Downing Street Says » UK Border Agency (UKBA)

Asked for details of the breach of border control, the PMS said that he had been clear about what happened and made three points. Firstly that the Home Secretary had given permission for a pilot scheme that meant that under certain circumstances border staff could use their discretion as to when to open the biometric chip on the passport. Secondly, that basic checks were still undertaken and it was an unfair depiction to say borders were left open. Thirdly, that the pilot had recently ended and, although the results were not yet fully evaluated, statistics suggested that, compared to the same period last year, the number of illegal immigrants detected increased by 10%. This showed that this pilot seemed to have been affective at improving performance.

PMS said that it was a separate issue that the border agency seemed to have gone much further than they were authorised. When that had become apparent action had been taken and the official in charge had been suspended.

Asked for details about the pilot, the PMS said that it had looked at how best to control the border and apply resources in a more intelligent way. He said that they could either check everyone at the same high level, which might result in long queues at the border, or they could apply some discretion and try and target the people that they thought were most likely to pose a risk.

Asked why the head of UKBA was suspended if the strike rate on illegal immigrants had increased by 10%, the PMS said that was only half the story. The issue was that UKBA had gone much further than they had been asked to do by Ministers. The individual concerned had acknowledged that and had been suspended as a result.

Asked repeatedly for the absolute figures resulting in the 10% rise, the PMS said that the pilot still had to be evaluated properly and that this was just raw data. He said that it suggested that by deploying resources differently you can have different effects at the border.

Asked if the pilot showed a policy change and if the House of Commons should have been informed, the PMS said that this was an operational decision about deployment of resources.

Asked for more details on what happened when and the breadth of unauthorised relaxations, the PMS said there were a series of investigations going on to get to the bottom of this. Asked when they expected investigation to conclude, the PMS said that the Home Secretary had said they would report in January.

Asked if the PM was concerned that the Home Secretary didn’t know this was going on, the PMS said that they did have concerns and were looking into it. He said that clearly some decisions were taken by the border agency that were not authorised by Ministers, and we were investigating the circumstances. He added that Brodie Clark had been suspended.

Asked if the PM was happy for pilot to go ahead, the PMS said that basic checks had remained in place and that at no time was the border left open, but they were looking at now to deploy resources more effectively which was a sensible thing to do.

Asked if it was because of cuts, the PMS said that this was not a new debate coming out of the financial situation and that there had always been a debate over how best to control the borders.

Asked if the motivation was to cut queues, the PMS said that one of the things we attempt to do when controlling borders is to ensure that passengers get through quickly. There was a cost to the vast majority of law abiding passengers from being held in a queue for a very long time. Clearly we wanted to maximise the throughput, but at same time didn’t want to jeopardise our security.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.

» Tuesday, November 8, 2011

UK Border Agency (UKBA)

No Comments »

Post a public comment

Search

Supported by

Recent Briefings

Archives

Links

Syndicate (RSS/XML)

Credits

Enquiries