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

Thank you, Sir Nicholas. I am sure that the Committee’s smooth running is due largely to your impeccable chairmanship.

Nicholas Winterton (Macclesfield, Conservative)

I hoped you would say that.

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

I hoped that you were hoping that I would say it, Sir Nicholas.

When I was interrupted by the suspension this morning, I was praying in aid senior police officers in favour of our proposal in new clause 2 for a border police force. I had just moved on to Sir Ian Blair, who is not often prayed in aid from these Benches but who was right on this issue. He said in February 2005 that when the country

“got into the debate about SOCA, it surprised me that we did not have a national border police.”

I suppose that I should emphasise for the purposes of Hansard that when I refer to SOCA, I am talking about the Serious Organised Crime Agency.

Sir Ian Blair repeated that opinion:

“I have always thought that having a national border police was a good idea...I am very supportive of this issue.”

I have suggested a number of growing serious international crimes with which the border police would deal, and I want to return for a moment to the subject of human trafficking, because it is the fastest-growing international crime in the world. It is up there with transporting guns and drugs across frontiers, and I suspect, unfortunately, that it will continue to grow and become ever more serious. The UK is one of the biggest destination countries—I think that it is the biggest in Europe at the moment—for that crime. The Minister can correct me if he thinks that I am wrong, but whether we are or not, human trafficking is a serious problem for us. Not only are we a destination country, we are a transit country as well.

The latest estimate is that 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year. The number of women in the UK who are victims of trafficking is, of course, difficult to estimate, but there are many thousands. The figures for off-street prostitution are stark, vivid and terrible. Whereas 10 years ago, 15 per cent. of such women were foreign, the number is now about 85 per cent., according to some of the surveys I have seen. The proportion of women involved in prostitution who come from abroad has been turned on its head. Inevitably, large numbers of those women were trafficked here deceitfully, having been promised lives as waitresses and so on and then exploited by criminal gangs. The other, particularly horrific part of the trade is the trafficking of children, which also appears to be growing. In an attempt to combat that particularly evil trade alone, it will be worth while having a specialist border police force.

I emphasise the point that a specialised police service is particularly effective in fighting new types of crime. The Committee will be aware that we set up a committee under Lord Stevens, a former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, to review our border security arrangements as a whole. His committee, which was full of other senior police officers and former Home Office officials, concluded that only a unified border force could protect our borders effectively. We are now building on the valuable and useful work of Lord Stevens and his committee to develop the detail of what we can do and when we can do it.

I share the Minister’s concern that we should change our policing and other control systems gradually so that there is not too much disruption to existing activities. We know that it ought to be possible for a new force to be effective and that it ought to be able to protect our borders. We have discussed the one land border that this country has, and there is division across the Committee on how we should deal with it, given the common travel area, but there should be no division about whether all other UK borders can be defended. They ought to be defensible, but they are not defended well enough at the moment.

Experience in other areas of crime prevention shows that the type of specialisation we propose has been effective, so there is no reason why it could not be applied at the border. We also feel that the proposal has a tide running behind it. An early proponent was the Select Committee on Home Affairs, in a previous incarnation. In a report as far back as 2001, it recommended

“a single frontier force on the basis of secondment and direct employment, but with clear lines of communication”.

That was six years ago, and some steps toward better co-ordination of our enforcement activities at the border have been taken, but the Government have not taken the big, important step of not only involving the police but allowing them to set up a unified border force. I cannot remember how many times I have urged the Government do that when we have debated immigration Bills, but I do so strongly once again. We think that would be an important step forward in improving the safety of our borders and therefore the security of all those who live within our borders.

Tom Brake (Carshalton & Wallington, Liberal Democrat)

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair again, Sir Nicholas.

Simon Burns (Whip, Whips; West Chelmsford, Conservative)

Slurp, slurp.

Tom Brake (Carshalton & Wallington, Liberal Democrat)

It was a genuine comment, Sir Nicholas.

I rise partly in support of the proposal and partly to seek further clarification of it. The Liberal Democrats support the idea of a UK border police force, and would like to see such a force, but the Conservatives’ proposal seems to be for an all-purpose border and immigration force that focuses very much on immigration rather than policing. We would like the focus to be clearly on immigration and the policing of immigration issues, but also on the wider issue of crime. That does not come across in the proposal.

We believe that there is a need to unite different border functions, and it is clear that major crime is not a particularly local issue. Indeed, it is often a national or international issue, and therefore crosses borders, so we support having police powers within a UK border force. Perhaps when the Conservatives respond to the Minister, they will have an opportunity to set out whether they see the proposal as principally about tackling immigration issues at borders or whether there would also be a component for tackling major crime that is not linked to immigration.

In the other place, our proposed amendment referred to

“protecting UK borders...strengthening frontier protection against threats to the security, social and economic integrity and environment of the United Kingdom...preventing and detecting human trafficking; and...maintaining and improving a safe, ordered and secure environment in ports”.

It is clear that more debate is needed, and perhaps this is one step towards what may be the Government’s longer term ambition of including the police. If that is the Government’s journey, I hope that they will speed up arrival at their destination.

It is probably sufficient to have expressed support in broad terms for the amendment, but to have queried the almost exclusive focus on immigration at the expense of other significant policing issues affecting our borders.

David Hamilton (Midlothian, Labour)

I am raising this question again because when I raised it at our first sitting, you kindly told me, Sir Nicholas, that that was the wrong time to do so, so I am now raising it at the appropriate time.

We already have a UK force. It is called the British Transport police. It is not new, but it needs to be adapted. We must recognise that the world has changed. When I was a young man, my ambition, like many boys in my age group, was to have a holiday abroad. The way we live has changed fundamentally, and the vast majority of British people can now take holidays—when I go into schools, every young kid tells me that they go on holiday abroad. The mass of people moving in and out of the country has changed the dynamics of how we operate.

What has not changed during that time is that we have not recognised that we must move the apparatus forward to ensure that all the agencies move as one. The agencies dealing with immigration, drugs, human trafficking, terrorism and so on are important. They have shown that they can adapt year on year, time after time, and their experience tells them when they must do so. The one agency that has never adapted is the uniformed police, and I make no apology for returning to that point.

I do not understand the nonsensical argument for having Lothian and Borders police in Edinburgh, Strathclyde police in Glasgow, Tayside police in Dundee, and Grampian police in Aberdeen. That is reflected throughout the UK. It makes no sense not to have a unified force with a single command structure that can adapt to changes over the years.

We are discussing devolving more power to Scotland, and that will follow in Wales and Northern Ireland, but increasing power should be a two-way stream. We should recognise that although Scots law is different from that in the rest of the UK, and that the police forces are different and come under different regimes, there is a sensible argument for some powers returning to Westminster. This is one. There is logic in having a structure that tells people clearly that if they arrive at any airport in the UK, the same system will operate. With the best will in the world, the co-operation between police forces and agencies lacks the necessary command structure.

I always say if one cannot say something in five minutes, it is not worth saying—although this place does not abide by that—so I shall not take up much time. My view, which is simple, not partisan, is that we must adapt to a world of changes, and we have not done that. We must get four Governments to sit down and agree that one Government—the UK Government—should deal with the matter. That makes sense, and the vast  majority of people throughout the UK would understand that. We should have one force, one line of command and one Department, under one Parliament, not four.

Phil Woolas (Minister of State (the North West), Home Office; Oldham East & Saddleworth, Labour)

Thank you for your kind words, Sir Nicholas. I welcome you back to the Chair. I had hoped to have an Under-Secretary to help me, but that is not to be.

Ministers often resist Opposition amendments on the grounds that they were not invented here, although they rarely admit that. I assure the Committee that that is not the basis for my argument on new clause 2. As the hon. Member for Ashford said, there is a long-standing debate behind the suggestion and it has been debated within the police force and elsewhere. Indeed, the Government’s Green Paper consulted on a similar proposal—although it was not exactly the same in its range. Let me reassure the Committee that my argument is not based on the fact that the proposal is not my new clause.

There is an argument for what is being proposed. My hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian has put the argument, as have some people in the police force. The matter was also debated in the other place—although I do not think it was voted on. In the other place, my noble Friend Lord West of Spithead—known in the Department as west of Spithead as opposed to east of Manchester as in my case—set out the significant steps that the Government have already taken towards the objective that my hon. Friend raised: making sure that we have the best command and control to deal with what we all accept is a significant issue in the United Kingdom.

In addition to ensuring that we have the powers to strengthen our border controls for the purposes of migration management and customs detection, which we have been debating in the Bill and in relation to other things, we should make sure that we have the right structures in place. It is important that there is integration at the ports and airports, and through the postal service. The postal service is often overlooked in public debates on this matter because it is not an immediately visible facility, but our postal detection facilities are very important in relation to customs powers.

Increasingly, there has recently been what I have described as the exportation of the border—the juxtaposed controls at Calais, in Belgium and potentially elsewhere if dispersement happens. The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington rightly picked me up on that. There has been integration of Customs and Revenue functions not only in relation to the border and immigration authority as was, but in relation to UK Visas. Traditionally, the staff whom the United Kingdom Government employ to check and issue visas came under the remit of the Foreign Office, but they now come under the UK Border Agency. Some 3,000 of our staff are employed overseas and that is a further exportation of the border.

I cannot argue against the new clause tabled by the hon. Member for Ashford on the basis that we do not want integrated structures; it is really a question of how best to achieve those objectives and how one draws the line. That is the basis of my argument. The provisions  of part 1 provide a more robust legal framework for the UK Border Agency, so that it can build upon its successes. We are very proud of its successes and we think that we get an unfair hearing given the dangerous and difficult job that our people do.

On Second Reading, the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) made some criticisms of our border controls. I understand why, but let me briefly paint a picture of why we think we are improving the situation. I suppose I could be accused of making partisan points, but these are the facts. It is true that we now deport more people than ever—66,000 people were removed from the UK in 2008. I am sorry, but that figure is not more than ever as there were previous years when there were slightly more. However, in recent years there has been a significantly upward trend. Some 5,400 of those people were foreign national prisoners. A Home Secretary resigned over that issue and took responsibility for that. So it is incumbent on us to improve.

On illegal migrants, more than 1 million freight vehicles were searched last year, and as a result 28,000 attempts to enter the country illegally were stopped. I say “attempts”, not people, because some attempts involved the same people trying to get back in.

The hon. Member for Ashford is right to mention people trafficking. Our crime teams at major ports, working with the police authorities in the area and the Serious Organised Crime Agency, have successfully prosecuted more than 70 people who have been involved in organising smuggling and trafficking. A specialist team at Heathrow, the Paladin team, detected and helped 184 children last year who we believe were being trafficked.

On drugs and firearms smuggling, seizures of class A drugs reached record levels in 2008 and detection of illegal firearms doubled.

On organised crime directly, our approach has been to set up immigration crime partnerships across the UK. We have worked with the Association of Chief Police Officers on that. This is a difficult argument for me to get across, because it is a matter of where one draws the organisational boundary, but our strategy on a day-to-day basis is to work with local police officers. We have within our ranks more than 300 police officers who are seconded to the UK Border Agency local immigration teams, which work directly in the communities. The hon. Gentleman mentioned that border control is not just about the physical border, but is about our towns, villages and countryside, as well as urban areas.

Tom Brake (Carshalton & Wallington, Liberal Democrat)

I am not sure whether the Minister is about to quote this figure, but I am sure he is painfully aware that, between 1997 and 2006, only 37 employers were found guilty of employing illegal immigrants, although, as he is also probably aware, the Government’s most recent estimate of illegal immigrant numbers, which dates back to 2001, shows there are 430,000 of them. However, only a rather small number of employers have been prosecuted.

Phil Woolas (Minister of State (the North West), Home Office; Oldham East & Saddleworth, Labour)

My argument is not that everything that has happened since 1997 has been perfect. Indeed, I have been heavily criticised, as the hon. Gentleman knows because he has done some of the criticising—quite reasonably, because he is doing his job and I do not  blame him for that—for criticising the past myself. The sponsorship arrangements that are now in place allow the sponsor to be held to account in a much better way than in the past. On the number of raids, although I will not go into detail, the fact is that we are able to carry out interventions in a much better way now. The critical point is that we are utterly dependent on our partnership working with the police forces to do raids on employers, for example.

The new structures that we have put in place—the Bill is intended to provide a statutory footing for the final pieces of the jigsaw—are delivering successes, although not perhaps as many as the public would like to see. Nevertheless, they are doing so.

On the effectiveness of the action that we take with regard to employers, under the fines that we have put in place we have now successfully, through the civil penalties regime, issued 1,800 fines worth a total of £18 million from February 2008 to the end of April this year. Those fines do not just deter or punish the transgressors; they deter others and, critically, they address the pull factor, which is a major difficulty faced by this country, alongside border control, which the people traffickers exploit. I accept the point made by the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington.

My argument is that the picture is not, as the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell has tried to paint it, one of failure, but one of growing success. There is no disagreement in the Committee or the House on the need to strengthen our borders. The argument is that there should be a single unified agency for UK borders encompassing all immigration, revenue, customs and police functions. The amendment that was tabled and discussed in the other place and is replicated here would not bring that about.

Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington proposed an all-encompassing agency. I read his report, which is serious not just because of his experience and the fact that he is a serious member of the other place, but because it addresses the argument in the Green Paper. At the time of the report, the Border and Immigration Agency existed, but not the new UK Border Agency, which incorporates HM Revenue and Customs. The key point in Lord Stevens’s report is that HMRC and the Border and Immigration Agency should be brought together with the agencies that he listed. My argument is that evolution of the agency has brought a large part of Lord Stevens’s intentions together.

To repeat what my noble Friend said, we do not rule out the hon. Gentleman’s proposition. It has merit, but we have some important arguments about the organisation’s remit and the organisational disruption that it could cause. Critically, we have arguments about how best to obtain the co-operation in practice of the existing 43 police authorities in England and Wales, the one in Northern Ireland and the eight in Scotland. How can we get them to work better with us? Our fear is that if we encompass all police functions in the agency, it may be more difficult in practice to obtain the assistance of local police forces.

David Hamilton (Midlothian, Labour)

The forces have evolved to where they are, and some people will always oppose change, but the vast majority of people whom the new force would consist of are the very people who are there already, so  it would not be difficult to transfer into one structure. I suggest that in the long term that must be the only way forward. Having one structure makes more sense than having around 49 forces.

Phil Woolas (Minister of State (the North West), Home Office; Oldham East & Saddleworth, Labour)

I point to two factors. The first is the experience of the British Transport police. Many people, but not the Government, argue that the British Transport police should be integrated with local police forces, especially the Met.

On the second factor, my hon. Friend was quite right when he said that many of the schoolchildren he visits take foreign holidays. That is due to the success of the economic policies of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. Disposable income and wealth in this country have increased as the economy has grown, and that has brought about greater overseas travel—60 million of our citizens travel to France and Spain every year.

Nicholas Winterton (Macclesfield, Conservative)

Order. I hope that the Minister will connect what he is saying with the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill. He seems to have strayed a little.

Simon Burns (Whip, Whips; West Chelmsford, Conservative)

He has gone on a journey.

Phil Woolas (Minister of State (the North West), Home Office; Oldham East & Saddleworth, Labour)

How do we police the increase in global movement? Some 285 million people travel in and out of the United Kingdom each year, and that number is growing.

Let me provide some examples of the practical co-operation between those police forces and the UK Border Agency in my hon. Friend’s area. In the aftermath of the Glasgow airport bombings, UKBA identified the suspects together with the Strathclyde and Metropolitan police, and provided the background information for the convictions that were secured. The serious question that we have to ask—not just wearing our party political hats, but as Members of Parliament—is, would we be better equipped to secure such convictions with a single force, as opposed to less co-operation with the local police force, if that partnership was not embedded in?

Operation Warren, again with Strathclyde police, dismantled the largest sham-marriage scam in the United Kingdom—107 marriages—the main facilitator of which was convicted and imprisoned. The second part of Warren secured the arrest and conviction of another of the main organisers. On Operation Grange, which as my hon. Friend knows was to do with the Moira Jones murder, the assistance of UKBA was requested by Strathclyde police to help identify the suspect. The hon. Member for Ashford will say that that co-operation could exist, and of course it could, but my argument is about balance. There are other examples, but I will not detain the Committee with them.

I was talking about the Stevens report, which was undertaken at a time when some of the major functions were not already brought together as they are now. Indeed, on future recommendations, he said, in proposal 5:

“Administering effective and efficient border security would require a range of partnerships with international bodies”,

including the Identity and Passport Service as well. We have not gone that far. One can see that, from the viewpoint of UKBA, there would be some sense in a  merger of the two. However, I am not sure whether that would make sense from the viewpoint of a focused delivery of the passport service. Again, I do not dismiss that idea; I take it seriously.

Proposal 2 in the report says that the border protection and security police force would need warranted powers to stop, search and arrest for all offences anywhere within the jurisdiction of the UK. That relates to the point made by the hon. Member for Ashford about Totnes. Again, I argue that by having a partnership with Devon police—

Simon Burns (Whip, Whips; West Chelmsford, Conservative)

Devon and Cornwall.

Phil Woolas (Minister of State (the North West), Home Office; Oldham East & Saddleworth, Labour)

Yes, it is one police authority; thank you. I do not believe that if we had a national, single police force, either within UKBA or parallel to it, its focus would mean, as proposal 2 suggests, that we would effectively be able to tackle the Totneses of this world.

The increasing success of the border controls for which I am attempting to build consensus will increasingly highlight visa overstayers and illegal immigrants. In future, the authorities will have much better, more straightforward and comprehensive intelligence on those overstayers that will help in enforcing that new policy and removing illegal immigrants. But the resources that we will require to enforce that policy, particularly from the point of view of deterrence and addressing the pull factor, will involve even more co-operation with the police authorities. That is an important point.

The Green Paper, “From the neighbourhood to the national”, consulted on what model of policing would best operate alongside UKBA at our borders. We received a range of responses. It is true that people in the police forces take different views. The hon. Member for Ashford has prayed in aid some of those views, but I pray in aid the official policy of ACPO. Its formal view remained in favour of a single border police force, rather than an all-encompassing agency, so as a half way between our two positions, there should be a force parallel to UKBA.

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

As both the Minister and the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington pointed out, the new clause does specifically what ACPO is talking about.

Phil Woolas (Minister of State (the North West), Home Office; Oldham East & Saddleworth, Labour)

Except that the ACPO response acknowledged that its preferred model would require much further work, planning, and, critically, additional funding.

Kent police—the hon. Gentleman’s force—forcibly rejects the idea of a national force, which is probably why ACPO does not go the whole hog. The Kent force has significant experience—probably the most experience outside the Met and, possibly, Thames Valley as well—and it does not wish to lose that power.

The Association of Police Authorities also strongly opposes the proposal for a national border force. It can see the drawbacks, particularly over the financing. Were we to provide for a new force in the legislation, we would require detailed work on the funding. Would it top slice local authorities’ council tax? How would it be paid for? These are serious matters.

To answer the hon. Member for Ashford, however, we must say what we are doing instead that is better than his proposal. The work that we do with ACPO to enhance the arrangements for our police borders is, therefore, of critical importance. We have a phased approach to that work. First, it focuses on counter-terrorism and special branch activity, developing border policing with the police counter-terrorism network of dedicated regional counter-terrorism units and counter-terrorism intelligence units, which themselves sit alongside special branch. In that regard, would we take just the special branch function into the UKBA, or would we leave it separate? Again, there would be a demarcation line. The next phase is to improve consistency of standards and better co-ordination of border policing, and then to build on our existing collaborative approach with other agencies.

The ACPO president was recently in correspondence with the Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing about the shape of that programme of work. By its very nature, some of that activity is not visible to the public; much of special branch’s work is, necessarily, not in the public eye. However, we in the Home Office, and the leadership of the police service, with whom we are engaged on the work, are clear that tangible improvements to public safety have resulted from it. The work is in the context of our Contest strategy.

The proposals refer to arrangements with the police. Central to our strategy is the idea of—indeed the existence of—immigration crime partnerships. They are being put into place around the country and involve UKBA staff locally with local authorities. As I have said, the key to resisting illegal immigration is the pull factor. We believe local crime partnerships are the best way to deal with it; for instance, UKBA staff are embedded in police counter-trafficking teams at Heathrow. I have already mentioned Paladin; experienced detectives from the child abuse investigation command of the Metropolitan police are working with us. UKBA officers are embedded in the human trafficking centre in Sheffield, where their immigration experience and knowledge adds significant value. Since 2007, all border force staff have been required to complete a training package designed to help identify traffickers and their victims.

We believe that those local immigration crime partnerships are better at getting the necessary co-operation with police forces. There is another significant advantage of that approach, which I fear is lacking from the Lord Stevens approach—it is a question of balance and judgment. That advantage is our ability to use immigration law in the wider fight against crime.

We all know that the people who organise crime in our country do not just organise one bit of crime. They do not just do illegal trafficking and let another gang do drugs and another gang do cash laundering, so breaking those criminal gangs has to be done with that in mind. To have a police force that concentrates just on immigration and customs—in fact, a fairly wide remit—does not address the point that to break those gangs a wider focus is needed on the gang than on the activity. I mentioned earlier the Eliot Ness strategy—the gangster Al Capone was caught by a tax accountant, not by a police officer. In that respect, there is a parallel.

As my noble Friend said in the other place, there are compelling arguments for our proposal. There is the argument that I first used about the disruptive effect that it would have were it to take place immediately. I refer the Committee to the comments of the hon. Member for Ashford when we discussed clause 3 on Tuesday morning. He was addressing the amendment about the designation of general customs officers. He made a consistent statement of conservative philosophy, with which I have some sympathy: “If it ain’t bust don’t fix it”. He said:

“While we are discussing the amendment, this would be an appropriate time for the Minister to give us an update on the progress of the merger of the organisations, because he will be more aware than I am that HMRC and UKBA are two very separate organisations with different cultures that he is trying to bring together. One hears of stresses and strains, which is not surprising and is entirely normal, but certainly those stresses and strains are there...Are those different groups of people, with their different training, backgrounds and organisational cultures, actually working together smoothly, or could that be best described as a work in progress?”——[Official Report, Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2009; c. 20.]

The hon. Gentleman went on to say that there were many practical issues. He was right, and just as he was right about the general transfer of duties, I am right about the fact that if we brought the police force into the UKBA at this stage of its evolution, we would cause chaos. I pray in aid the good old-fashioned principle of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

Nicholas Winterton (Macclesfield, Conservative)

I now call Mr. Damian Green, perhaps to fix it.

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

I will address that point directly. It is indeed true that I believe, as all sensible people do, that “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, but the fact is it’s broke—our borders system is not working. It needs to be fixed, which is the purpose of our proposal. Until that point I was about to stand up and say that I was delighted that we were having such a serious debate.

This is a serious proposal, and as the Minister made clear—very honestly—many people who have looked at the matter feel that we need to move down a track towards better and greater integration of all the enforcement bodies that work at our borders and deal with immigration crime both at the borders and beyond. In some ways, the last part of his speech exaggerated the difference between us. All the rest of his speech had made it clear that we all believe that there should be greater integration. There are practical points about which parts are done when and how fast, which is what everyone dealing with these things seriously needs to address, but I do not think anyone doubts the final destination. As I listened to the Minister’s speech, it struck me that whatever happens politically, I would be surprised if something like our proposal were not in place in five years’ time; it certainly will be if there is a Conservative Government after the next election. The thrust of the argument is that we are heading in that direction.

Let me deal with some of the points that were raised, many of which are very good. The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington said that while the amendment was particularly focused on immigration, other things at the border are important. I completely agree with  that. I said in my initial remarks that it was not just about stopping illegal immigration, although that is clearly hugely important and is one of the parts of the system that is broken at the moment; it is about human trafficking, drugs, guns and other crimes that are increasingly international. I entirely take his point on that.

The hon. Member for Midlothian made a powerful, passionate speech about the inadequacies of the current arrangement. He made the point that in the form of the transport police we already have a national specialist police force. It may be of interest to him to know that one of the people sitting on the Stevens committee was the newly knighted Sir Ian Johnston, who brought to the committee his experience as the long-time chief constable of the transport police. He was included on the committee precisely because he has run a relatively small, specialist, national force. He believes, as a member of the committee who signed that report, that that is the best way we could operate a border police force. Others have spotted that very important read-across. Since then, this Government have introduced SOCA. I know that it is not a police force but an agency, but it is another attempt, if you like, to nationalise as opposed to regionalise a part of specialist policing operations. The tide of history is flowing in that direction.

I do not wish to enter the debate about what should happen to regional police forces, as neither the shadow Home Secretary nor the shadow Minister for Police Reform would thank me for treading outside my territory. There appears to be a widespread consensus that, in terms of these specialist parts of policing, national activities are preferable. I am glad that the Minister has said that he will not rule it out and that he found the arguments compelling. He had a number of objections and his point about how we get co-operation in practice is a real one. Inevitably, if we are to discourage illegal employers or human traffickers, we will have to do it all over the country; we would have to know that we can operate anywhere. Therefore, in practical terms, we may well have to rely at times on local forces to do that.

The Minister’s argument was that it is working wonderfully well now. [Interruption.] That is unfair; that was a slight parody of what he said. He said that it is working better now—it may be, but it started from a low base. As he knows, it does not work brilliantly now and there are many areas of the country where individual local police have been quoted as saying that they would like to do more in areas such as human trafficking but they have no drivers to do so. They are not funded to do so and they do not score any points on their Home Office public service agreements by doing so. It is almost as if they are discouraged from doing things in an area that would be of central interest to a border police force.

The Minister says that it will be easier to get local police forces to co-operate with UKBA than it would be with a border police force. I disagree with him about that. It seems overwhelmingly likely that if two parts of the police family talk to each other and, if necessary—if they are making large strategic decisions—chief constable talks to chief constable, there would be more co-operation than there is now. We have never tried that, so neither of us can be definitive about it, but that may lead to a better system.

The Minister’s second argument was that we have so much more intelligence now that we will reach the stage where we know where the vast majority of overstayers are; that would generate a requirement for more enforcement activity. If that is the worst problem that we have to face in three or four years’ time, we have made a tremendous step forward. By that I mean actually knowing where thousands of illegal immigrants are. I am not sure whether I share the Minister’s optimism about the beneficial effects of technology. I hope that he is right, and if he is right, we have to organise the enforcement activity, which brings us back to the previous argument about how best to get the national border force and the regional police forces working together. As I say, we differ on that matter.

The Minister makes the point that organisations such as the Kent police and the Association of Police Authorities do not like the idea. I have spoken at length to the Kent police about the matter. I am an MP for Kent and I know the force well. It does its job effectively and has developed expertise in this matter. From a national perspective, it is important that we do not lose that expertise, and if possible we should spread the practice to other forces as well. Again, it seems that there is a prima facie case for arguing that if the people who are doing a good job in Kent are part of a force that is working all around the border, then we will improve performance in other areas.

The Minister makes the point about cost, which is obviously a serious point. How we deploy the money spent on the police in the most effective way at a time when economic failure has made the public finances a train wreck is obviously a problem that faces existing Ministers and will face future ones as well.

Tom Brake (Carshalton & Wallington, Liberal Democrat)

We costed at around £100 million our proposals for a UK border force. Does the hon. Gentleman have a figure for what he believes his proposals would cost?

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

I do not, and not because I am just not giving a figure but because it depends on what we do, when we do it, the speed of integration and what duplications there may be within the existing structure. The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. I do not have an exact figure to give him now, but one will come. The detailed argument that we are having about when we integrate and at what stage we do it has a significant impact on the costs.

The Minister’s final point was about some of the beneficial things that have happened, all of which boil down to embedding immigration expertise inside the police. The various specific local and regional examples that he gave were about why policing has become more effective, and it is precisely because there are now people who are full-time experts on immigration crime inside the police. I agree with that; it is a very important step forward and precisely why we are trying to make it permanent with a border police force. As we all agree that immigration-related crime and cross-border crime is big and will be an increasing problem, it seems to me that making that kind of beneficial sharing of expertise permanent and nationwide is precisely why we argued for a border police force and why we have tabled the new clause, which I commend to the Committee.