Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

My Lords, in Committee we discussed what the Director of Border Revenue would do and who that person would be. It became apparent that, for the moment at least, the chief executive of the UK Border Agency is the person on whom the Secretary of State’s hand has fallen to become the Director of Border Revenue, so we have two senior roles in one. As things stand, none of this needs to be approved by anybody other than the Secretary of State. I made it clear then as now that I have no objection to the person who has been appointed as Director of Border Revenue—she is a distinguished chief executive of the UK Border Agency—but I have concerns with the principle of what is happening. If the Secretary of State is, on each occasion, going to put her hand on the chief executive of the UK Border Agency and make that person the Director of Border Revenue, we ought to make that clear. It ought to be assumed to be part and parcel of the UK Border Agency chief executive’s role and Parliament needs to know about that. If that is not going to be the situation and, as time passes, new people are appointed and the Secretary of State no longer thinks that the chief executive of the UK Border Agency should be the Director of Border Revenue, then those two positions part and you have two senior people in two different roles. If that is the situation, one of two things must happen. Either there has to be a full and transparent appointments process under the Nolan principles, whereby people put their names forward as an applicant for this post, whether they are in the department or not, or Parliament has to approve in some way the person who is going to be appointed. There are several ways of doing this. It can be done by a Select Committee, by the Treasury Select Committee, by a report to Parliament or even by appointment by Members of Parliament. This post has a significant job to do controlling the revenue brought into this country or claimed at the ports and it carries a big customs role as well. We need to make it clear that this post cannot for ever more be designated by the Secretary of State. That is the reason for this amendment. I beg to move.