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Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that explanation. I should like to take a straw poll across the House to determine which noble Lords have understood what the general customs functions and the general revenue functions will be. As he clearly indicated, they are still as opaque as they were originally. I am extremely grateful to him for trying to help us out on the allocation of these functions and their definition, both in the explanation that he gave this afternoon and in the long letter that he sent prior to our laying the amendments. However, as I say, I do not think that anything has taken us much further in obtaining transparency about what these duties are. Without referring to several other pieces of legislation, it is still difficult to know what is involved and what the exact functions covered under the general customs functions are and what is covered under those given to the Director of Border Revenue. As we understand it—the Minister has tried to explain this today—the intention is that, as regards the customs matters, only those functions of HMRC that relate to the importation and exportation of goods will be passed to the UK Border Agency and only functions relating to customs and excise duties, agricultural levies and VAT as regards the importation or exportation of goods will pass to the Director of Border Revenue. The Minister rather decried the extremely helpful list that he sent, which seemed to me to delineate carefully what those functions will be and what powers are to be passed across. However, unfortunately, the Minister dismissed it as not being very helpful. I am sorry about that because I think that the list—