3.The Government’s White Paper Fairer, Faster And Firmer – A Modern Approach To Immigration And Asylum, published on 27 July 1998, provides the background to the Act. The White Paper (to which all later references in these explanatory notes to “the White Paper” refer, unless otherwise stated) set out a range of proposals to modernise and integrate the immigration and asylum system. The overall aim of the planned reforms is to develop a more flexible and streamlined system of immigration control capable of providing an improved quality of service to British citizens and those who qualify to enter or remain in the United Kingdom, as well as strengthening the necessary controls on those who do not.