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Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

Perhaps I may make a brief intervention. I have taken an interest in the subject of security amid these islands and have alluded to it during this Committee stage. I did not speak to the amendments moved by my noble friend Lady Hanham because I realised the Government’s motivation behind this clause and therefore gave them the benefit of the doubt until I had heard their case. However, I make one small warning on a matter which the noble Lord mentioned in his concluding remarks, and that relates to the British-Irish Inter-Parliamentary Body. It was founded in 1990, arising out of the Anglo-Irish agreement, and the unionists were not prepared to join it because that was its origin. My noble friend Lord King of Bridgwater, who had been Secretary of State in Northern Ireland at the time that the agreement was signed in 1985, served on the body from 1992 to 1997, when I took his place and served until 2007. The body has been an outstanding success in improving relations and reducing suspicions between Members of this Parliament and Members of the Dáil. After the Belfast agreement, we were joined by elected representatives from the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. I understand that the unionists are now to join the body, which is a good index of improved relations within Northern Ireland, but ironically it occurs at the very moment when the body is wondering what its purpose will be from now on. At least in the short term, I congratulate the Government on having given a raison d’être to the body, which is shortly to meet for one of its semi-annual plenary sessions in County Donegal—a meeting which may well occur before this Bill concludes its passage through this House. The body meets alternately between the Republic and Great Britain. The one cautionary word that I utter is that, if this Parliament has had difficulty in knowing what the Government are about, it may well be that, when the group that I have described comes together in County Donegal within the next month or so, it will have the same degree of ignorance of exactly what is happening. I mention quietly—the noble Lord will already have realised this—that, because it is on Irish soil, it will be Irish Ministers who answer the questions.