The case of the missing Immigration and Citizenship Bill

Today the Home Affairs Select Committee (HASC) announced that it was suspending its investigation into the draft Immigration and Citizenship Bill (pdf). This was because of the failure of the government to include certain sections, such as asylum support provisions, in the draft public bill. Keith Vaz (Lab), the chair of the committee, said that he had no idea why this was. He, and one of the witnesses, Don Flynn (Director, Migrants’ Rights Network), called such an exclusion “unique”. Just to make clear, it wasn’t that the HASC (which has a Labour majority, as do all select committees) was unhappy with the bill’s proposals, but that sections that should have been included were deliberately left out.

(Analysis of the hearing to follow tomorrow)