Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [Lords]

As ever, the expertise of the Select Committee Chairman helps me out. He makes a valid point, and I would add to it Frontex, the European frontier force. Frankly, this country could not protect itself against some of the criminal gangs coming from northern Africa and elsewhere without such co-operation. That raises an interesting point that I would like to put to the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) and ask him to think about deeply as I know that he can. We depend on co-operation with other countries—primarily in Europe, but also elsewhere. In order to get that co-operation, we must share policies and information. One cannot take an exclusively nationalistic view; we cannot expect to collect data on people travelling to our country unless we are prepared to share data with other countries. That is a matter of common sense in practical policy information. The first part of the Bill thus achieves what I have set out and the second part looks at the idea of earned citizenship. Again, I believe that some of the criticism of that idea has been unfair. At the moment, this country provides for citizenship through naturalisation, for temporary leave to remain and in the middle we have the concept of indefinite leave to remain. Many of the people in my constituency and in others who have indefinite leave to remain are neither citizens nor temporary migrants; they are in what one might describe as a no man's land. What we have done in this country has, in my view, failed to provide the routes for integration required to give expression to the aspiration of migrants to integrate into our communities and to get on with their lives. The big mistake in our debate is the false assumption that the migrant does not wish to move to integrate and to aspire. That is precisely why the idea of earned citizenship is not punitive, but a platform to help meet those aspirations.