The amendment would require the Home Secretary to publish impact assessments on the effect of clause 59 both on nationals from the countries in subsection (3) and on the UK’s economy and trade.

The Government plan to replace clause 59 with Government new clauses 9 and 10. This is a slightly more developed version of the proposal to punish the nationals of countries if the Government consider their Governments to have been unco-operative on returns. The explanatory notes for clause 59 do not explain its purpose—because it was a placeholder clause, there was no detail—so I assume it is to act as an incentive for countries to co-operate with returns, but I hope that the Minister will seek to provide some evidence of that.

The explanatory notes do state that

“a very small number of countries do not cooperate”