Clause 28
Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [Lords]
Public Bill Committees, 9 June 2009, 5:30 pm
Phil Woolas (Minister of State (also in the Home Office), Home Office; Oldham East & Saddleworth, Labour)
I beg to move amendment 27, in clause 28, page 21, line 5, at end insert ‘, and
( ) after paragraph (g) insert—
“(ga) practice and procedure in relation to the prevention, detection and investigation of offences,
(gb) practice and procedure in relation to the conduct of criminal proceedings,
(gc) whether customs functions have been appropriately exercised by the Secretary of State and the Director of Border Revenue,”.’.
This amendment, with amendment 28, requires the independent Chief Inspector to monitor and report on (i) UKBA’s practice and procedure in relation to criminal matters, both immigration- and customs-related, and (ii) whether customs functions are being appropriately exercised by the Secretary of State and Director of Border Revenue.
Phil Woolas (Minister of State (also in the Home Office), Home Office; Oldham East & Saddleworth, Labour)
These are technical amendments to meet the stated policy intention to extend the independent, external scrutiny provided by the chief inspector to the question whether the Secretary of State and the director of border revenue are exercising their customs functions appropriately.
As drafted, subsection (4) has the unintended consequence of confining the chief inspector’s role to customs functions relating to offences and criminal proceedings. The amendments will ensure that the independent chief inspector’s powers in that respect extend to the broad range of the Secretary of State’s general customs functions and the director of border revenue’s revenue customs function, which was the original intention.
Damian Green (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Ashford, Conservative)
Is it in order for me to speak to amendment 16, Miss Begg?
Damian Green (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Ashford, Conservative)
In that case, I shall simply say that I see the point of the Government amendments, and the logic of our amendment 16 sits very well with them. I hope that the Minister will be equally generous during the next debate.
Paul Rowen (Rochdale, Liberal Democrat)
The clause extends the functions of the chief inspector. Why does the regulatory impact assessment not contain anything about additional resources? Page 24 of the Home Affairs Committee’s fifth report states:
“We have some concern that the additional responsibilities in this Bill will impose a significant extra burden on the Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency, which is already a new post, and one whose capacity to oversee the whole of the UK Border Agency we have previously questioned. We agree with the Immigration Law Practitioners Association that the Chief Inspector’s office may require a corresponding increase in resources to meet the additional burdens imposed by this Bill if his role is to be effective.”
Given that nothing is said in the impact statement, is it the Government’s intention to make available additional resources to carry out these powers?
Phil Woolas (Minister of State (also in the Home Office), Home Office; Oldham East & Saddleworth, Labour)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point, which, as he said, was raised by the Select Committee, the Chairman of which raised it with me personally and in correspondence.
The role of the independent chief inspector is a new one. He has just commenced his pilot inspections and has been made aware of the full planned scope of his role, as envisaged in the Bill. He published his inspection plans in April cognisant of that, and they take account of the proposed increased role. The then Home Secretary agreed the budget for 2009-10—£3 million—cognisant of that plan. I concede that the inspectorate is new, and we have given a commitment to review that budget, subject to the financial restraints. We have worked the matter through with the inspector. However, the hon. Gentleman makes a strong point.
Damian Green: I beg to move amendment 16, in clause 28, page 21, leave out lines 16 to 26.
As I have said, I appreciate what the Minister seeks to do with Government amendments 27 and 28. The Government have brought into being a new structure, with the chief inspector of the UK Border Agency, which is just beginning to get up and running and to do pilot inspections. The purpose of amendment 16 is to help the chief inspector and to streamline and make more efficient the inspection regime for the immigration detention estate. The role of the new chief inspector is an extremely important one, about which there was much discussion in the deliberations on the UK Borders Act 2007.
One anomalous thing that remains in the Bill is the multiple inspection regime that the agency and those who work in it will be forced to endure. There will be a chief inspector of prisons, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and the new chief inspector of the UK Border Agency, all of whom, to some extent, will be trampling over the same ground. The Minister will be as aware as anyone that in the public sector, and probably in the private sector as well, one of the great complaints of the age is of over-inspection, particularly multiple inspection by different inspectorates that have slightly different demands. Schools and universities are the best examples of that I have come across. The measure will set up an equally intrusive inspection regime in which people at the sharp end of these jobs will feel two things very strongly. First, they will feel that they are never allowed to get on with their job because they spend their entire life either undergoing the current inspection or preparing for the next one. Secondly, they will feel that they are given different, sometimes contradictory, signals by different inspectors as to what they should seek to achieve.
This part of the Bill presents an opportunity to step back from that procedure for the UK Border Agency. With the current structure, with three powerful inspectorates looking at the UK Border Agency, I can guarantee that in a few years’ time it will complain that it is over-inspected and has to spend all its time looking over its shoulder rather than getting on with the job. I am fully prepared to be advised that the amendment is technically defective and does not achieve what I seek, but I hope that the Minister can at the very least agree with the general sentiment I express and take the amendment away to look at, and that we can return to this debate on Report. He is in danger of setting up a fairly monstrous and top-heavy system of inspection.
Of the three inspectorates that will operate in this field, the chief inspector of the UK Border Agency will be the least powerful, partly for historical reasons. We all know about HMIC and that the chief inspector of prisons has a hugely important job that is done extremely well and powerfully and very publicly, so a new inspectorate that is rather small because it is inspecting only one agency may be the least important of the three. There is something faintly perverse about a system where the least important inspectorate of the UK Border Agency is its own chief inspector. That is what I think the Minister is in danger of setting up. Therefore, for his sake as well as mine, and most of all for the sake of the UK Border Agency, I urge Ministers to take the matter away and look at it seriously. We can see, 50 yd down the track, the pit into which we will fall, so it might be a good idea to stop and cover that pit before we fall into it.
Phil Woolas (Minister of State (also in the Home Office), Home Office; Oldham East & Saddleworth, Labour)
I am not trying to be too consensual, but may I say that the hon. Gentleman has a valid point? I hope that I can satisfy him about the approach that I am taking. I come to the issue with some record as the Minister for Local Government. I have tried to sort out—moderately successfully, I think—that very point of over-inspection, through providing for gateways, less inspection and having the right inspectorate for the right functions. That is also the approach that I have adopted in this regard.
Clause 28 must be taken on board with clause 29. What I am doing is what the hon. Gentleman is trying to achieve, in terms of having single inspectorates for functions, and not duplicating them. But I have done so in a slightly different way, which I think is preferable—I am not seeking to score points for the potential difficulties with the drafting of his amendment.
Clause 28 will amend section 48 of the UK Borders Act 2007, which established the office of the chief inspector of the then border and immigration agency. That chief inspector provided an external review, independent of the agency and Department. Currently, the inspector’s remit applies to immigration, asylum and nationality functions only. Clause 28 will evolve that function as set up under the 2007 Act, and will allow the chief inspector to look at the full range of functions that will be exercised by UKBA under the Bill. As well as immigration, asylum and national functions, the inspector will be able to monitor the exercise of general customs functions via the Secretary of State and her officials, including the designated general customs officials and the exercise of customs revenue functions by the director of border revenue and her designated officers.
Apart from evolving section 48 of the 2007 Act, the clause also specifies that
“the chief inspector shall not monitor and report on”
functions at detention facilities, short-term holding facilities or removal centres. There is a power for the Secretary of State to direct that, but I took that function out—or rather, did not include it—because they are areas where Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons, Her Majesty’s inspector of constabulary, the Scottish inspector and the Northern Ireland inspector should continue to have the primary oversight to ensure that that is being conducted by inspectors with the right experience. In other words, for the detention facilities and for areas such as the short-term facilities, the removal centres and the escort function, the HMIP will have oversight. Our inspector will, of course, have rights and powers to work with those people. If the Secretary of State wished for a specific investigation—as sometimes the House calls for—by that inspectorate, that will be possible.
David Hamilton (Midlothian, Labour)
I do not wish to be unhelpful, but one of the things that concerns me is that we are talking about Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons and Her Majesty’s inspector of the constabulary. In Scotland, of course, they are responsible to the Scottish Parliament. How will the Minister balance that report? Will the report come down to this House, or will it go via the Scottish Parliament?
Phil Woolas (Minister of State (also in the Home Office), Home Office; Oldham East & Saddleworth, Labour)
The inspectorate reports on the facilities of UKBA are for UKBA and therefore for this Parliament. There is the additional point I mentioned earlier that the Home Secretary has the power to direct the inspectorate of the UK Border Agency to look specifically at those facilities should he so decide.
Amendment 16 would have the effect of further extending the powers of the chief inspector of the agency to include monitoring and reporting on the holding facilities that I have listed, but it would not remove the responsibility of HM inspector of prisons for overseeing functions at the same facilities. I am not trying to score points. I accept the policy objective that there should be a single inspectorate. We believe that the inspectorate for detention facilities should include the people with the expertise, obviously allowing UKBA access to the reports and influence on them.
There is the further point, which I mentioned in the previous debate that, as we seek greater flexibility in the facilities, and as some facilities will not at all times be immigration-related, it makes sense to do this to provide reassurances. The fourth lock-in, of course, is the independent monitoring boards that are part of our structure.
Damian Green (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Ashford, Conservative)
I am grateful to the Minister for his explanation. He and I do not disagree about the dangers of over-inspection.
I am not entirely convinced by his position. I can see the logic of it—that there is expertise in HMIP, so HMIP should inspect detention facilities rather than the chief inspector of the UK Border Agency—but, in the end, detention and escort will be the flashpoints inside the agency in terms of inspection. That will be where inspection is most important.
It seems logical, if we want the agency to feel like a proper, coherent body that does the whole gamut of immigration control including, where necessary and at the extreme, detention, escort, deportation, removal—all those kinds of things—that the inspection regime does not send a different signal. Depending on where an individual is—they may be moved around the agency—they will have different inspectorates looking over their shoulder. That seems slightly unsatisfactory and, in the long term, slightly incoherent.
I accept that in the short term we would want the expertise of HMIP in the detention estate, but expertise could be built up over time inside one inspectorate. I do not wish to divide the Committee on the amendment, but I am not entirely convinced by the solution that the Minister has come up with. I am glad that he recognises that this is clearly a problem that could affect the UK Border Agency in the future. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.