Lord Grocott
Main Page: Lord Grocott (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Grocott's debates with the Home Office
(2 days, 7 hours ago)
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Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
As noble Lords will know, we have negotiated the French pilot for the first time with the French to ensure that we have detention in the UK and return to France. As I said in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Massey, we intend to have returns under that scheme imminently. That is a pilot scheme; it will be assessed, and the intention, if both parties think it is valuable, is to increase its capacity over time to meet our obligations. In the meantime, there are a number of legal routes that people can apply to. There are asylum claims that individuals can make. We have put in additional support to speed up those asylum claims to determine who can stay and who can go. It is the responsibility of any responsible Government to try to deal with this with constructive solutions, of which I know the noble Lord is supportive. I look forward to his support in evaluating the success of the French pilot.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
Does my noble friend agree that we would be in a far better position to deal with issues like border security, access to services and knowing who is in the country illegally and who is not if the last Labour Government’s identity card scheme had not been scrapped by the Tories and the Liberals?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble friend for reminding me that, when I was last a Minister in the Home Office, we had an identity card scheme in place that was scrapped by the then-incoming Coalition Government of 2010-2015. It is an expensive business to re-jig ID cards, but all options are always being examined by this Government. I am genuinely sorry that the Coalition Government took the decision at the time to scrap that deal.