Immigration Bill

The interesting thing about clause 1 is that it reads as follows: “This Act is the Immigration Act 2007.” “Hark”, I say to myself, “what year are we in now?”. I wonder what took us so long. I can further advise the House that no amendment to clause 1 is upon us. So we may be about to pass legislation that is wrongly labelled the Immigration Act 2007, when it is to be passed some time late in 2009. But perhaps help is at hand, because the parliamentary counsel folk at the drafting office may have taken upon themselves certain extra parliamentary freedoms to make little changes here and there—their little bid for minor amounts of power. It may be that they are fully entitled by the weird and wonderful sorts of practices that we have around this House to make the Immigration Act 2007 become the Immigration Act 2009. I am not sure whether the Minister is worried about that. At that point, I sort of give up and think “God, I hope the system works”, because we have had this legislation in front of us now for 2 years. Two years have clicked by and one hopes that when we print this thing we can get the year right.

The more important question I would like to ask the Minister—I am not sure whether the Minister is in a talkative mood—is in respect of clause 430, which is the “what the hell happens next” clause. I want to ask the Minister what happens next. Clause 430 comes into effect immediately, and it is the clause by which the Minister can get on and promulgate regulations, put people on boards, and do all of the things that may be said to be part of the implementation of the legislation. The Minister, one assumes, has a game plan for that. One assumes it will be driven somewhat by officials. I am not suggesting it should not be. But I want to know when this legislation will come into effect, because we have waited long enough for it. Of course, only clauses 1 and 430 will come into effect on the day after the royal assent. The others will come into effect precisely when the Government wants them to. So we could—and I am not being silly here—pass this legislation and have nothing happen.

I wonder whether the Minister would like to tell us how he is positioned: whether he has the budget he needs to get the implementation of the legislation done, and whether he has the officials doing the work plan. I am sure that he has, so when does he think we will see the new authorities up and running? Will it be later this year? Might it be early next year? Will there be any problem around the development of such regulations as are needed under this legislation? Sometimes officials say that regulations take years to put in place. In other words, having sweated this legislation through, I ask the Minister to jump to his feet and tell us very briefly what he thinks the implementation plan looks like and when we might see this legislation fully fledged and in full force. That concludes my contribution.