My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, has picked up a number of important points with these amendments. I think the crucial one is Amendment 141, which is for an independent review of the efficiency of the system for processing claims. The backlog of asylum claims, as we have talked about—and as the Government actually accept—is one of the biggest challenges we face in this area. We could resolve that problem by speeding up the process, and getting the appeals process right—where I think over half the claims are successful—would do a lot to help the system. If the Government do not accept Amendment 141, what plans do they have to address the problem that it seeks to overcome?
Every amendment in the group is about fact-finding, evidence and asking the Government to be transparent with data, which is absolutely fundamental to confidence and trust. We all have the problem with data: I quote one figure; the Minister quotes another; you look somewhere else and there is another figure—partly because people use different start dates, different timeframes, et cetera. But getting the data right is really important so that the public can see what is going on, for good or bad.
In respect of that, Amendment 193 is particularly important, especially proposed new paragraph (b), which seeks to probe. What are the Government going to do about the daily migrant figures in respect of those crossing the channel? We know that the news is extremely bad at the moment. The numbers have increased dramatically and now we read that the Home Office is preparing to stop publishing daily figures and go to quarterly figures. That is talked about as a possible plan. What are the plans with respect to that? It looks like burying bad news. They are embarrassing figures, particularly to the Home Secretary, who says consistently that she will bring the migrant crossings under control. All we have seen is them go up and now we see that the way the Government are going to solve it is by refusing to publish the figures daily in the way that they are now. What is the truth of that, what are the plans and what is going to happen with that? At the end of the day, what is at stake is not whether or not it is embarrassing for the Government but the confidence and trust that the British public have in the figures that we produce and in the Government of the day in dealing with this problem.