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Immigration (Biometric Registration) (Amendment) Regulations 2009

My Lords, forgive me for my momentary lapse of memory. The noble Baroness made the point that there were only three. That is not the whole point. First, there were three successful prosecutions. Also, I stated that others are in the pipeline which we expect to go down the same route. The other important thing is the number of people refused on the basis that they failed when coming to seek the documentation. Therefore, this has had rather more impact than the noble Baroness suggested by saying that only three people had been apprehended. That is in the first few months, so one would expect, as it rolls out to greater numbers and there are people seeking entry by subterfuge, there to be more prosecutions and more successful detentions and successful refusals. I hope that that takes all the points made into account. This has been a thoughtful debate and I appreciate the points made. We believe that the introduction of ID cards is supporting our efforts to secure our border and reduce abuses of our Immigration Rules and laws. It is also part of our wider national identity scheme. We focused initially on issuing cards to foreign nationals to make it easy for employers, education providers and public services to check whether a person is entitled to work, study or access benefits in this country. That is where we believe that employers would gain some benefit from individuals having those documents. In support of that, we have engaged widely with stakeholders from various organisations, from representatives of employers of foreign nationals to student bodies and government departments. That fits in with our efforts to challenge illegal working and other abuses of our Immigration Rules and laws. Having recovered from my pain at being accused of choosing only soft targets, I will add that selective rollout will enable us to increase this gradually and, at the same time, increase the availability of places where applicants may enrol their biometric features, expanding the system across the country. We will again return to Parliament to seek further approval when we decide to roll this out to other categories of foreign nationals required to apply for identity cards. We are determined that only those foreign nationals here legally will benefit from the privilege of working and living in Britain. As such, I commend the regulations to the House.