Policing and Crime Bill

My Lords, I, too, am a member of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly and a member of the committee to which the noble Baroness referred. It is in the middle of a study of border controls within the common travel area, with particular reference to e-border controls, which are now coming in. The assembly is keen to preserve the common travel area in the way that it has existed up to now. Since it was raised in the assembly yesterday, I have been in touch with the Isle of Man Government and it is clear that there has been some consultation between the UK Government and the Isle of Man Government. They have been reassured that Clause 99 does not apply to the Isle of Man. Nevertheless, I have a number of questions. The power is to require a passport or travel document from someone entering or leaving the United Kingdom, including travelling within the common travel area to the Republic, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man. Will the Minister confirm that this power does not apply to anyone travelling to Northern Ireland from Great Britain? That, after all, is not leaving the UK—it is travel within the UK. Am I correct in saying that nobody who is concerned about the position of Northern Ireland need be concerned about this clause? That is how it appears to me. Secondly, what is a travel document? I thought at first that a travel document—you have to produce a passport or a travel document—might be, for instance, a document that a refugee or stateless person might have, but that is actually defined as a passport for this purpose. In subsection (2)(c) of proposed new Section 157A, "passport" means, ""a document that can be used … instead of a passport"," so refugee papers and so forth would be defined as a passport, but travel documents are also included. What are travel documents if they are not such documents? As the noble Baroness pointed out, the clause does not specifically require anyone who is travelling anywhere to have a passport, but a customs officer can require them to produce one, which is a rather backwards way of compelling people to have a passport. That is presumably the purpose of it. What happens if someone travelling within the common travel area to Dublin or one of the Crown Dependencies does not have a passport with them when the customs officer requires them to produce it? I am not sure what the sanction is, and it would be helpful to know. From the answer that I had from the Isle of Man Government this afternoon, it seems that travel within a customs union, such as exists with the Isle of Man and the other Crown Dependencies, is not covered, because they are customs powers. Is that correct? If so, the Crown Dependencies, at any rate, need not bother about it, although that is of course not the case for the Republic of Ireland, which is within the CTA, but the customs arrangements are different. The last point that concerns me is the question of the amalgamation of customs and immigration. The noble Baroness made the point, so I shall not dwell on it, but it appears that if a border agency official who at a particular point has his customs hat on, he can require a passport, but if he takes his customs hat off to put his immigration hat on, he cannot. If he happens to see a passport when he is wearing his customs hat, he is not allowed to swap his hat over and take notice of it the other way round. That seems a very peculiar arrangement. As a former customs Minister, I have always been hesitant about the amalgamation of those two services. I am not necessarily against it—it may prove effective and it has a certain simple appeal—but I have always thought that there would be complications in it, and perhaps that is one which should be considered. We all want to try to preserve the common travel area. We do not want it to be nibbled away at by various side means. I seek some reassurance on my questions.