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have chien they will always be the parents of those children othing magical happens at 18 or 21 to stop them being their children. Under the EEC regulations the definition of family does not have a cut-off point.
The regulations are welcome, but they point up the difficulties faced by immigrants. The Government are not prepared to tackle those problems. The Minister should tell us whether in the people's Europe that we are now entering, he is prepared to consider the plight of many people resident in this country who find it increasingly difficult to be joined by their families--to whom they are closely attached- -or to marry the person of their choice. I suspect that the Minister will reply in the negative.
It is ironic that the European convention on human rights provides that everyone of marriageable age should be free to marry. In theory we are all free to marry but not if we choose to marry someone, for example, from the Indian sub-continent. Although in theory the primary purpose rule applies to everyone, in practice it is applied only to spouses from certain parts of the world.
If everyone in the House is in favour of family unity, we should give it some substance and not simply use the words as a slogan to collect votes at election time. I fear that many hon. Members, particularly Conservative Members, say one thing to their constituents and vote the other way when given the opportunity.
Europe gives us an opportunity to harmonise rules. We are not talking about primary immigration. We are discussing the need to treat our citizens equally. If the regulations are put into effect the extraordinary result will be that people living in continental Europe will have greater rights to live with their wife, mother, father or children than people who live in Britain. People in Britain will wonder how that can be the case.
It will be open to a British citizen to go to Paris or Germany and become a worker in the sense of the EEC regulations and then come back to Britain to get round the British regulations. We should avoid that ridiculous position.
I wish to deal with three further points. I understand that the regulations are at a preliminary stage and that the Government will come back with definite proposals. As I understood it, the Minister welcomed this opportunity of i preliminary debate on the substance of the directives. No natter, I shall make the points anyway because they have some substance-
Mr. Peter Lloyd: I commended the draft directives to the House and said that although the Government were determined to see that the legal base was changed, we believe that the political agreement that has already been reached is sensible and satisfactory and we hope that the House will agree with us on that.
Mr. Darling: I obviously misunderstood the Minister. However, the point that I am about to make still stands because the issues will arise time and again.
First, I refer to harmonisation-
Mr. Nigel Spearing (Newham, South): I am grateful to ny hon. Friend for giving way on this point about which e should be absolutely clear. It is my understanding that here will not be an opportunity to discuss the regulations gain, providing that the understanding to which the Minister referred materialises and that the regulations btain a two thirds majority at the Council of Ministers, ossibly at the end of next month. If my hon. Friend thinks
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that there may be an opportunity to exercise other matters at large, that is one thing, but I believe that there will be an opportunity in respect of these regulations also.
Mr. Darling: I fear that my hon. Friend is absolutely right. I shall now preface my three points with the obvious remark that these issues arise now and will arise again and again and again because they do not directly fall within the scope of the directives. My hon. Friend has made a good point about the directives because the discussions are between Ministers and the House will not get an opportunity to discuss them further, despite the fact that the constituents of many hon. Members will be concerned, not only with the directives and the subject matter that they cover, but with the matters that they could have covered but do not.
At long last, I reach the three other points that I have wanted to mention and on which I shall be grateful for the Minister's comments. First, what is happening about the Schengen agreement? No debate on immigration rules. would be complete without a reference to it. We are not a party to the treaty, which is between the Benelux countries, France and West Germany, but we send observers. Completely against the odds, the Schengen agreement was not signed last December because of objections mainly from European non-governmental organisations that were concerned about the ramshackle bureaucracy that it would create, together with the potential for discriminatory practices in the control of movement. I should be grateful if the Minister could let us know the Government's view on the current state of the Schengen agreement, because it has some bearing on this country. There is no doubt that it is the blueprint for the regime that will prevail after 1992 and it is referred to when the Trevi group of Ministers meet from time to time.
My second point is entirely connnected with the directives. Undoubtedly, as we move towards more harmonisation and common rules throughout the EEC, we shall need safeguards and an appeals system. The Minister has talked about the test of whether someone will become a burden on the public purse. There are always two or three interpretations of individual circumstances. The need for an appeals system in this matter, just as in connection with every other immigration rule, is growing greater by the day. As the decisions of immigration officers often cannot be questioned and hon. Members right to intervene have been severely curtailed, the quality of the decision-making is deteriorating. That is not in the interests of any view of justice or of the good workings of Europe. The time for an independent watchdog to supervise such matters is long overdue but I dare say that we shall return to that matter on many occasions.
Thirdly, our system for dealing with emergency applications to enter this country leaves much to be desired. The directives are about the right of families to come to this country. I need hardly remind the Minister that only two weeks ago we had the appalling spectacle of a family trying to come to their father's or their uncle's funeral in this country and being cross-examined by an immigration officer about the number of water buffalo that one of their relatives had owned when he lived in Pakistan.
That sort of thing is thoroughly distasteful, and we really ought to avoid it. What we need is an efficient and speedy system of resolving these problems.
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