Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [Lords]

The Bill provides a beautiful tapestry on which the next proposals will be embroidered. There is a beautiful and symmetric logic to what we are doing, as I shall explain. I am sure that the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) will welcome the proposals. My right hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Jacqui Smith), the then Home Secretary, made it clear on Second Reading that she thought that should the Bill be accepted by the House—it has cross-party consensus—it would provide a platform from which to move forward to the next stage of reform, which would be a points-based system for citizenship building on the points-based system for temporary migrancy for economic reasons. Indeed, the document "Building Britain's Future" to which my right hon. Friend referred makes it clear that our intention is to bring forward ideas for consultation on that point, precisely to address the proposed lack of a link between temporary and permanent migrancy, but it is important that we get this Bill first. Its citizenship element, although not the border functions set out in part 1, is a platform on which those proposals can be built.