Part of Immigration Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 10:15 am on 27 October 2015.
James Brokenshire
Minister of State (Home Office) (Security and Immigration)
10:15,
27 October 2015
In many ways, the purpose of a Bill’s Committee stage is to tease out some of these issues, and to get the Minister—in this case, me—to set out and clarify the purpose and intent of a Bill’s provisions. We strongly believe that the Bill gives certainty and clarity about how the director will provide co-ordination.
The measure is about existing agencies that are already carrying out functions. If intelligence is already discovered by those agencies, sharing will already take place. This does not change anything about operational practice; rather, the director will provide strategy, co-ordination and an overarching response. We need good work on enforcement between agencies so that we do not—I do not think we have this, but the provision ensures that that is the case—have a silo-based approach, given that there is an overlap and that we need to look at this as an overall market. Those are the reasons why we do not believe the Amendment is required, so I ask the hon. and learned Gentleman to withdraw it.
A parliamentary bill is divided into sections called clauses.
Printed in the margin next to each clause is a brief explanatory `side-note' giving details of what the effect of the clause will be.
During the committee stage of a bill, MPs examine these clauses in detail and may introduce new clauses of their own or table amendments to the existing clauses.
When a bill becomes an Act of Parliament, clauses become known as sections.
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In the end only a handful of amendments will be incorporated into any bill.
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