Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

My Lords, in rising to speak to these amendments, I do not intend, with your Lordships’ agreement, to get involved in a party-political spat. I want to comment on the place of the police within a border agency. I spoke on this in Committee on 25 February, when I supported a single all-embracing border agency, as outlined in the Stevens report, to which reference has already been made today. As I said at the time, that would ensure a number of things. It would ensure that effective counterterrorism measures could be taken. It would confidently allow us to combat other serious and organised crime, and prevent the importation of illegal drugs, illegal weapons and people trafficking. It would try to do quite a lot to prevent smuggling and protect the UK tax base. It would protect us against illegal immigration in all its forms and certainly would address environmental control and protection issues. Significantly, I said at that time that the Association of Chief Police Officers supports the concept of a single agency, including the police within such a border agency. The Minister challenged that view at cols. 214-15 of the Official Report on 25 February 2009. I repeat today that it is the stated view of ACPO that it supports a single agency, including the police within that body. I checked immediately after the Committee stage and found that I was right. I checked as recently as this morning in a lengthy telephone conversation with the president of ACPO, and nothing has changed between 25 February and today. I will take your Lordships quickly through the stages to remove any doubt. In the summer of 2007, ACPO asked one of its number, Assistant Chief Constable John Donlon, the national co-ordinator for ports policing, to produce a report, and he did so in the summer of 2007. The report was entitled Border Policing—Options for Change. The options that were investigated ranged from the formation of a fully integrated, single border agency right through to no change at all. The stated objective was for, ""a single border agency bringing together all agencies operating at the border, including the police, into one truly integrated organisation"." In November 2007, the Cabinet Office carried out its own border review and published the results. It recommended the UK Border Agency, which ruled out the inclusion of the police. ACPO was anxious to work with the grain of government, against its now stated policy, and was anxious to make the best of the concept of the UK Border Agency, as included in the Bill. In other words, it was going to make the best of an indifferent job. I hasten to add that "the best of an indifferent job" are my words, and not ACPO’s. ACPO then asked John Donlon to produce a second report. He produced that report, entitled Border Policing—The Next Step, in July 2008. I draw your Lordships’ attention to the strapline to that report: ""A paper to inform discussion on modernising police structures in the light of Cabinet Office Border Review recommendations"." It recommended the establishment of a single national police force to police ports and airports in this country, working alongside and with the newly envisaged UKBA. In other words, there would be a national police force covering the ports and there would be the new UK Border Agency. ACPO deserves praise for that. It was co-operating with the Government, as one would hope, and it was, significantly, willing to give up a good deal of its own operational responsibility, manpower, budgetary base, and so on, to create that force. It was not a change of preference. Its stated preference is still to espouse the single agency that has been mentioned already by the two noble Lords who have spoken before me. We should declare the aim of having a single border agency that includes the police. That would, of course take time, step by step, stage by stage. It cannot happen overnight. To fail to declare a single, all-inclusive border agency as an aim is to go off at half cock and is, in many ways, waste of time and effort. It is a scrambled opportunity; it misses a golden opportunity. I certainly support what both previous speakers have said on this subject.