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Immigration

As the hon. Gentleman knows, there are no border controls between southern Ireland and Northern Ireland because we all subsist in the common travel area. However, I am happy to tell him, as I think I have before in this House, that I am shortly to visit Dublin to sign a memorandum of understanding with the Irish Government that will strengthen the common travel area. He makes a valid point, from his constituency interest in the port of Stranraer, that we need to ensure that the common travel area is as robust as it should be. I am determined to do that and so are the Government of the Irish Republic. Under e-Borders, we already screen more than 90% of non-EU flights and more than 55% of all flights into and out of the UK. We are continually extending the number of routes and carriers covered. More than 10,000 wanted criminals, including murderers, rapists and those responsible for smuggling drugs or humans into the country, have been arrested at the border as a result of such advance passenger screening. As a result of joint working with the French authorities and the use of improved technology, it has become even more difficult for clandestines to evade border controls. That has resulted in a significant reduction in the number of attempts to cross illegally from France to Dover from more than 29,000 in 2009 to 9,700 in 2010. That is a significant strengthening of our border between Calais and Dover. To move on to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), we are tackling those who come here illegally as well as those who have come for a limited amount of time and then not gone home. We are making life more uncomfortable for those people. Those who are not compliant in one area usually are not compliant in others. We are therefore working ever more with organisations such as the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, the NHS and credit reference agencies to track people down and encourage them to go home of their own accord. We tell credit reference agencies about illegal immigrants so that they cannot easily access credit. We are also focusing on criminals who facilitate people staying here illegally, such as sham marriage facilitators and passport factories. The UKBA and Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs are working together to come down hard on rogue businesses that use illegal labour to evade tax and minimum wage laws. The first year of that joint work resulted in more than 130 arrests and potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds of tax liabilities for HMRC. A targeted campaign this summer saw more than 550 arrests. We are seeing the results. On 25 November, a Moroccan serial fraudster who used a fake identity to get British citizenship and claim an estimated £400,000 in benefits was sentenced to nearly seven years in prison. Last month, a Vietnamese woman was found guilty of conspiracy to facilitate and smuggle immigrants from Vietnam to Europe and was sentenced to five years in prison at Maidstone Crown court.