Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

My Lords, we are very grateful to the Minister for not ruling out the ultimate creation of a unified border force on the lines proposed by both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in their strategy documents. We have accepted the arguments that the Minister advanced, both in Committee and this afternoon, for not proceeding with the proposal at this stage. We listened with great care to what the noble Lord, Lord Dear, said. It was interesting that ACPO revised its position following the publication of the Cabinet Office report in July 2007 and came round to the view that it should, for the time being, rule out the creation of a unified force. The Minister rather unfairly said that its position seemed to fluctuate when what it had done was to try to accommodate itself to official government policy. It would be interesting to know whether ACPO has any response to the objections that have been ventilated thoroughly, for an hour and a half in Committee and now for 35 minutes on Report, on why this is not the appropriate time to proceed with a unified border force. We welcome what the Minister said about the progress made at the conference on 25 February. Will he kindly place any outcome of that conference in the Library so we can all have a look at it? If we can see that the arrangements that are being made between the police and the border force are such as to promote this ever-closer co-operation, which everybody wants to see, to deal with the menace of trafficking and drug importation and to counter the threat of illegal immigration, we will all have achieved the result that we wanted, even if we have not reached the ultimate goal of a unified force at this stage. For the time being, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 2 (to Amendment 1) withdrawn.