Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill
4:30 pm
Mr Humfrey Malins (Woking, Conservative)
On behalf of the official Opposition, may I also say that it is a pleasure to welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Illsley, and your colleague, Mr. Hurst. I am sure that, under your chairmanship, we shall have a smooth and constructive Committee.
I welcome both Ministers. I feel slightly outnumbered, but I am comforted by the reassuring presence of my hon. Friends the Members for Upminster (Angela Watkinson), and for Bexhill and Battle (Mr. Barker). I welcome other hon. Members to the Committee. On Second Reading, the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) remarked that it was the fourth time that he had debated an immigration Bill—there have been four major immigration Bills over the past 10 years. He said:
''it almost does not matter what we do in terms of legislation, if the Home Office does not get its act together to make decisions within a reasonable time scale.''—[Official Report, 24 April 2002; Vol. 384 c. 387.]
I was impressed by that statement.
The official Opposition will vote against the motion. We do not believe that the programme permits us to do justice to scrutinising and amending the Bill. The Committee has been assembled with almost indecent haste. We should remember that the Bill had its Second Reading only last Wednesday night. Amendments to clauses 1 to 13 had to be tabled with the House authorities not later than the rise of the House on Friday, which effectively gave those who wished to draft amendments approximately a day to do so, especially because it is always difficult to speculate what time the House will rise on Fridays, given that business may fold and the Adjournment Minister may or may not turn up. That does not give the many organisations seeking to contribute constructively to the debate much time to prepare amendments.
Several organisations have taken an interest in the Bill and are undoubtedly lobbying each member of the Committee with their proposed amendments. The Law Society, the Immigration Advisory Service—which I had the honour of founding in 1992—the Immigration Law Practitioners Association, the Commission for Racial Equality and many others are under the same pressure. The question of time will be especially relevant when we discuss accommodation centres. My colleagues and I believe that we are proceeding with indecent haste within a very tight time scale to discuss accommodation centres that, by any reckoning—the Minister will correct me if am wrong—cannot possibly be up and running for months, or even a year or more from now. That is another reason why we object to the motion.
In a speech to the Special Standing Committee on the Immigration and Asylum Bill , the then Minister, the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien) said:
''In many ways the Bill represents the most comprehensive and radical reform of immigration law for decades''.
He continued:
''The Bill is good news for genuine asylum seekers in terms of the speed with which it will deliver changes to the asylum process; it is bad news for those who seek to abuse the system.''
Describing the Government's target, he said:
''On average, the initial decision on asylum will be dealt with within two months and appeals within a further four months. We aim to reach that ambitious target by April 2001.''
He went on:
''We must also deal with the removal on which previous Governments have not effectively delivered''.
He concluded:
''We are strengthening the carrier's liability regime.''——[Official Report, Special Standing Committee, 30 March 1999; c. 495.]
I mention those matters because it must be plain to hon. Members that the Government failed utterly in the targets set out in that speech. On the matter of speed, it is currently the case that the time between application and decision can be as much as a year or
more, and in August last year 43,000 applicants were awaiting an initial decision.
The Bill did not succeed in terms of the carrier's liability regime as the then Minister said that it would: for example, in the case of Roth and others the regime employed to impose penalties on lorry drivers and haulage companies was incompatible with European Community law.