I listened carefully to what the Minister had to say and I am confident that the Home Secretary has clearly got the message that the Government need to table amendments in the other place, which will return to us and will then, I hope, be approved by this House. I believe that to be a perfectly appropriate mechanism. I would have preferred to have had Government amendments yesterday, but there were not any on this issue. I was saddened that we had not yet reached the point at which the Government accepted the arguments, but I believe that they now do accept them. If they do not, I suspect there will be a majority in the other place that will impose a judicial oversight amendment in any case. We would then have to debate not a Government proposal, but one concocted by colleagues in the other place. Provided that such a proposal is not grossly inappropriate, I will support it when it returns to us. I am sure I am not alone in that, and I know that the Home Secretary is looking at this very carefully. I am genuinely grateful to her and her colleagues for the fact that they have engaged with that argument.
There are still issues to be resolved. We had what was almost a semantic debate, but one that I think was important in the context of the Bill, about the difference between temporary exclusion and managed return. I feel that we are on a journey in that respect. Some people would say that the language amounts to the same thing, but I think that “managed return” better expresses where we need to be.
I have a concern that was not expressed on Report. The Bill requires the Home Secretary to issue a permit to return “within a reasonable period”. I hope that that “reasonable period” will be constrained enough to prevent people from being in limbo for a long time. They will need to know what they must do to ensure that their return is managed appropriately, and that must be arranged promptly and timeously if it is to be effective.
In a sense, however, those issues are peripheral to the main thrust of the Bill. As I have said, I cannot welcome a Bill many parts of which I would not wish to see in place, but I do not live in a perfect world. I live in a world in which the events that happened in Paris today happen not only here, but throughout the globe. We have to recognise that, and we have to deal with it. I hope that we shall reach a point at which we will no longer have to legislate in this way because people will no longer behave in the way that has become so common in recent years, but, sadly, we have not reached that point yet.
4.31 pm