Policing and Crime Bill

First, I promise that I will write to noble Lords—not, on this occasion, because I am in any doubt about the answers that I should give, but because it is a complicated issue. No one has greater regard for the British-Irish Parliamentary Association than I do and I am sure that its concerns and views will be taken on board in the appropriate quarters. I was very much with the noble Baroness in her moving of the amendment, when she rightly harped back to the provision rejected by your Lordships’ House of a change to the common travel area. I was going to start by saying that I can assure her that such concerns are misplaced. I believe that they still are, but I am sure that we will benefit from correspondence setting out in some detail the answers to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Cope. The first thing to say is that we are not making any changes to the common travel area. This is not about changing legislation relating to the CTA. The CTA is an immigration concept. Common checks already apply in the area known as the CTA, except for the Isle of Man. It is probably helpful if I explain, although at this late hour it will take a few minutes, how the customs controls within the CTA operate. As I said, the CTA is an immigration concept and deals not only with customs and revenue matters. Immigration controls are not applied within the area, with the exception of journeys to and from the Isle of Man. Customs checks already apply in the CTA, so we are not putting in place something that does not already exist. To turn to the question of the travel document, every airline that I have been on for several years has demanded some form of photo identity before it will let me on the plane, or at least it will want that identity to verify that I am the person named on the ticket and travelling. Therefore, it is not a question of a travel document as highfalutin as a passport or a refugee travel document; it will be the document that was required to journey by sea or air. Some sort of photo ID is required; I cannot think of any exceptions. For the purpose of anti-terrorist checks, travellers within the CTA can already be asked for a passport or another form of ID. This clause will make it clear that the officers carrying out customs checks can also seek such travel documents. The noble Baroness’s concern is about the two-hats approach of the UKBA. Police officers have various powers under various acts of Parliament, yet we do not believe that they will easily confuse them if they are dealing with parking offences rather than social disorder on a council estate. The customs officer knows when he is operating as a customs officer. He will be instructed and given guidance that he is not allowed from that to seek access to passports or to use that information for immigration. Customs is now an intelligence-led operation looking at people who are bringing in drugs, contraband, weapons or whatever. If we are looking for Mr Smith, we have to identify the right Mr Smith. We do not want to round up five Mr Smiths to find that four of them are indignant because they have been stopped and questioned. We also have to find where the Mr Smiths have come from. We have intelligence and are looking at where they started and where they are when we ask the questions, "Can we see your travel document?" and "Where are you going and where have you been?". This is not something that we need to be fearful of. I can appreciate the concern now that the UKBA can exercise both powers, but I can give an absolute assurance that customs powers cannot be used for immigration purposes. The powers available in Clause 99 could not be deployed to check the immigration status of persons travelling in the CTA. This is not an attempt to reinstate the proposed CTA measures in the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill. The BCI Bill would have introduced immigration checks on CTA movements and required a passport. This clause is not a requirement to carry any document other than that currently required for travel via air or sea. I hope that it may further reassure noble Lords if I point out that the Constitution Committee also raised concerns about the application of Clause 99 to the CTA but that, with the further explanation that I gave, it concluded in its report that the clause does not infringe constitutional principles. The Crown dependencies do not take issue with its application. I will provide more detailed responses to the questions not only for noble Lords participating in this debate but, by putting a copy in the Library, for those who would be unnecessarily and unreasonably alarmed by reading Hansard. This is a customs requirement; it is not an attempt to achieve something on the common travel area that your Lordships rejected some months ago.