Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

My Lords, as we are discussing the "Extent" clause, I wonder whether I may be permitted to take this opportunity to raise matters that were to be pursued by my noble friend Lord Wallace who has asked me to apologise for his unavoidable absence. He spoke in Committee about the power in this clause to extend any provisions in the Bill apart from "Part 1 or section 55" to the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. On Monday he wrote to the Minister summarising his concerns that we did not think had been dealt with either in Committee or in the subsequent correspondence. The Government’s attention was disproportionately concentrated on the land border between the Republic and Northern Ireland as a route for illegal migration into the United Kingdom, which the Minister justified by arguing that the numbers involved in the two routes were very different from each other. We pointed out that an increasing number of illegal immigrants are clustered around the Channel ports in France. Considering the experience of Italy and Greece—the former starting 20 years ago and the latter about 10 years ago—it would be surprising if the Channel Islands remained immune from irregular migration, particularly as other methods of entry are increasingly effectively tackled. The Minister pointed out that people arriving at the Channel Islands would have already been checked by another EU country when they entered the common travel area and promised to write to my noble friend about the scale of involvement of the Crown dependencies with the EU on those matters. I do not think that he has done so, because all the ministerial correspondence has been copied to noble Lords who spoke in those debates and I am not aware of any letter on that subject. On the other hand, we have all had copies of a letter from the Chief Minister of the States of Jersey raising the fundamental point that the constitutional relationship between the UK and Jersey is being altered by the Bill and that that their people’s rights under Article 1 of the ICCPR and Articles 2 and 3 of Protocol 4 to the ECHR are being infringed. The letter from the Chief Minister said that those concerns were to be addressed by the proposal by the Government for a memorandum of understanding, which is yet another of the loose ends being left by the Bill. It would be useful if the Minister could say something on the record about those matters.