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Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

The noble Baroness has raised an extremely important matter and we support the amendments. The provision is simply that the director must be satisfied, but we do not know what criteria will satisfy him; they are not laid down anywhere in the Bill. The word ““adequate”” is extremely vague, as the noble Baroness said. Earlier, the Minister told us that customs officers who are to carry out UKBA duties would be given 14 weeks’ training, although he did not say what that training would consist of. If it were intensive training, I can imagine that 14 weeks may well be adequate. One knows that it is possible to have immersion courses that teach people a large amount of information in a short space of time, such as the Foreign Office has for language training. We need to know a little more about this before we leave the subject, because simply to have the wording in the Bill that the director must be satisfied without telling us how he will satisfy himself and the use of the vague word ““adequate”” will not reassure those who have to deal with the officials that they will receive top-quality training and that they will be as qualified as is necessary to enable them to do the job properly. I sincerely hope that we will receive a lot more information from the Minister in answer to the amendment.