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Richmond upon Thames Liberal Democrats:Covering the constituencies of Twickenham and Richmond Park |
Brake, Huppert and Hancock quiz May on border controls
November 12, 2011 8:05 PM
• [Nov 07] Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington, Liberal Democrat): DOES the Home Secretary expect any of the reviews that she has initiated to recommend that retrospective checks be carried out on any people who got into the UK over the period in question and on whom partial information had been captured, and what would such retrospective checks involve?
51)
Theresa May (Home Secretary; Maidenhead, Conservative): I do not expect the investigations by Dave Wood and Mike Anderson to come up with such a recommendation, because they are specifically examining what happened in relation to certain individuals. Chief inspector John Vine's report will tell us in more detail what has happened over the period in question across the board, rather than at just a number of ports. I have to say, however, that I doubt that he will come forward with specific recommendations on any individual.
• . . Julian Huppert (Cambridge, Liberal Democrat): There has been a catalogue of problems in UKBA for many years, as was shown in a recent Select Committee report before this case took place. We had seen the disasters of the asylum backlog, which has not quite gone away; poor decision making; cases being dropped; and a huge number of successful appeal rates. Fixing this has defeated many previous Home Secretaries, so how can we be sure that this one will resolve it?
54)
Theresa May: I thank my hon. Friend for that question. He is right to say that over the years-this is the point I have been making-successive Governments have come across difficulties in the operation of UKBA, or its predecessor organisation in the Home Office, in relation to security checks and border controls. This coalition Government are taking the right steps, by establishing the border police command, to strengthen our ability to deal with controls at our border. But, as I indicated in my answer to Keith Vaz, it will of course be for us to look at any recommendations that come from the chief inspector's investigation in order to see whether further action is necessary to put in place what we all want: a system to ensure that UKBA can maintain the security of our borders in the way we wish.
• . . Mike Hancock (Portsmouth South, Liberal Democrat): I hope that the Home Secretary will not mind me saying so, but she sounds today like she is more on autopilot than anything else. Does she recollect being given a report about the pilot at the end of September? If she did not see it, which of her Ministers did?
59)
Theresa May: As I indicated in my statement, it was decided in the middle of September to extend the pilot until this week. If that is the report the hon. Gentleman is talking about, we of course looked at it and considered whether we should extend the pilot.
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