Clause 6
Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [Lords]
12:00 pm

Damian Green (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Ashford, Conservative)

I beg to move amendment 6, in clause 6, page 5, line 3, leave out ‘must’ and insert ‘may’.

The clause deals with the new post of director of border revenue. On the surface, the purpose of the amendment is to give Ministers a flexibility that they may not want, but we also want to tease out the full powers of that new post and the practicalities behind it.

We made some progress in the Lords, where there was a full debate about the new post, which is clearly hugely important. It is designated by the Secretary of State to exercise the functions of border revenue and also to carry out the general customs functions—I take the point the Minister made earlier about how important it  is to distinguish the two. Clearly, the director will be the most important person in the whole new regime that this part of the Bill sets up, apart from the Secretary of State himself.

One of the questions I hope the Minister will address is whether it is necessary or contingent that the director of border revenue should always be the head of UKBA, because one of the things that was illuminated in the Lords debate was that that was the intention, and that Lin Homer would be appointed to the post. But it was left unclear as to whether that was a simple convenience at the time, and that she would add that extra role to her accounting officer role in UKBA, or whether it was always envisaged that they would be the same person.

I draw the Minister’s attention to that apparently procedural point because it seems to me to be quite important, because the fluidity of the organisational structure of our immigration system has been extraordinary over the past few years and there may be no reason to believe it will be less so in the future. In the three and a half years I have been my party’s immigration spokesman, we have moved from the Immigration and Nationality Department to the Border and Immigration Agency to the shadow UKBA, and now, from this April, to UKBA. That is four different structures in less than four years. The structure for immigration changes as often as the Home Secretary does; I am now shadowing my fourth Home Secretary as well, although—I am happy to report from the Minister’s point of view—only my third immigration Minister. The job of immigration Minister is very slightly safer than that of Home Secretary.

Behind all that flux is the reason why I asked the question. It is a serious question as to whether it is necessary that the head of UKBA will always be the director of border revenue, because the post of the head of UKBA might itself change radically in future. In particular, if and when we have a fully integrated border police, one can imagine that there will be consequential effects on the organisation within UKBA which might mean that the two posts need not be coterminous.

Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington, Liberal Democrat)

If there are to be two different people, it would be useful for the taxpayer to know what the financial implications are.

Damian Green (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Ashford, Conservative)

Indeed. That is one of the questions I am hoping that the Minister can address, because if we are, in effect, creating a post that, in the end, becomes a dignified part of the constitution, whether we have a separate person doing it at some vast expense is a very interesting question.

In the debate in the other place, Lord West said that the Government wanted to ensure that there was a clear, single and unified command structure—something suitably military for Lord West.

Phil Woolas (Minister of State (also in the Home Office), Home Office; Oldham East and Saddleworth, Labour)

That is what it says here too.

Damian Green (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Ashford, Conservative)

I am glad to hear that the Government are consistent and will say the same thing in this debate as they said several weeks ago in another place. But, in all seriousness, if that is what the Government are looking for—who could disagree with that as an aim?—it is important to know which functions of the director of border revenue may be different from those of the director of UKBA. The two posts can be brought  together under Lin Homer, which seems appropriate, but I am not just staring into a crystal ball when I say that the functions change. I have observed them changing considerably, in the relatively recent past. If, in particular, we move towards a unified border police force, it is easy to imagine that those functions will change quite radically in the future as well. Therefore, before we set up the post, the Committee deserves quite a lot more detail and clarity about what it is meant to achieve.

Essentially the question is whether the post is just a name. Is it required because there is a need for a director of revenue and an accounting officer, and someone formally responsible for all the money? Alternatively, is it envisaged as a new post, with new powers and new functions? I would not expect those to be set out in the Bill, but it would be useful for the House to know whether the post is essentially a sinecure that comes along with other jobs that people do, or a real job in its own right—or could the Minister envisage circumstances in which the former might become the latter in the future? Before we pass the clause it is important to tease out some of the details, and I hope that the Minister can do that.

Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington, Liberal Democrat)

I support many of the points that have been made about seeking greater clarification of what the director’s responsibilities will be; whether there is simply a requirement that someone should be called the director; whether it could potentially be a different person, and the financial implications of that; and whether the role is of such scale and significance as to imply the need to advertise the position of director, rather than simply passing the responsibility on to Lin Homer, as has been suggested. Any clarification that the Minister can give will be gratefully received.

Phil Woolas (Minister of State (also in the Home Office), Home Office; Oldham East and Saddleworth, Labour)

I am grateful for the perfectly reasonable points that hon. Members have made. My approach was to give the Committee assurances that the position was required to maintain the principle that the powers were not with the Minister. I had not covered the point from the other end of the telescope, by dealing with the arrangements inside UKBA.

The United Kingdom Government receive about £22 billion from tax revenue collected at the border each year. That figure is rising, even in the current economic circumstances. It represents about 5 per cent. of the total tax take of the UK Border Agency. That is why the immigration Minister is also a Treasury Minister. The public may be interested to learn that included within that £22 billion about £2 billion is collected on behalf of the European Union. Thus we are dealing with significant sums of money. Clause 6 is intended to maintain the important principle that the director of revenue is not a Minister. This is a question of customs revenue functions. Those functions are currently undertaken by the commissioners of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, so we are transferring them to the new director.

It is our policy and intention to appoint the chief executive of UKBA as the director of border revenue. That position is a civil service position and therefore maintains the separation. The Bill does not designate that the director must be the chief executive of the United Kingdom Border Agency. It says in my briefing  notes that that is partly because that structure may not be permanent, to answer the point made by the hon. Member for Ashford, who, I am surprised to note, objects to evolution rather than radical reform as a principle. His police proposals would cause further radical reform. However, that designation is not in the Bill for the very reason that he highlighted. We would not want to have to come back in several years to change it.

In practice, a new job is not required—it is not an additional position, but a legal power and responsibility that the chief executive should have, the terms and conditions for whom are a matter for the permanent secretary and not for Ministers, in line with those principles, although I am not aware of any proposals to change.

The amendment is successful in teasing out such points, but I suspect that the hon. Gentleman does not want it passed, because that would allow the Home Secretary to become the director of border revenue, which I promise that the hon. Gentleman does not want. I do not know whether my new boss wants that—I have not talked to him about it—but I suspect that he would not, being the decent bloke that he is. I ask Hansard not to put that last phrase in, please, in case he reads it. My right hon. Friend the new Home Secretary does not want those powers. I ask for the amendment to be withdrawn.

Damian Green (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Ashford, Conservative)

I am happy to assure the Minister that I am neither against evolution nor, when necessary, radical reform. An incoming Conservative Government would happily introduce radical reform in areas where it is needed. We have always done so and will continue to do so. Our borders are one area where we believe that radical reform is needed, because there have been many failures over the past few years.

I take the Minister’s point and can see the sense of it. We do not want to have the director of border revenue receiving all that money, on behalf of the UK Government and of the EU as well—it should be the Home Secretary; he is right. I did not know why he was afraid of having that on the record if the Minister regards the Home Secretary as a decent bloke—

Phil Woolas (Minister of State (also in the Home Office), Home Office; Oldham East and Saddleworth, Labour)

It was the word “bloke”—I meant my right hon. Friend.

Damian Green (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Ashford, Conservative)

I see. The right hon. Gentleman, the new Home Secretary, is indeed a decent human being. I think we can all agree on that. I hope that that nomenclature suffices both for Hansard and, perhaps more importantly, for the Home Secretary.

I also agree with the Minister in not wishing to foist on my hon. Friend, the shadow Home Secretary, should he become Home Secretary at some time in the future, the job of director of border revenue. That seems extremely sensible. As the Minister said, the amendment has achieved what I wished it to achieve—it has teased out a certain amount of clarity on the purpose of the role and whether it is necessarily that of the chief executive of UKBA. I am glad that the Minister and his briefing recognise that there may well be changes to come in the organisation of the institutions responsible for border control.

In that spirit of cross-party good will, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.