Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their kind words. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, and a couple of other noble Lords thanked the Bill team. I also thank it for its very hard work. I know that it tried very hard to answer all the questions that had been asked. The noble Baroness talked about the copious number of letters that have been written. I do not think that I have ever written or signed off such immensely long letters before. Some important points were made. They have been very useful and I am glad that they are now being put on the record so that they can be seen. I absolutely agree that there are issues that will need to be addressed. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for his input. I know that changing the times of some of the debates meant that he could not be here for some of the substantive discussions. I know that he has a great interest in this area, as does the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. I absolutely take the point about the charities. This will be done not only with them but with a whole raft of organisations and agencies that need to be involved. It was brought home to me that, when children are put into local authority care, it is no longer recorded that they are immigrants. Therefore, if the children go missing, the statistics are not recorded. This is exactly the sort of thing that we have to get right. I absolutely agree that we have to resolve this. The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, touched on the simplification Bill. The Bill that we have been discussing is a small Bill, but it raises a couple of issues that I was keen to get through before the summer, but we can see the complexity. That is why the simplification Bill has taken so long, but I absolutely agree that it is required. This is not the only area that needs simplification, but the draft Bill is planned for the autumn and we will be able to move forward from there. The noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, talked about the scandal of Pakistani student visas. I do not think that he was in the House when I talked about the incident in the north-west and how much we have done in the past two years. We have done a huge amount. As I say, it was an area that I identified when I did my study in July 2007. This has been tightened up dramatically. The changes that we have made are significant and we now have a good handle on this. The situation is getting better all the time. I am glad for the support for e-Borders. It will make a huge difference, which I am glad about. We have tightened up on passports. I would be stupid to say that we are right in every area—I do not believe that. We have work to do. We must do it and I am in dialogue with the people involved. It is not precisely my area, but I know that we need to tighten up some things there. On what was said about my right honourable friend Jacqui Smith, I have worked for many people in my life and I have been very impressed by her. All sorts of extraordinary things are said about the Home Office. I had never been in the Home Office, but I had been in the MoD and the Navy. I went there expecting some appalling establishment, but was very pleased by the quality of the people there. There are some excellent people, some good people and one or two bad people, as in every other place in which I have ever worked in my life. Overall, I am rather impressed by what goes on there and I do not believe for one second that it deserves the bad press that it gets. It has some good people who are working very hard on what are sometimes almost intractable problems. I think that they do very well. I could not agree more with the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, about the risk posed by the CTA loophole. I am sure that we will come back to that after the Bill is considered again in the other place. We have only to look at the risk that we face. That really worries me, which is why we may need to adjust this and do it slightly differently if we can. I really worry about that. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for his point about children. I understand that we have basically satisfied the requirements of the UNCRC, but I absolutely agree that there is more to do. We should be proud of what we have done in this House in that area because it is quite a step forward. I am very pleased with that. Bill passed and sent to the Commons.