Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, and the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for their explanation of why these amendments have been tabled. I am in no doubt whatever that everyone in this Chamber believes in strong borders for all the reasons we have given about their importance to the security of this nation. Moreover, I can assure the noble Viscount, Lord Slim, that we are not in the least bit wishy-washy; far from it. Indeed, we are being forceful in establishing the border arrangements, and the basis on which we are going forward is an indication of that. We discussed the noble Baroness’s proposals at length in Committee, when I had to go through a whole raft of clause stand part Motions which I have to admit was rather over-long. I set out then the reasons I felt that we are going in the right direction and that the proposals in the amendments were not the right approach. I have to reiterate those reasons. We are not at all clear about exactly what is meant when talking about a single police border force, and the sheer complexity of it would be great. The noble Baroness referred to the complicated arrangements set out in the Bill to form the border force we have proposed. When you are in government and trying to make something work both administratively and operationally, it is a highly complex exercise. Just to say in loose terms, "Let’s have a border police force and shove them in with it", begs certain questions. What are the functions, who should be put into the force, who should the leadership of the organisation be—a police officer or a civil servant?—to whom would it be accountable, issues of devolution and huge issues of funding—would it require top-slicing and how would it be done? These are extremely complicated and difficult questions. This was looked at in the Cabinet Office report, Security in a Global Hub, to try and deliver practical improvements to border security as a result of the attacks in 2007. Having looked at the complexities and difficulties, the Cabinet Office decided that having a single border police force was not the way ahead at the time. It did reach that decision because it would have been happy with something less good, but because there are real and practical ways of going about these things. Certainly, what we are doing is practical and will work. We have a responsibility and a duty to back up our policy proposals with well-thought-through provisions, which these are. I know that the noble Baroness seemed to think that they were a bit rushed, but they are not. For a Government, we are moving quickly, but we are not rushing. Indeed, we already have the border force in place and working to some rather ad hoc rules, with work-arounds—that is not the way to do it—to achieve what we are saying we want to do. We need to get it on a proper basis; that is why the provisions in Part 1 of the Bill provide the necessary legal framework to build on the earlier successes of our border force and ensure that the officers and staff have the powers that they need to do their job effectively in the modern world. The measures in Part 1 complete the job of laying the foundations, where we have already started that work. We have already taken important steps to enhance border security, but we need the provisions in Part 1 to complete that process. There is, therefore, a time issue, which is why it is important to move this quickly. I explained why we have not left this to later legislation; we want to get this in place and working for the security of the nation, so that we can have it fully in place and completely working by September. Without these provisions, we will not be able to transfer to the border force officers from HMRC who are currently engaged in customs controls. I shall say a little more about policing. I have already mentioned that we had a long debate about this before today, and on the proposal to create a new border police force we have really heard nothing to persuade us that our approach is wrong. It is a highly complex thing to do. The judgment within the Cabinet meeting was that this is not the right way to go. The noble Lord, Lord Dear, talked about the ACPO position; all I would say there is that it seems to fluctuate a bit. As the noble Lord made clear, we have talked to ACPO at length. I have talked to a number of people within ACPO—a number of chief constables—and there are various views about this. The APA has a different view. There are a number of different views about this because it is so complex and hard to know exactly how to go ahead. Our bottom-line judgement remains that we have not seen a compelling case as to the operational benefits to be derived for setting up a new national border police force, when we set them against the potentially significant costs, which are probably real, and a number of drawbacks involved. I do not believe that we have heard noble Lords articulating such a compelling case. It seems superficially attractive, and is easily said, but if you have to be there to implement it would not be quite so straightforward or so clear-cut that it will work as well as has been said. In Committee, I set out to your Lordships our approach to enhancing significantly the already close working relationship between the police and the border force. The noble Baroness may not have said that it was at arm’s length, but she gave the feeling that it was not close, but it is a very close relationship and works well. We are trying to make it even better. Indeed, ACPO is helping us on this and I am grateful for its work there. We have a very firm platform to build on. I think of the creation, within the past few years, of the police counterterrorism network, and of dedicated regional assets closely linked to local Special Branches, which gives quite a lot of flexibility—particularly to the local chief constables. We will take steps to enhance border policing within that network and to improve standards, consistency and co-ordination. So, I believe that it is good and getting better. Yesterday, the government strategy known as CONTEST came out. It is the first time that we have set out, in a public document, a detailed account of the history of the threat from international terrorism, the impact that has had on the UK, our understanding of its causes and our view of its likely direction. The current threat of international terrorism remains "severe", meaning that an attack is highly likely. A key part of the strategy is ensuring the security of our borders. I am delighted, as I have said, that all noble Lords who have spoken absolutely see that, understand it and support it. The CONTEST strategy sets out steps that we are taking to improve our protection. The Memorandum of Understanding between the border agency and the Association of Chief Police Officers is an important part of that. We will continue with our e-Borders work and biometric visa programme; we will improve our capacity to detect, deter and intercept radiological material, as I mentioned yesterday. That will all be done by the new border force. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, asked what happened at the conference referred to in Committee on 25 February. I was not there myself, but I understand that it was a very useful meeting between senior police, the border force and Home Office officials. They discussed quite a lot of the detail on some of the proposals to improve standards and national co-ordination. There is no doubt that we are improving intelligence sharing. They are going to meet again in April to go the next step further. In a sense, these things are still living; I would never say that never in future would we ever say we are not going to have a border police force. Perhaps conditions will change and we will see things differently but, at the moment, it is not the appropriate thing to do. It is much more important that we achieve what we are achieving here, which is something that is achievable and practical and will absolutely enhance the security of our borders and, therefore, our nation. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, asked about the Policing and Crime Bill. There are provisions to assist with collaboration between police forces in that Bill, which is presently in the other place. It also refers to airport security. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, referred to trafficking. I cannot put something in this Bill on that issue, but I absolutely understand the full horror of trafficking and how important it is. Later in the Bill, when it comes to children, this subject will again be mentioned. What I certainly will do is consider whether there is some measure that could be reflected within the new border force, because this is a very high priority for everyone. I shall see what can be done in that sense. We will not or do not intend to create a new national border police force. Our energies and those of the police and the border force are much better put to delivering increased protection through the steps that we have outlined, rather than stretching out towards a rather vaguely articulated position, with all sorts of implications that we do not understand, which may or may not be workable in practice. I ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.