Clause 2 - Entering United Kingdom without passport
Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill
2:30 pm
Mr Edward Garnier (Harborough, Conservative)
I do not want to die in any ditches either, particularly after today's rain, but I invite the Government to have another think.
I want to deal with the question of the immigration document. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) pointed out that there is a different definition for ''immigration document'' in clause 2 from that in clause 3. Clause 3(3) amends the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981 so that ''immigration document'' means a
''card, adhesive label or other instrument''.
Applicants for asylum who go before the immigration officer may not have a piece of paper that comes under the definition of a passport or a document that relates to a national of a state other than the United Kingdom and is designed to serve the same purpose as a passport. However, to use an historical example, what would happen to someone who escaped from a Nazi concentration camp during the second world war but had an identity number tattooed on his arm? Is that not one way of establishing the identity of the bearer of that tattoo? But it is not a document. Had the Bill been in force in 1940 to 1945 or thereabouts, that person would not have been able to establish to the
satisfaction of the immigration officer that he had a means of identification that came within the terms of the Bill, still less within the terms of clause 3.
We need to be a little more imaginative about ways of establishing identity. That is our important objective here. We want to prevent people from presenting themselves at ports of entry and deceiving immigration officers about their identity. It is unimportant whether they have a passport or some other means of identification—what is really important is who they are and whether that can be established to the officer's satisfaction. Passports can be forged. Other documents can be forged. We need to consider other means of establishing identity.
Let me give another example. What about a military dog tag? Soldiers in action have around their necks a chain with a brass plate engraved with their name and military number. If a Government lose their authority because of a rebellion or a revolution and a former member of that country's armed forces ends up at Heathrow, is he to be denied the right to establish his identity simply because he can produce only a military dog tag? I ask the Committee to forget about all the difficulties of getting on a plane without a passport and so on. I merely mention the problem to show that while subsections (1) and (10) and clause 3(3) look neat and tidy they may produce opportunities for the sorts of injustices that I was describing before we adjourned this morning.
It is easy to dismiss my concerns as mere debating points, but I hope that the Minister will take them rather more seriously than that. Even if she does not accept my detailed examples, perhaps she will accept my motive for presenting them, so that she can deal with them rather more cogently than I have. There it is. The Bill, whatever its general policy, throws up some problems, and it is the duty of all members of the Committee to consider them. I trust that the Minister will be able to deal with the points that I have raised.