Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendments. As she rightly says, we have been approached by the Public and Commercial Services Union, which is concerned about certain aspects of the Bill. As my noble friend said, I want to talk about the power of the Secretary of State to designate officials as set out in the Bill. The union states: ""These clauses widen the definition of who is able to carry out immigration and customs functions. If ‘officials of the Secretary of State’ can include people from outside the civil service then contractors could be used to carry out all the functions described in the Bill. In previous legislation powers have been specifically designated to immigration officers, customs officers or the police"." The wording in the Bill therefore, according to the union, ""provides the government with the means to privatise all functions to which the designated powers apply"." I and the union have grave concerns about the clause. The union states: ""PCS believe that if low paid contract workers, without the benefits of civil service pay and terms and conditions carry out this work then they will be more open to criminal inducements. This argument was accepted by previous Ministers when used by PCS in defence of members’ jobs in freight searching, which were under threat of privatisation by the previous Immigration and Nationality Act"." Furthermore, the wording in the clauses states, ""may be permanent or for a specified period"." In other words, you could well have temporary contract workers performing immigration functions. That would not be in the public interest either. Rightly, it would not be in anyone's interest to have those important jobs done by people who are quite inadequately trained, which could very well be the situation if we had temporary contract workers doing those jobs. Why are the proposals in the Bill? Why is there an attempt to widen the definition? I hope that we will not be told that the job will be done more efficiently through contracting-out or privatisation. I would not find it at all acceptable if it were intended to do it more cheaply. We must not accept such an argument in regard to this very important function. I am sure that that is not the idea behind the wording, but it could well be believed to be by the union, and that is a bad situation. I support my noble friend’s amendment and await with interest the Government's response.