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Proceeding contribution from Lord West of Spithead (Labour) in the House of Lords on Tuesday, 13 November 2007. It occurred during Ministerial statement on Security Industry Authority.


Security Industry Authority

My Lords, as I mentioned, the employers have clear guidance on exactly what checks they would have to carry out. I could write to the noble Lord with the exact details. I do not know every detail of the checks, but clear guidance for them exists. I found his question about nationality and what people look like quite bizarre. It is rather like the cricket test, and I do not accept them as issues. There is no doubt that ID cards will make the situation an awful lot easer. On the noble Lord’s question about my right honourable friend Jacqui Smith, I speak as I have found. Since I have been working in the Home Office, from the end of June, I have been extremely impressed by her leadership; I have been extremely impressed by her probity; and, as she said, this was a complicated issue that was difficult to bottom-out. She made it clear in the Statement that the basis on which she acted was that it was only responsible to ensure that she was fully aware of the scale of the problem and took action to deal with it, rather than just put incomplete and potentially misleading information in the public domain. My experience from time in the MoD and elsewhere is that there are often many things which it would be unhelpful immediately to throw into the public domain. One has to be very careful with some things and make sure that one has bottomed them out. Sometimes it affects people who might leave jobs or move or involves the difficulty of catching them. We need to be very careful with such matters.


Secondary information

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
696 c384 
Session
2007-08
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
Subjects
Employment Licensing Immigration Identity cards Monitoring Migrant workers Security Security guards Work permits Security Industry Authority Border and Immigration Agency
Link
View this Proceeding contribution on www.publications.parliament.uk