Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [Lords]
10:30 am
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington, Liberal Democrat)
I echo colleagues’ comments: it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Nicholas. Regardless of whether we have objections, in principle, to programming, we support the timetable for this Committee stage. We considered the need for more sittings, but felt that, given that Second Reading did not quite go the full course, the agreed number of sittings might be sufficient to deal with the points that we seek to address. To echo points made, it is disappointing that this Bill does not cover some aspects of borders, citizenship and immigration matters, such as the Government’s call for the simplification of legislation—I am not convinced that the Bill represents a simplification. Neither does it address a major area of concern about, for example, the destitution of refused asylum seekers who cannot be returned to places such as Zimbabwe. That could, and should, have been addressed, but regrettably was not.
With those few comments, however, the Liberal Democrats are happy with the timetable for the Bill, which we hope to investigate and probe further over the next couple of weeks.