Keith Vaz
Main Page: Keith Vaz (Labour - Leicester East)Department Debates - View all Keith Vaz's debates with the Home Office
(13 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Damian Green
First, may I add my good wishes to my hon. Friend on reaching his 39th birthday? I assure him that the Government are keenly aware not only of the key issues he has raised but that he and his Committee will be scrutinising what the Government do. Indeed, as the negotiations are likely to go on for at least a year, if not longer, there will undoubtedly be opportunities for the Committee to return to its perfectly proper scrutiny arrangements during that time.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
May I also support the Government’s decision to opt in to this directive? The Minister has dealt adequately with the two issues raised by the Home Affairs Committee when it considered the matter—privacy and cost—but will he confirm that the information being collected will not be shared outside the EU? It had been suggested that it might be given to other countries, such as the United States. Secondly, will he also assure us that now that the contracts have been issued under the e-Borders programme, which of course suffered an unfortunate delay under the previous Government, it will be fully operational by 2014, when he may still be the Immigration Minister?
Damian Green
The right hon. Gentleman always paints a happy prospect of life ahead. I am grateful for his support and on the data protection issues I can say that the British information will be dealt with by the British Government, so we will not see the random international sharing of information that he suggests—I agree that that would be bad for data protection issues. On the e-Borders system, we are indeed proceeding with letting the new contracts. We already have more than 90% of routes outside the EU covered by e-Borders and we hope that within the next 12 months that coverage will be more or less complete, so that will proceed quickly. Clearly the biggest single gap in the e-Borders coverage is within the EU, which is what this directive is very precisely going to help us with.