| Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill
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Mr. Heath: The Minister is right in saying that, but it does not actually concern me, because the purpose of the clause seems to be to deal with those who deliberately destroy the documents on which they would otherwise rely to establish their identity and citizenship. It is immaterial to me whether that is a passport or, in the case of someone who does not have a passport, for whatever reason, another document. If they destroy those documents deliberately to mislead Column Number: 46 the authorities, it is right to prosecute them on the basis of the clause, but if they do not do so deliberately and have an alternative means of identification on which they rely to establish their identity, it is equally right not to prosecute them simply for not having a passport.
3 pmBeverley Hughes: I return to the point that I made at the outset, which is that the intention behind the clause is to be able successfully to prosecute people who deliberately destroy documents that we know that they had on embarkation. Someone getting on a plane, a sea ferry or Eurostar would not be able to embark on those methods of transport unless they had a valid travel document. For most of the citizens that we are discussing, that would not normally be some form of identity card. It would be a passport, or a document equivalent to a passport. For those reasons, the clause as drafted rightly specifies immigration documents to a high standard. We can be sure that people had a document at the point at which they got on, for example, a plane. They could not get on a plane with some other form of identification, such as a birth certificate. They would have to have a passport or a document that satisfied the requirements in subsection (10)(b). To widen the scope of the clause to other documents would not only frustrate its intention but muddy the waters as to whom we are intending to prosecute with the offence. Mr. Garnier: We are trying to prevent people pretending that they are one sort of person when they are another. We are trying to prevent people coming into the UK claiming to be asylum seekers when, in fact, they are economic or other migrants. A passport, or in the absence of a passport or travel document, some other document such as that referred to in subsection (10)(b), will not help the Government to establish the proper status of a person presenting themselves at the port of entry. The Minister is allowing herself to be seduced into confusing the way in which she and I might accept a passport with the question of identity. A passport may not help us to establish a person's identity. It may simply be a document containing a self-serving statement, ''This is me, and I'm telling you it's me.'' Someone cannot really corroborate their own evidence in that respect. We should be careful that we are not lazily accepting that the passport or its equivalent is the best and only way of establishing identity. If we concentrate on the evil that we are trying to prevent, rather than on the means of establishing identity, we will reach a better conclusion. At present, the Minister is more concerned with process than with substance, although I accept that process is often important. I agree that personal reminiscences are not always helpful when we are trying to establish law, but I shall recount a brief anecdote. I was able to travel from a hotel in Spain across the border to Gibraltar and back to Gatwick airport and home on no more than a Barclaycard—I had left my passport in the hotel in Spain. I was travelling within the European Union but, none the less, my identity could not be established Column Number: 47 except by the fact that I said I was who I was. I said that my name was Edward Garnier, and the only way in which I could ''prove'' it—it was no proof—was to say, ''Here is a credit card, with my illegible signature on the back, and E. H. Garnier printed on the front.'' No one bothered to check whether I was Edward Garnier, and my wife—no doubt for good reasons—was not admitting that I was Edward Garnier. I think that I have just demonstrated why it is not always helpful to include personal reminiscences in matters such as this—although I am still married to her, by the way.That anecdote demonstrates to me that we should be careful about getting too excited about particular sorts of documents. We are trying to establish the real identity, in so far as one ever can, of the individual claiming to be an asylum applicant in front of the immigration officer. Beverley Hughes: As the hon. and learned Gentleman rightly admitted when he was recounting the anecdote, the journey that he undertook was by an EU citizen entirely within the EU. For that purpose, there are various mutual recognition agreements between EU countries on a number of documents that are not passports. However, that is not relevant in this context. We are not discussing issues concerned with the validity of the claim. Identity is important, and it is one of the reasons we want to introduce clause 2. We want to try to preserve information where we think people have started a journey with a record of identity, even if it is a false record or passport, because it helps us to track the route they came from and therefore their probable country of origin. The primary purpose of the clause, however, is to change people's behaviour—to stop them destroying documents, because that makes it more difficult for us to identify people. Hon. Members must remember that if we want to prosecute people we will have to take cases through courts of law. In those circumstances, it seems important that we restrict the cases, as we said that we largely would do, to those circumstances where we are sure that, because of the mode of travel—or, in some special circumstances, because of intelligence we have received—the person embarked with a document that met the requirements of the country they were leaving and their immigration control. That is a passport or a document that relates to a national of a state, as outlined in subsection (10)(b). In order to be able to apply the clause successfully and to be able to take cases successfully to the courts, it is important that we restrict our definition of ''immigration document'' to those documents that are internationally recognised as authentic documents for identity, nationality and the purposes of travel. It is in that way that we can successfully apply the clause, obtain some successful prosecutions and therefore reinforce the signal we are trying to send. Destroying documents is not acceptable behaviour and we will respond to that behaviour with prosecutions and therefore, I hope, start to break the power of the facilitators, who often tell people to destroy their Column Number: 48 documents. If people keep their documents, we will be able to identify them and take them through the process in a better way.Mr. Heath: The Minister has not addressed the—what was intended to be helpful—drafting of my amendments. I pull her up on that. She has partly answered them en passant in saying that she needs the definition of a passport or something similar. I hope that she might agree that it is still unhelpful to have the term ''immigration document'' in consecutive clauses defined in different ways. In this clause, she is talking about a travel document, not an immigration document as defined in clause 3. Will she look at the matter to see if there is a more felicitous way of wording the two clauses? Beverley Hughes: I raised the matter myself. As Members will have discovered for themselves as they have gone through the Bill in some detail, although superficially it looks confusing that ''immigration document'' is defined one way in clause 2 and another in clause 3, that is because the documents referred to in those clauses are completely different documents. Mr. Heath: Exactly. Beverley Hughes: But I do not think that it is unreasonable. The term ''immigration document'' is a generic term used in the legislation, but within the confines of each of those clauses it is defined specifically. Here, as the hon. Gentleman rightly says, it is restricted to a travel document that would be accepted internationally, but in clause 3 it refers to additions to travel documents such as cards, stickers and vignettes. It is right that the different definitions are pointed out. ''Immigration document'' is a very wide generic term. It could mean many other things besides those referred to in clauses 2 and 3, but in each of those clauses there is a specific definition to say which immigration document is being referred to for the purposes of each of the two clauses. With that, I hope that I have reassured the hon. Gentleman that to go down the route of the amendments would not achieve what he seeks. It would muddy the waters on the clause's implementation. I respectfully ask him not to press the amendment. Mr. Malins: I am not convinced by the Minister's reply. Periodically, during her speech, she said that the Government's intention is only to catch people who destroy documents that we know that they had. We all agree with that. I assure the Minister—let her be in no doubt—that no member of the Committee dissents from the view that those who destroy their travel documents with the intention of denying to the host country the ability to find out who they are, should be punished for that. However, that is not what the clause says. If the clause said what the Minister says she has in mind as the mischief, we should understand it, but the clause does not say that at all. It does not use the phrase ''destruction of documents''. It uses the phrase
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As I told the Minister earlier, there must be thousands of genuine refugees who have never had a passport, and cannot get one or its equivalent. When they arrive in this country, there is no doubt that, under the clause, they will be guilty of an offence. Is the Minister seeking a method whereby people's identity must be known to the immigration officer? Is not that what she wants? The immigration officer must know with whom he or she is dealing and from what country they come. What about Zimbabweans, for example? Removals to Zimbabwe have been suspended for, I think, a couple of years. However, what about somebody who is a member of the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, and is being prosecuted? First, they cannot obtain a passport in Zimbabwe—end of story. Secondly, they cannot obtain the equivalent of a document giving them lawful permission to travel. So what do they do? They go over the border to South Africa, usually. They will probably obtain a visa to enter the UK and buy a South African passport or travel document. Interestingly, their genuineness as a refugee may not be open to doubt, but they will arrive at Heathrow with a false travel document and passport from South Africa in their pocket. It will become plain within hours, from documentary evidence, that they are a leading member of the Zimbabwean opposition and undoubtedly entitled, as such, to have their asylum claim heard and decided. The lack of flexibility in the clause means that they cannot pray in aid their proof that they are a member of the Zimbabwean opposition. They have not, by the way, destroyed their passport or travel documents, but those are not valid. They cannot be enforced, because false documents cannot be enforced. My amendment seeks to highlight the problem of those tens of thousands of people who cannot obtain the documentation that the Minister requires of them because, under the clause, an immigration document is a passport or a document that is designed to serve the same purpose as a passport. Thousands of people who are genuine refugees have never had such documentation and cannot obtain it. What does the Minister want from them? She does not actually want a passport. She does not actually want a travel document. She wants proof of who they are, which is what is required. All my amendment seeks to do is to widen the clause a little to enable people, through another document, to prove who they are, because they cannot obtain the first two documents. That is what the Minister wants and my amendment would help towards that end.
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