Border Checks Summer 2011

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

We have heard a lot about the intricate detail of this policy, but I want to pose two key questions. First, what is the role in the Government of the Home Secretary and her Minister for Immigration? The second question concerns the Government’s overall approach to immigration policy.

Let us wind back to the end of last year. The chief executive of the UK Border Agency announced that she would be leaving her post, and from January she took up another post in Whitehall. At that point, an acting chief executive was appointed, while several acting directors were also in post—as I understand it, some of them remain in post. Of eight posts, up to five at any one time were acting. All were operational posts—not backroom posts, but front-line operational director posts. On 26 September, the new chief executive of UKBA was appointed.

Ministers, and the Minister for Immigration in particular, had a strong responsibility to ensure leadership and continuity at a time when there were so many acting officials. It was his responsibility, in particular, to watch the detail, to ask the questions and to set the direction. Clearly the Home Secretary had a role, but I have been a junior Minister supporting a Home Secretary, and I know that the role of a junior Minister is to look at the detail and to ensure that the Home Secretary has what she needs to do her job. So why has the Minister for Immigration been so silent? Was he reading the detail of the briefings sent to him, and was he watching the Home Secretary’s back? She is protecting him now, and he should be very grateful. The named civil servants who have been condemned publicly in the House and elsewhere have not had the same cover. In his closing remarks, will the Minister tell us what progress reports he received from officials, what action he took to ensure that the pilot, as outlined, took place and where the pitfalls were?

Immigration is a complex project, and it needs that oversight. On the approach to immigration policy, the talk was tough. “Let’s reduce the numbers,” they said, “to tens of thousands, and let’s go back to the levels of the 1980s and early 1990s.” They wanted to create a new border force, forgetting that, actually, UKBA was, in effect, that very thing. The rhetoric on immigration and migration was great, but the actions have been weak. At the same time as all this rhetoric, the Minister for Immigration, in a little-known side move as he abolished identity cards, abandoned fingerprint biometrics in passports. The reason he was appointed to the Home Office was to abolish identity cards, but in the process, he threatened the security of the British passport and, therefore, part of our immigration system. He threw out with the bathwater the precious baby of our security.

We have e-Borders, but only for some and only when it suits the Government. Then, let us look at the budget issues. We saw a 23% reduction in the Home Office budget, and it is naive to think that we can conduct a modern immigration service with fewer resources. I know, because I have been in such meetings in the past, that the Department for Transport, the airlines and the operators will have been putting immense pressure on the Home Office to reduce queues. However, the Home Office’s job is to maintain the integrity of security. It seems that it crumbled, but that is hardly surprising, given that it took its lead from No. 11 Downing Street, because, ultimately, those cuts to the budget led to a cut in service.

The buck stops with the Minister for Immigration, the Home Secretary and, ultimately, No. 10 and No. 11. By cutting too far, too fast and at any cost, the Government have put the security of our borders at risk.