Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)

The noble Lord, Lord German, asks an interesting and pertinent question. The noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, indicated that, under his administration, it was moving along swimmingly. Let me tell the noble Lord, Lord German, that it still is. I will leave it at that. I shall answer a couple of the points mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe. First, he rightly asked—again, my noble friend Lord Coaker has asked this question many times—what the economic impact will be. I can tell the noble Lord—I hope that this also reassures my noble friend—that the estimated cost of this is minimal: around £3,052 over a 10-year appraisal period. It was therefore well short of any threshold that required a full impact assessment; in fact, any impact assessment would have cost more than its results. So that impact assessment has not happened, but I hope the noble Lord understands why that was the case. The noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, also asked why and how PAF officers would potentially need to use their service weapons in the UK if they were carrying out immigration checks only. I need not remind the Committee, I hope, that any individual at any time can be a danger to those checking border paperwork and looking at issues to do with the regulation of this area. We do not know at any particular time who is going to be there and what threat they may pose. It is a requirement for the French authorities that they carry weapons accordingly, but I assure the noble Lord that that will be regulated by French national legislation in accordance with their normal working practices. PAF officers are required to carry service weapons; they do so while carrying out their work at the juxtaposed controls in the UK, but they do so under the same strict regulation that we discussed earlier in the Chamber in relation to firearm control. I hope that that reassures the noble Lord. With those comments, I again commend this order to the Committee.