Clause 5
UK Borders Bill
3:30 pm
Liam Byrne (Minister of State (Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality), Home Office; Birmingham, Hodge Hill, Labour)
I am grateful for the first part of the hon. Gentleman’s question, but I am slightly warier about the second. If he is suggesting that the most robust system for immigration control is the current system of immigration controls or, indeed, the very philosophyof frontier control—outlined earlier by the hon. Gentleman—which has a static point at a border where people offer various bits of paper to the immigration officer standing at a desk, then I would humbly beg to differ. I am glad that we are united in wanting immigration controls to persist for the under-18s; I am saddened that we differ about the best means of securing such immigration control in the future.
A few months ago—I think before Christmas—I was interested to note on the Liberal Democrats website a response to one of the hon. Friends of the hon. Member for Rochdale, the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander). I was excited to see that the Liberal Democrats had come to full support for the use of biometric information in passports. That is a very welcome advance. That is a sensible recognition that the use of biometrics in immigration documents is important. I want to extend that principle to the immigration control documents that we use for those foreign nationals under 18 in this country, subject to all the protections that we talked about in the ECHR and other international agreements. We currently take biometrics of foreign nationals under the age of 16; indeed, biometric visas must be taken up by everybody over the age of five. There is a debate among the experts—currently going on over EC regulations—about whether the right age for introducing biometric resident permits should be five or six. Obviously—in a way this is my direct answer to the hon. Member for Ashford—our provisions will be in line with that EC regulation; whether the age will be five or six I am not yet in a position to say.
The hon. Member for Ashford also raised the question whether there was an inconsistency between the sort of debate that we had over the national identity scheme, to which the hon. Member for Rochdale alluded, and biometric immigration documents. The tension is resolved with the answer that we will not be designating biometric immigration documents under the terms of the national identity scheme if the card holder is under the age of 16. However, it is important that immigration control is retained for those under 18 and that the most secure possible documentation is used; if it is good enough for biometric passports, I think it is good enough for biometric immigration documents for foreign nationals. With that clarification on the record, I hope that hon. Members will feel able to withdraw the amendments.