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Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [Lords]

I very much agree with the right hon. Gentleman, and I was going to come to that later. We had a greatly truncated debate about trafficking, about which I share his concern. As he says, I have lavished the Minister with praise, but I now wish to express deep concern about some matters. Before I come to trafficking, I begin with the common travel area. Although the Minister has withdrawn the Government's original proposal and accepted an amendment to remove it, which is welcome, he used the word "necessary" to describe the Government's proposed changes and said that he proposed to return to them later. That struck me as a clear signal that we are not out of the woods and that the common travel area is still under threat. It is therefore worth rehearsing some of the arguments that won the day in another place. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) that they also won the day in Committee. The Government's proposals, which the Minister has just described as "necessary", are offensive in principle to many of our fellow citizens. They are reckless with regard to the constitutional implications for Britain's relations with its dependencies, and if they were ever implemented, which he said he still intended to do, they would prove ineffective. He knows that the practical application of them would be fatally undermined by the fact that the land border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic is simply not policed. That is for good, historic reasons that we all know, but it means that it is simply non-existent as a security barrier.