Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [Lords]

I thank hon. Members across the House for their contributions to the debate, which have revealed a great deal of experience. I should like to address my remarks first to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Alison Seabeck) and the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), who have raised serious points. Of course I agree to undertake to look into them, and to meet the hon. Gentleman. I believe that a letter on that matter may have crossed, as well. In all cases, the policy that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has instructed me to adopt, which I am more than happy to do, is to place great weight on the representations of Members of Parliament because the MP is the person to whom someone seeking redress should go. That is why we take those representations very seriously, and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Mr. Malik) backs me up on that point. That is also why in all these instances we advise people that if they have a problem, they should to go to their MP. The Immigration Act 1971 gives the Secretary of State powers that are mainly delegated to me, and I take that responsibility extremely seriously. I am grateful to the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire for his kind comments and I undertake to look further into the issue he raised. A number of specific comments have been made and I shall try to answer them in the short time I have available—[Interruption.] —and I also want to deal with the bigger picture. Yes, I can assure the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) and the House that I do not intend to speak until 10 o'clock. If I did, I suspect it would be last time I would ever speak from this Dispatch Box—and some might well think that that would be a good thing, anyway. [Interruption.] Pause for objections, please, Hansard. This is a small Bill, and I believe that it has been unfairly criticised for not doing the whole job when it is, in fact, part of the jigsaw puzzle of the changes to the immigration system that we are introducing. It does essentially two things, both of which I believe have secured a consensus in this House and in the other place. First, the Bill brings together the necessary statutory changes to ensure that the UK Border Agency is put on a proper legal footing—that involves the merger of its customs functions with its immigration functions from the previous Border and Immigration Agency and Customs and Excise, or the relevant parts of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. The creation of that single force meets the exact requirement that the House wants the Government to meet. As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary mentioned in her opening remarks, when she first assumed that office, she intended not just to get rid of duplication, but to provide a more focused border security force. In itself, of course, the border security force is only part of the chain. The 42 police forces—or 43 if we include the transport police—are now backed up by the Serious Organised Crime Agency, which operates overseas in co-operation with our border posts, providing the joined-up police powers that Lord Stevens looked at in his report. The incorporation of the police force into the new UK Border Agency has taken place without diminishing the role of the other security organisations, which was the fear I had about it. I believe that the partnership is very important.