Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill [back to previous text]

Mr. Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con): I do not want to die in any ditches either, particularly after today's rain, but I invite the Government to have another think. I want to deal with the question of the immigration document. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) pointed out that there is a different definition for ''immigration document'' in clause 2 from that in clause 3. Clause 3(3) amends the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981 so that ''immigration document'' means a ''card, adhesive label or other instrument''. Applicants for asylum who go before the immigration officer may not have a piece of paper that comes under the definition of a passport or a document that relates to a national of a state other than the United Kingdom and is designed to serve the same purpose as a passport. However, to use an historical example, what would happen to someone who escaped from a Nazi concentration camp during the second world war but had an identity number tattooed on his arm? Is that not one way of establishing the identity of the bearer of that tattoo? But it is not a document. Had the Bill been in force in 1940 to 1945 or thereabouts, that person would not have been able to establish to the Column Number: 43 satisfaction of the immigration officer that he had a means of identification that came within the terms of the Bill, still less within the terms of clause 3. 2.45 pm We need to be a little more imaginative about ways of establishing identity. That is our important objective here. We want to prevent people from presenting themselves at ports of entry and deceiving immigration officers about their identity. It is unimportant whether they have a passport or some other means of identification—what is really important is who they are and whether that can be established to the officer's satisfaction. Passports can be forged. Other documents can be forged. We need to consider other means of establishing identity. Let me give another example. What about a military dog tag? Soldiers in action have around their necks a chain with a brass plate engraved with their name and military number. If a Government lose their authority because of a rebellion or a revolution and a former member of that country's armed forces ends up at Heathrow, is he to be denied the right to establish his identity simply because he can produce only a military dog tag? I ask the Committee to forget about all the difficulties of getting on a plane without a passport and so on. I merely mention the problem to show that while subsections (1) and (10) and clause 3(3) look neat and tidy they may produce opportunities for the sorts of injustices that I was describing before we adjourned this morning. It is easy to dismiss my concerns as mere debating points, but I hope that the Minister will take them rather more seriously than that. Even if she does not accept my detailed examples, perhaps she will accept my motive for presenting them, so that she can deal with them rather more cogently than I have. There it is. The Bill, whatever its general policy, throws up some problems, and it is the duty of all members of the Committee to consider them. I trust that the Minister will be able to deal with the points that I have raised. Mr. Tom Harris (Glasgow, Cathcart) (Lab): I rise briefly in defence of the comma, and specifically to talk about amendment No. 52. One of the joys of serving on Committees is that, as someone who is not a trained lawyer, and therefore probably in a minority, I find it interesting to look at how syntax and punctuation can change the meaning of sentences. I was given as a Christmas present by my son a book by Lynne Truss called, ''Eats, Shoots & Leaves''. At the risk of boring the Committee, I should explain that the title is based on a story of a panda who walks into a cafe, orders and eats a sandwich, and then stands up, takes out a gun, fires two shots in the air and walks out. When the waiter asks him why he is doing that, the animal says, ''I'm a panda, look it up,'' and throws the waiter a badly punctuated dictionary. The definition of panda says, ''Eats, shoots and leaves.'' Amendment No. 52 would insert a comma after the word ''identity'' which would render the sentence completely different from that in the clause as drafted and mean that establishing the person's identity would be an option. We should not frame measures that allow people who come into Column Number: 44 the country to establish which country they came from and perhaps their citizenship but not to establish who they actually are. Surely, the point of the Bill is to identify who individuals are. It is far easier to impersonate a citizen of a specified country than it is to impersonate a specific individual. If the amendment were accepted it would undermine the point of the clause. Beverley Hughes: The amendments would make it not an offence to arrive without a valid passport or other document for that purpose if a person can produce some other documentation, including an out-of-date passport, which satisfactorily establishes identity and nationality or citizenship for themselves or their children. That would mean that a person could produce any sort of document purporting to establish their identity, nationality or citizenship. I shall make some specific points, but it is important at the outset to go back to the intention of the clause, which we discussed this morning: it is to catch those who deliberately destroy the documents that they used for embarkation to the UK in the first place. It is not to catch the people who may be able to arrive here without the passport or other documentation that enables them to travel but perhaps with some evidence of experiences testifying to their claim to be refugees and in need of asylum. The clause is not to catch those people; it is precisely to catch people who we believe have deliberately destroyed their documents. There are several reasons why accepting the amendments would compromise the intention of the clause. First, if someone could produce any other sort of document to establish their identity, nationality or citizenship, the task for the immigration service, the police and the prosecution would be to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the documents did not establish any of these, or indeed were forgeries. Given that the documents could come from any part of the world, possibly from different kinds of organisation, and by definition, in comparison with a passport, could be easily forged, the burden of proof beyond reasonable doubt on our prosecuting authorities would be very difficult and unreasonable. Secondly, even if we or the courts were satisfied that the documents established identity, nationality or citizenship, there is no guarantee at the end of the asylum process, if people's claims are not accepted, that the country of nationality or citizenship would be satisfied that that document was sufficient for them to accept back a person whom we needed to return. I made it clear to hon. Members that as well as trying to change people's behaviour so that they do not destroy documents, one of the main purposes of the proposal is to ensure that, at the point of claim, by avoiding the destruction of documents, as far as possible we can identify a person and establish their nationality with a high level of credibility. Thus we can do what hon. Members on both sides of the Committee want: return more people whose claims fail. That would be very difficult if we accepted at the outset of the process a document that the very countries from which those people came would not accept as sufficient proof of nationality. Column Number: 45 Mr. Jon Owen Jones (Cardiff, Central) (Lab/Co-op): My right hon. Friend stated that all hon. Members present want to ensure that we can send back people whose claims are false. Presumably, at some point in our proceedings, some parties will table amendments that are designed to help us in that process. It is early days yet, and so far all the amendments have been weakening amendments, but at some point certain parties may table strengthening amendments. Beverley Hughes: I am sure that, in saying that, my hon. Friend has in mind the comments made at the outset by the hon. Member for Woking that there is shame on any system if people are not returned successfully when their claims fail. The intention of the clause is that at the point at which we receive people, when we know that they had a document at embarkation, they retain that document, precisely so that we can return people. I would be interested in any amendments from any quarter that help us to strengthen the potential of the clause. The amendments would have problematic consequences in terms of the overall intention and objective of the clause. Let us consider the amendments from another point of view. Widening the scope of the clause in this way might have unintended consequences, even given what may be the hon. Gentleman's objectives. Let us say that the clause was amended to include other documents, and we applied the same approach to other documents as the clause applies to passports and the rest of the documents identified in subsection (10). A much wider group of people—the kind that he described, who perhaps had never had a passport but could be expected to have another kind of identity document—could be at risk of prosecution if we thought that they should have had a lesser identity document but had destroyed it en route. Let us suppose that people entered the country clandestinely, hidden in a vehicle, and did not have a passport, but we reasonably thought that they might have had some identity document. They then claimed asylum in country at a screening unit and either admitted that they had destroyed such a document so that we could not identify them, or were believed by us to have done so. Such people would, under the amendment, be within the scope of prosecution under the clause. I have made it clear that, according to the limits of the definitions in subsection (10), the clause is intended to catch only people who deliberately destroy either a passport or another travel document of the same level of authenticity.

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