My Lords, I endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has just said. This is not the first time during the passage of this Bill that a vast number of government amendments has been inserted. The same thing happened in the other place immediately before Report, and the same complaints were made that none of the amendments had been scrutinised properly. Indeed, there was no time to do so before the other place had to vote on amendments in Committee that they had not had time to scrutinise. Remembering my own time in the Ministry of Defence, if I were faced as a civil servant with such a huge and complex piece of legislation, with additional complexities, I would have complained to the Secretary of State and to the Permanent Under-Secretary that legislation was being made so complex that it was simply undeliverable.
We have to realise that the immigration system in this country is currently under stress. There are said to be some 600,000 unrecorded migrants in the country now and we will face not just a flood of people coming here from the Middle East but an additional flood of people from places such as Africa thanks to climate change. Therefore, we should be simplifying our legislation so that it can cope with pressure rather than complicating it in this way.