Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness’s concluding remark that there is a need for more consultation. I hope, as a result of the discussions we had in Committee and the ones we are going to have this afternoon, that that will be the next step in thinking about a unified border force. As the noble Baroness has already said, this was the first amendment that we discussed in Committee and it would be remarkable if anybody had anything radically new to say about it—we spent, I think, an hour and three-quarters debating it and the Minister dealt thoroughly with Clause 1 and gave a general review of how Part 1 will operate. We all agreed that the protection of our borders is of vital national interest; the noble Baroness reiterated this proposition in her speech. The two main themes of the Minister’s response were, first, that the police were already working very closely with the border force at every level and, secondly, that the amendments—both the ones tabled by the Conservatives and ours—left many issues that needed to be resolved. For example, who will be the head of the unified force? Should that person be a chief constable? Who will be responsible for the discipline of the police to be added to the force? Will the IPCC or some other body have jurisdiction over complaints against those officers? Will the police in the unifying force cover protection of the infrastructure of the counterterrorism force and general crime and disorder there? We take a different view from the Conservatives, as I tried to explain in Committee. While we share the long term objective that there should be a unifying force, we look at Part 1 as being an important step towards that ultimate goal. We were encouraged that nowhere in his lengthy remarks did the Minister query that proposition in principle. Our two main objections to the noble Baroness’s amendment were that some of the functions that the Tories wanted to give their UK border police force went beyond the protection of our borders and the issues involving employers of illegal immigrants and the internal policing of human trafficking, extending into matters that were the result of the failure to protect our borders adequately but were not about present day protection of those borders. As I also mentioned in that debate, there is the vital question of how the unified border force will operate in Scotland, where the police come under the jurisdiction of the Scottish Parliament. From the inquiries that I have made via Scottish Lib Dem colleagues, the matter has not been discussed by the Scottish Parliament and, if for no other reason than that, it would be premature to make decisions here that took their agreement for granted. In our previous debate, the Minister said that the Government intend to pursue a phased approach to the enhancement of our border security. The approach will concentrate on counterterrorism, including joint operations between the police and the border force, and intelligence sharing between them. He referred to measures in the Policing and Crime Bill, which deal in particular with security at airports. I have read Clause 76 of, and Schedule 6 to, that Bill and did not see anything that reads across into the matters with which we are dealing under this Bill. I do not question the Minister’s assurance that there will be close co-ordination between the police and the border force, but it would be interesting to hear more about what he called the "even more practical improvements" that emerged from the conference being held on the same day as our debate, 25 February. As we see it, the Government are taking the pragmatic view that the Immigration Service and HMRC need time to digest the far-reaching changes that are being imposed in Part 1 and to explore with the police any non-statutory arrangements that can be made for the closer collaboration that is necessary and desirable between them. However, at the same time, they are not ruling out the creation of a unified border force to bring in the police at a later date. If it can be shown that that is the most effective way to protect our borders, that will be the way to go. We accept that challenge and will seek to launch our own study to see how far we can get ACPO and the Association of Police Authorities to agree on what the next step should be. In the mean time, we do not intend to press our amendment to a Division.