. We have made it clear that we will not introduce routine border controls on the land border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. We have also made it clear that we will not require persons to carry a passport or national identity document on this route—I shall come back to that shortly—but we may want to check that a person is entitled to enter the United Kingdom without leave where we have intelligence that they might be entering unlawfully. We will not collect e-Borders data on those who cross the land border, although we will do so for those who travel on aircraft or ships, as e-Borders will spread to all aspects of ship and aircraft travel. We have made it clear that Clause 46 is only part of a process of reform of the CTA and that we will consider further the approach to intelligence-led, risk-based operations to tackle illegal movement over the land border as part of the wider simplification of immigration law. However, we are committed to retaining the CTA. It is an incremental process. It is the first step in making us safer and resolving some of the loopholes. I was asked by the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, and the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, about the intelligence operations. The controls will not be fixed. We shall not ask every passenger arriving to present their passport to an immigration officer. We will target those who have no entitlement to enter the UK who we think pose a threat. We will use information obtained on the air-sea routes between the Republic of Ireland and the UK through our e-Borders system and other available intelligence. The noble Lord, Lord Shutt, asked about ethnic-minority communities, which are clearly an issue. Passengers are selected very much on the basis of direct intelligence and risk, drawn from a number of sources—to which I shall come. No passengers will be selected on the basis of race, and we are developing operating procedures, intelligence audit trails and ethnicity impact assessments to ensure no negative impact. We do not employ racial profiling. Under the land border operation on the quieter roads, we often stop a whole number of vehicles. That is not possible on the main Dublin-Belfast road, so we target the odd bus, minibus or taxi, because our experience has shown that those are much more likely to be a threat. The noble Lord, Lord Shutt, mentioned Operation Gull, which has highlighted to us the huge number of problems and difficult cases that we have. In the operation, we asked passengers for identification. Ninety per cent carry passports, even though they do not need to. We asked the remaining 10 per cent questions about their nationality and their UK immigration status. We verified that by checks with CID, WICU, CRS, Irish records, and fingerprint checks on the QuickCheck, re-interviewing the people concerned as appropriate when there were discrepancies. We found that a skilled immigration officer can weigh up a person’s nationality and status very quickly through a mixture of good interviewing, IT and mobile databases, and a bit of common sense—which is sadly lacking, very often—both on the border and in Operation Gull. The Irish, of course, do exactly the same in reverse when they are checking persons entering Ireland who have no passport, so it is not an unusual thing to be done. It is worth mentioning that we have included refugee travel documents, because we are aware that there might be a number of Tanzanian refugees living along some of the border areas. We have done that to ensure that that is covered. The noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, asked about checks made on those travelling by air and sea from Northern Ireland to Great Britain. This is not covered in the CTA reforms, as it is a domestic journey, like a journey from, say, London to Liverpool. Persons are, therefore, not subject to immigration control. Section 14 of the Police and Justice Act 2006, to which the noble Lord rightly referred as enabling us to do certain things, introduced a new power that would allow the police to capture passenger, crew and service information on air and sea journeys. That is exactly the same sort of data that we are getting for our e-Borders. We will launch a separate consultation on domestic travel requirements in due course to cover that. On the travel documents needed to travel between the Republic of Ireland and the UK by air and sea, we will require all persons, including those who are British and Irish, to prove their identity and nationality with a passport or national identity card. Interestingly, I flew into Dublin about 10 days ago to have some talks with people and for other reasons, and I had to produce a passport on that occasion. That seemed to go against the grain of what has been said here—but it is hardly surprising, when there are so many nasty and unpleasant people around, that one sometimes has to prove one’s identity. On the land border, we will not introduce fixed or routine controls, or a document requirement, as a matter of policy. The noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, asked on that specific point. What are we doing to secure Northern Ireland? All passengers travelling internationally to and from Northern Ireland will be subject to the same requirements to provide data as the rest of the United Kingdom. That means that on air and sea routes between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, they have to carry a passport and identity card. We will introduce phased intelligence-led immigration controls on this route, in the same way as we do on other routes, tying in with e-Borders. Practical and political considerations mean that routine immigration controls and/or the collection of e-Borders data is not a viable option. I hope that that answers the bulk of the questions that were asked. We are committed to retaining the CTA, and I hope that on that basis the noble Lord will agree that the amendment is unnecessary and will feel able to withdraw it.