Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [Lords]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is very keen to discover Conservative policy, but we are dealing with a situation that is probably a year away. Before we get to that point, I would be delighted to write to him and the public as a whole with more detail about what we intend to do. Let me move on to what I think is the most absurd portion of the Bill—the proposed change to the common travel area. For most of the past century, people travelling between the UK, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and the Republic of Ireland have been able to do so without border and immigration controls. Anyone who is tempted to be reassured by the Home Secretary's comments should go back and look at the Hansard record from the other place to be absolutely clear about the Government's intentions. The common travel area was introduced in 1921, when Ireland was partitioned. It survived throughout the second world war. Only now have the Government decided that change is necessary; we disagree. The Government's proposals are unworkable and should be scrapped. We oppose them, most importantly because the plan is completely unenforceable. What on earth is the point of having tougher controls at ports and airports between, for example, Britain and the Republic of Ireland if the land border between the two does not exist in any physical form at all? All the security installations between the two have been dismantled, and in many places the border has always been no more than a bend on a country lane. Unless the Government are now planning to introduce border controls between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, their plans are completely unworkable. I trust that even this authoritarian Administration do not propose to introduce internal movement controls within the UK. That is why we brought forward an amendment in the other place to remove the proposals from the Bill. I very much hope that Ministers will accept that change, but I fear that they plan to continue the battle to secure a change that is not needed and not workable. In light of recent events, the glaring omission from the Bill concerns student visas. It is clear that the student visa system is being exploited by thousands of bogus colleges acting as fronts for illegal immigration. We have warned the Government about that for years. Getting a student visa for Britain is big business in Pakistan. High-quality fake documents that will help applicants to get visas are on sale for £100, and self-styled "immigration consultants" are hard at work trying to beat the system. The British high commission in Pakistan previously estimated that half of all students to whom it grants visas disappear after reaching the UK. Just last week, a national newspaper reported that four of the students recently arrested and later released had certificates from a bogus college in Manchester. They were then given places at English universities. The institution in question allegedly brought hundreds of people over from Pakistan before eventually being shut down by the Home Office. Despite that threat, in April we found that student visa applications from Pakistan are being handled by the UK Border Agency not in Pakistan but in Abu Dhabi, to allow for a reduction in staff in Islamabad. Anxious to appear to be tackling the problem, the Government introduced a new, much shorter, list of approved colleges for sponsoring UK student visas. The Minister for Borders and Immigration boldly claimed that that formed part of""the most significant changes to our immigration system since the Second World War"." There were about 15,000 institutions on the Government's approved register, but now there are only 1,500 institutions on the list. That dramatic reduction prompts the question why many of them were on the official list in the first place.