New Clause 2
Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [Lords]
1:30 pm
Phil Woolas (Minister of State (the North West), Home Office; Oldham East and 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.