Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

I admit that I favour the proposition to remove the clause altogether, although I agree with my noble friend’s suggestion of a common visa policy. In a broader context, the Bill clearly says that the UK Government look upon the Irish Government as incapable of properly managing their own borders. The common travel area should revolve around both those jurisdictions being able to sensibly and effectively keep out people who are not supposed to be there. Instead, we seem to have an attitude of, "Well, that’s not going to work properly. We don’t trust that system and must therefore bring in something else". But that something else clearly cannot work effectively; it is incapable of doing so. I agree entirely with a common visa system between those different jurisdictions in the common travel area. But let us be plain about it. Even though I am sceptical about how effective we can make all our borders, if we feel that the Republic of Ireland cannot come up to what we require for e-Borders, perhaps we should say so. However, this is not an answer to that. Without destroying my own argument, my solution would be for both Ireland and the United Kingdom to join the Schengen acquis. That would be far more effective. Although a government Minister has recently said that that is not on the agenda at the moment—I was interested to hear "at the moment"—I understand that that will by no means be a practical solution within the timescale of the Bill; it is not currently a politically feasible solution. However, I see this as throwing something valuable away and replacing it with something that just cannot work.