Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Third sitting)

Katie Lam Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)]

We on the Opposition Benches struggle to understand why the law must set out that the Border Security Commander must be a civil servant. The Minister said that amendment 10 implies the commander should not be a civil servant, but all it seeks to do is remove the requirement that they should be. If the Home Secretary and, presumably, the Home Office permanent secretary believe that the role is best filled by a civil servant, perhaps for the reasons of co-ordination that the Minister set out, so be it—they can still be appointed as a civil servant—but the legislation will mandate that they have to be, and we struggle to understand why that requirement is necessary.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I made it clear in my response to the hon. Member for Stockton West that the recruitment could be done externally. Were somebody to be appointed who was not a civil servant when they applied, they would then come into the Home Office on civil service terms, bringing with them whatever experience they had and that the recruitment process had determined would be suitable for the role. I am not sure there is much between us, unless the hon. Lady is implying that, by the act of becoming a civil servant, the commander would somehow be less effective. I do not believe that is the case, especially as the idea is to ensure that the Border Security Commander can convene the entire system across Government Departments. Having a base in the Home Office, albeit designated as a civil servant, will make that more effective rather than less effective. To be clear, if the legislation gets on the statute book, any future office holder would not have to come from the civil service. I hope that reassures the hon. Lady.

[Katie Lam]

I thank the Minister for that response, which is reassuring, but it does not quite address the concern. These issues are very difficult, and I presume the Minister accepts that it is possible that it might be better, either in due course or in relatively short order, for the commander to be operationally independent. If that is the Home Secretary’s judgment as time goes on, the Government will have to come back to Parliament to change the law. Would it not be better for them to give themselves the flexibility?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

The hon. Lady implies that total independence from the machinery of government would somehow assist in the job that we wish the Border Security Commander to do. I do not agree with her in that analysis. The job of the Border Security Commander is to convene and cohere and to strategically focus, across Government Departments, with a focus on checking that our border security is as effective as it can be. I do not think that total independence is going to add to effectiveness in that context. In fact, we believe that having the commander operating out of the Home Office at a director general level, but appointed by the Prime Minister with a special place in primary legislation, is a more effective way to ensure that the commander’s basic role has the biggest-percentage likelihood of being effective.

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[Dame Angela Eagle]

I do not want to read out the job description, which was put out there ahead of Martin Hewitt being appointed last year. It is there for all to see, it is a public document. The role is very much about being able to operationally cohere the system and to make certain by the operation of the Border Security Commander’s board, upon which sit many of the other parts of Government that need to have regard to the strategy, that we decide how to take forward and deal with threats to our border security. It is not really rocket science, and I do not think that there would be much to be gained from putting the details of all of that into primary legislation.

It is important that as the threats to our border security evolve, which they certainly will do over time, that we do not find ourselves with a very rigid set of requirements in primary legislation, which is hard to change. The idea is to have convening powers to give flexibility to the commander to ensure that he can bring together all of the forces across Government that are charged with security in this area and ensure that the focus on organised immigration, crime and border security is always at the forefront of the work that they do.

[Katie Lam]

I am a little confused by some of the contributions from Labour Members. They seem to be advocating for the commander to be a civil servant, and that is fine, but that is not actually what we are discussing. The question here is whether there could be any benefit in having some flexibility for the Home Secretary to do something different, and we do not feel that that point has been answered.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Could the hon. Lady go into more detail about what she means with respect to that? I have given her an assurance that the Border Security Commander could come from outside of the civil service and be appointed from outside of the civil service, but would then take up a civil service role of convening within Government and with the support of Government. That means that we do not have to set up an entirely new independent structure and fund it separately, which would be more likely to disintegrate rather than integrate the strategic approach to this multifaceted problem. I am beginning to wonder what the hon Lady has got against civil servants?

[Katie Lam]

Nothing whatever. There are lots of parts of the Home Office where the principle is accepted, that sometimes, particularly for difficult things and things that the Department has struggled to achieve, independence can be valuable. It sounds like the Minister is saying that she does not feel that that is the case. We must accept that, but we do not have to agree with it.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

It is true that independence has a very valuable part to play, particularly in holding Government structures to account. For example, the independent inspectors of our detention or prison estates who are allowed to go in and publish without fear or favour regarding what they find there. That is obviously a very important role where independence matters. But in this context, the Border Security Commander is cohering the effect and the work across Government that is trying to keep our borders properly protected. That is operational. It ties into the diplomatic and political as well, although obviously Ministers have an important part to play in that too.

The hon. Lady has nothing to worry about when it comes to the Border Security Commander sitting in a civil service context given that nothing in this Bill means that anyone who was not a civil servant when they applied to the post of Border Security Commander would be excluded from consideration. Being in the civil service to begin with is not a requirement.

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[Dame Angela Eagle]

It is quite revealing that the hon. Gentleman seems to think that the natural order of things is for Ministers to be at loggerheads with civil servants and the people who are operationally charged with delivering on objectives. That may say more about Opposition Members than about the way we are seeking to achieve operational effectiveness and objectives in what we are doing.

Finally, new clause 21 focuses on the Border Security Commander’s functions in relation to tackling small boat crossings to the UK. This is an all-encompassing new clause, which goes far beyond the commander’s functions as set out in the Bill. The new clause seems to want the commander to be all things to all people.

The immediate priority is organised immigration crime-enabled small boat crossings. The Border Security Commander will, and necessarily must, evolve over time to provide the systems leadership across all threats as they emerge. Such crossings did not really emerge until 2018, but they have become embedded and more of a threat over time. Had we been discussing something like this in 2017, small boat crossings would not have featured at all. It is therefore important that our legislation allows the Border Security Commander to change approach or focus as new threats emerge. Threats evolve and change over time. Our approach accounts for that by stipulating in legislation that the Border Security Commander has particular objectives that might be important now but less important in the future. The new clause seems to me to present an overly difficult and inflexible way of moving forward.

[Katie Lam]

Presumably, it would always remain an objective to bring an end to illegal migration, as far as is practical?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Yes.

I was going to talk about what new clause 21 suggests we should do. For example, the subsection on asylum processing seems to say that the Border Security Commander should somehow take over the duty to ensure that those who arrive illegally are processed within six months—something that the Conservatives did not achieve at all during their time in Government. I am not certain why the Border Security Commander should be empowered to take over the entirety of the asylum system.

Next, the new clause states that the commander should also be in charge of immigration enforcement, and that they should do removals as well as asylum processing and defending the border. The authors of the new clause seem to think that the Border Security Commander should be not only independent, but virtually all-seeing, all-singing and all-dancing, and that they should do absolutely everything with which the entire immigration and asylum system is currently charged. That is overreach, to say the least.

The new clause also suggests that the commander should remove people to a safe third place within six months for processing. In all their years in office, the Conservatives never managed to achieve any of those things. To put them into a new clause for a Government that has been in office for seven months—a Government who were left with the most appalling mess, with an asylum system that had crashed and had massive backlogs, and with a structure in the Illegal Migration Act that made it illegal for us to process any new arrivals who claimed asylum after March 2023—and to complain that we have not sent small boat arrivals home fast enough takes the biscuit.

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[Dame Angela Eagle]

Not for the first time today, I agree with my hon. Friend. When the time comes, we will be voting against this new clause.

[Katie Lam]

The Minister perhaps slightly mischaracterises new clause 21. It states that the Border Security Commander should “have regard to”, not manage, the wider aims of the Home Office in securing the border. Why would the Minister not want the Border Security Commander to have regard to that?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

New clause 21(1)(c) talks about:

“making arrangements with a safe third country for the removal of a person who enters the United Kingdom without leave, or with leave that was obtained by deception”

and new clause 21(1)(b) mentions:

“ensuring that a decision is taken on a claim by a person under subsection (1)(a) within six months of the person’s arrival in the United Kingdom”.

If that is not asking the Border Security Commander to take over the workings of the asylum system, I am not sure I understand what the new clause is trying to do.

[Katie Lam]

The new clause clearly does not do that. The two points that the Minister just mentioned are part of a broader sentence that states that the Border Security Commander

“must have regard to the objectives”

in subsection (1). The new clause does not state that the Border Security Commander should do those things themselves.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

But how on earth could asking the Border Security Commander to have regard to those things lead him or her to deal with border security? The new clause would take away the focus in the current Home Office arrangements on immigration enforcement and the asylum system. The new clause says that the Border Security Commander must have regard to all the processes in areas of the Department they have nothing to do with. It would upend working relationships. It would make it impossible and incoherent to deliver any kind of—