UK Borders Bill

Part of the debate – in a Public Bill Committee at 10:30 am on 13 March 2007.

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Photo of Stewart Jackson Stewart Jackson Conservative, Peterborough 10:30, 13 March 2007

Sir Andrew, first I should like to commend your organisation for adding to the debate in an intelligent and rational way, although you would not take that view if you had heard the TGWU last week. There has been debate in this Committee over the past few weeks about the suggestion that this measure is a legislative sledgehammer to crack an administrative nut. Isnot the key issue the unreliability or unavailabilityof accurate data about immigration under this Government, and possibly under former Governments? Do you believe that that can be corrected, for instance by a more robust collection of statistics or even—dare I invite you to comment on this?—by a border agency such as that which this Committee has discussed? How can we rectify the situation so that we know what numbers we are talking about and can make intelligent policy decisions based on those data?