Clause 2 - Entering United Kingdom without passport

Part of Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 11:00 am on 8 January 2004.

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Photo of David Heath David Heath Shadow Spokesperson (Home Affairs) 11:00, 8 January 2004

First, the presumption of guilt is made by the arresting person and not the court. Unless the arresting officer presumes guilt, an arrest should not be made. That is the premise on which a person is arrested and brought for indictment.

Secondly, the hon. Gentleman is right to say that there is a defence of reasonable excuse, but that would be a difficult defence for a person in those circumstances to make. I accept his premise that the courts will determine whether the fact that travel documents were in the possession of, perhaps, another family member who cannot be contacted at short notice constitutes a reasonable excuse. Under the circumstances, it would not be easy for a person to prove that they have put their passport into Auntie Flo's handbag and that she has disappeared to the far end of the country. Given the adverse presumption that is inherent in the clause, how on earth could that be established to the satisfaction of a court?

The amendments simply suggest allowing an amount of time to produce the documents. After that, the process of arrest and of bringing someone to trial for an offence would resume. The practical difficulty—and it is a genuine one—concerns the two scenarios described by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart: a person in that intervening time will either find a way of producing false documents or abscond and be untraceable. I accept that that is the problem, and I want the Bill to strike the proper balance between the human rights of individuals and the need for the system to be effective and to counter possible abuses. I am simply suggesting that we might not have that quite right.

Neither amendment—No. 2 or No. 58—necessarily offers an answer; we may need to find another path. The issue needs to be examined carefully and the Minister needs to engage with it. The hon. Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard) has a touching faith in the system and those who run it, which I do not always share. Many officers are doing an extremely good job, but on occasion there are abuses on the official side by those who are not doing their job as well as they might. I do not want to allow scope for that as a result of badly drafted legislation. I want the legislation to be as well worded as possible.