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Security Industry Authority

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement and I am sorry that he has had to do so. One of the things that will be made more difficult for these Benches in the future is the issue of trust. The Minister will know that we are at a particularly sensitive point, as far as trust goes, with the Counter-Terrorism Bill. We have to take on trust much of the evidence that we are told about, and we have to take on trust the intelligence issues. If we have the Home Secretary herself knowing about a tranche of information and not divulging it to the House until now as a result of leaks, that trust is very hard to restore. The fact is that we were in this Chamber from the beginning of October until November to discuss immigration issues time and again when considering the UK Borders Bill. My noble friends Lord Avebury and Lord Roberts stood here and talked at length with Home Office Ministers. They discussed many of the issues being touched on today, such as illegal workers. There was ample opportunity at that time to make some sort of statement. Further, there was an opportunity during the spillover period to make a Written Statement, but none was made. It is almost unbelievable that we got through the final stages of the UK Borders Bill without any mention of this issue. So, besides the actual subject under discussion, I am particularly sorry about it because of the issue of trust. I turn to the scale of the problem. Home Office figures estimate that there are between 310,000 and 570,000 illegal workers in this country. Although we are talking about the security industry, we could, if the issue is illegal workers, just as well be considering the catering sector. But if we are talking about the security of the public—as the Minister said, the Statement talks about protecting the public—that, in a sense, is another issue. I do not think there was any suggestion in the Statement that any of these illegal economic migrants are terrorists, but there is something of a blurring of the lines. The Statement speaks in the same breath of illegal economic migrants and of protecting the public. I ask the Minister whether catering staff, for example, could not be just as much of a threat to security if they wanted simply by poisoning people? Obviously there is a failure within the Security Industry Authority, but there is also a failure in government contracts. Surely contracts should specify that certain checks have been made before the authority goes on to employ other people. Who specifies what in these contracts, and who is now checking them? As I say, this is illustrative of the principles behind the matter. When the Liberal Democrats called at their party conference for honesty about the scale of the problem of economic migrants who were already here illegally and what the Government were going to do about it, they were ridiculed by both of the other parties for raising the question. We can see now that it is a real question which needs to be addressed.