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Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

My Lords, first, I apologise for intervening for the first time in this Bill at Report stage. With respect, I found the Minister’s arguments in Committee less than satisfactory. However, I am probably one of those Members of this House who, as a rule, are most inclined to support the authorities in their efforts to fight terrorism, crime and so on. I do so both by temperament and from my experience in government. I also have the honour to represent your Lordships’ House, among others, on the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly. As my noble friend Lord Glentoran mentioned, I was there earlier this week. I found a good deal of, first, confusion and, secondly, concern among the parliamentary representatives of both the Republic of Ireland—and, for that matter, Northern Ireland—and the Crown dependencies who were present. They were nearly all Back-Bench representatives of their various Parliaments and Assemblies. With regard to the confusion of the meaning, to which my noble friend Lord Glentoran referred, it seems to me, although I am not a lawyer, absolutely clear that the effect of this clause is to subject to control under the immigration Acts those arriving in the UK from any of the islands or the Republic of Ireland. That is clearly what it does. It takes out the words which stop them being under the control of the Immigration Act 1971 and all that has flowed from it since. At the same time, it also says that they shall not require leave to enter the United Kingdom on so arriving, and it refers to that as the ““common travel area””. That is the source of the confusion: the immigration Acts apply but, on the other hand, people are free to come and go. That, I think, is the first difficulty in all this. So far as concerns my journey to Northern Ireland and onwards to Donegal, my noble friend Lord Glentoran said that I was seized upon at Belfast City Airport. If I may say so respectfully to my noble friend, that is a bit of an exaggeration, although a gentleman in a nice suit asked me for my passport or some identification. Although it was not at all obvious from any uniform or anything else, I believe that he belonged to the UK Border Agency. I produced a House of Lords pass.