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Christmas Adjournment

I am convinced in my heart that the carriers will go ahead, but why do the Government allow the speculation to continue? Why do they not, once and for all, give proper dates and stick to them? Yesterday, I asked the Secretary of State whether he could categorically assure the House, the country and, more importantly, people whose livelihood depends on the carriers that the dates that the Government have announced will be stuck to. It simply is not good enough to treat people in this way. We have to make a proper analysis of what we need to spend on defence. The Royal Navy is as important today as it has been in past generations, and the future of the naval base in Portsmouth is important in that respect. We should be looking to give the Royal Navy the resources that it needs to provide the punch that the Government demand of it by their overseas commitments and their use of force on occasion. Again, we cannot talk the talk without producing the right sort of resources. We should give clear direction to show our armed forces that there is a future for people who enlist in the Royal Navy, and to show those on the industrial side, in shipbuilding, that their careers will not be affected because the Government have changed their mind. Thirdly, I wish to discuss the way in which we deal with some immigration cases. I deal with a phenomenal number of these cases, and I would imagine that half the people in the two advice centres that I hold each week have an immigration case or a problem related in some way to one. I am amazed at the number of times that I have been able to get people removed from detention. Some of these people have been picked up off the street, or have been detained when they have gone to report to the police station, as they have to do on a weekly or fortnightly basis. Most recently, I encountered the case of somebody who was detained in the city of Portsmouth, taken to Heathrow the same day, and told that they were to be deported within 48 hours I spoke to the relevant Minister's office, and I was delighted that the Minister was able to stop that. More importantly—this was beyond belief—I discovered from the immigration officer dealing with the case at the Heathrow holding centre that the person could not be deported because his papers were deficient and the country to which he was to be deported would not have accepted him. We had probably spent several hundred—if not thousands—of pounds detaining that person, only for him to be freed again, returned to live at home and told that he had to continue to report. I asked why that had been done, but nobody has yet been able to give a satisfactory answer. The problem is that that case is one of a dozen or so cases in the past three months of people being detained, sometimes for a week or a fortnight, only to be released subsequently with no real account having been given of why they were detained in the first place and why they were subsequently released into exactly the same circumstances as before they were detained. Again, there appears to be a lack of coherence in the UK Border Agency's way of dealing with these cases. I am perfectly supportive of the idea that people who do not deserve, or do not have a right, to be here should be removed, but for goodness' sake let us do it in a way that everybody understands. We should not pick people up, detain them in a detention centre and threaten them daily that they are about to leave the country, when we know that we are not in a position to deport them to another country because they do not have the papers that would allow us to do so. How on earth can that be logical or in anyone's interests, least of all those of the Treasury, which must be at its wits' end with the UKBA's performance in dealing with such cases? I should tell the hon. Member for Leicester, South (Sir Peter Soulsby) that, sadly, Leicester is not alone when it comes to the operations of the Audit Commission. My city was criticised for having a high number of reported rape cases. We, the police and other agencies had actively encouraged women to come forward, and the next thing we knew we were accused of being the rape capital of the south. What on earth is up with an organisation that tries to co-ordinate an approach to certain issues but fails to understand the simple basics? If we encourage and give support to women to come forward and report rapes or attempted rapes, that will push the number—or the indices—of reported rape cases up. The commission failed to understand that. The hon. Member for Leicester, South is dead right to criticise the Audit Commission's understanding of the background to many of its statistics. It beggars belief that an agency that has so much clout, and that the Government listen to, is allowed to get away with such statements—