Clause 4
Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [Lords]
12:00 pm
Phil Woolas (Minister of State (also in the Home Office), Home Office; Oldham East and Saddleworth, Labour)
As the Committee might expect, I ask it to resist the amendment. Again, I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s intent. I study Opposition amendments to Bills carefully, and this one falls into the category of “can’t think of anything to say, so we’ll get Parliament to approve it.”
The fact of the matter is that the designation power under the clause allows the Secretary of State—but, in practice, the management of the UK Border Agency—to designate officials. It is intended to provide flexibility in the designation of general customs officials. Again, we are not talking about revenue powers. In practice, not all our officials will need all the powers of an HMRC officer. Some will be employed on functions that will not require them to have a full set of powers; for example, officials responsible for the customs clearance of international post and parcels would not require the powers of questioning and/or of searching passengers, for obvious reasons.
Accordingly, we need some flexibility in that regard. The effect of the amendment would be that the designation of all our officials would have to come before Parliament. We have 4,500 HMRC officials moving over, and we already have 2,000 immigration officials. I suggest to the Committee that we really do not want to have to do that job; it is the job of the Executive, not the legislature. The power is there in the Bill. To be fair, the intent of the hon. Member for Ashford was that the House could have that power. The effect of his amendment would be to enforce the House’s use of that power. I ask that we have the powers to designate officials but that we do not give that to ourselves to do in the House.