Clause 2 - Entering United Kingdom without passport
Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill
4:30 pm
Ms Beverley Hughes (Minister of State (Citizenship and Immigration), Home Office; Stretford and Urmston, Labour)
No, I shall not pre-empt the debate. I have outlined what I intend. The trial will not be complete until after Committee stage—possibly not until the Bill has completed its passage. So that we can evaluate fully its implications and decide whether a voluntary basis is a satisfactorily robust basis on which to proceed, I intend to include a power in the Bill that
will enable us to revert to a statutory basis if necessary. The hon. and learned Gentleman will have to wait to see the terms.
New clause 4 is designed to penalise those who do not report to an immigration officer on arrival in the UK unless they can prove that after arrival at a port without immigration control they reported to an immigration officer within seven days and left the details of somebody willing to cover any public costs incurred as a result of their stay. I have already rehearsed the arguments to similar points made by the hon. Member for Isle of Wight. It is clearly an issue of concern for him, and I understand why, but in a debate on earlier amendments I pointed out that we already have in the 1971 Act offences that relate to illegal entry to the UK. Section 24, I think, makes it an offence knowingly to enter the UK without leave. The penalty for that is a maximum of six months imprisonment and a fine.
The hon. Gentleman made two other proposals, mentioning non-canalised ports and suggesting that people should have to report by phone. At such ports we operate through an intelligence-led approach. In some ways the hon. and learned Member for Harborough is right to raise the issue in the context of the potential impact of detection equipment that we have introduced as places such as Calais. We took pre-emptive action to ensure that we would be aware of any displacement into other ports and step up our intelligence-led approach, with immigration officers randomly descending on those ports as a deterrent against people trying to use them illegally. Although there has been a small amount of displacement, the action that we have taken to counter it has been effective.
We have sponsorship for categories such as marriage. Also, students must establish that they a place on a course. However, requiring every person wanting to come to the country to have a sponsor would impose an undue burden.