Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

My Lords, it would be a pity if this Bill left the House without it being recorded that at least some of us feel that it is not doing all that we hoped that it would. When the scandal of the Pakistan student visas broke over Easter, I was astonished to hear Mr Phil Woolas, the Minister of State for Borders and Immigration, claim on the radio that the Conservatives were opposing the e-Borders system. We have been urging such a system for years, yet the system as designed does not deal with the problem. It will not deal with it even when it comes into force in two years’ time. The passport system in this country is still extremely leaky. The Government opposed my only amendment, which would have made it necessary for applicants for British passports to declare what other nationality of passport they held or acquired. The Minister admitted in his Second Reading speech that there were a number of other passport-related issues. He said that, ""some issues need to be looked at closely".—[Official Report, 11/2/09; col. 1208.]" We have heard no more from him on that. I will not go through them. I have a final, very general point to make. The Home Office is crucial to the defence of the borders of the realm and it needs to be under much stronger political control than it is at present. Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Home Department is one of the great offices. It has been occupied in the past by major political figures. One only has to think of names such as Gladstone, Morrison, Butler and Jenkins. No one is under any illusion that the Home Office is an easy department for Ministers to control. To be effective, the Secretary of State must be a big fish in the turbulent Westminster and Whitehall waters. Now, we have only a minnow, and a naughty minnow at that. I suggest that in his remaining months in office the Prime Minister finds from the admittedly rather limited pool of talent on the government Front Bench in another place someone who can take over the Home Office and start to put serious reforms into place for the control of our borders.