Border control lapses put Home Secretary under pressure to resign
The UK Border Agency have let an unknown number of people into the UK through ports and airports without proper checks of their biometric information, passports and identity over summer 2011.It has emerged over the last week that border controls were relaxed, which included reduced passport checks against the Home Office’s ‘warning index’ of potential terrorists and illegal migrants seeking to enter the country. Fingerprinting of non-European nationals from countries that needed a visa had also been ‘abandoned on a regular basis without ministerial approval’.
As a result of the reduced checks the Home Secretary has admitted that ‘we will never know how many people entered the country who should have been prevented from doing so after being flagged by the warnings index’.
This admission follows the highly publicised tough approach on immigration and border controls as well as the many months of strict reforms to the Immigration Rules designed to drastically reduce the number of people entering the country.
Home Secretary under pressure
This relaxation of the checking regime was authorised by the Home Secretary, Theresa May, and took place without Parliament or Downing Street being informed.
The Home Secretary claimed the relaxed passport regime applied only to checks on EU nationals and other categories that did not pose a credible security risk. Officials could also use their discretion in certain circumstances to open biometric chips on EU passports to check the second secure photograph.
When the story broke three senior officials from the border force – including its chief, Brodie Clark – were suspended. At the time there were claims that May had reacted with ‘fury’ when she discovered the reduced measures used had gone beyond those she had authorised.
However, May was forced to admit on Monday that she did authorise the UKBA to ‘pilot a scheme that would allow border force officials to target intelligence-led checks on higher-risk categories of travellers’ in July. She maintains that Mr Clark ‘authorised his staff to go further than ministerial instruction’ and that he is responsible.
Theresa May now faces questioning in the House of Commons with the Labour party mounting an opposition-day debate on the topic. It remains to be seen if she will be able to keep her position after this.
Head of UK Border Force resigns
Now that these lapses in security have come to light the issue has very quickly become a major news story which has lead to the head of the UK Border Force, Brodie Clark, resigning. He used his resignation statement to hit out at the Home Secretary: This summer saw queues of over three hours (non EU) on a regular basis at Heathrow and I never once contemplated cutting our essential controls to ease the flow’.
‘With the Home Secretary announcing and repeating her view that I am at fault, I cannot see how any process conducted by the Home Office, or under its auspices, can be fair and balanced.’
In response to May’s accusations of improperly taking “additional measures” beyond those agreed with ministers in July for a four-month trial of risk-based passport checks, Mr Clark said, ‘I did not’. Those measures have been in place since 2008-2009.’
Indeed, Brodie said he had been pressing for the trial to go ahead since December 2010, and was pleased when May finally agreed to the pilot scheme this year because, ‘The evidence to support [such schemes] is substantial and the early findings are encouraging. I would do nothing to jeopardise them. I firmly believe that a more fully risk-based way of operating will offer far greater protection to the United Kingdom.
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