Brexit: Border Controls

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Wednesday 19th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. I talked about my right honourable friend the Home Secretary signing the joint action plan with his French counterpart, Monsieur Castaner. The plan that they agreed built on the existing border security partnership by setting out more than £6 million-worth of investment for new security equipment as well as the intelligence that he talked about and CCTV coverage of ports. On the small ports, we have enhanced our field intelligence and our search capability.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, a chain is as strong as its weakest link. What efforts have the Government made to identify and strengthen the smaller ports that are particularly vulnerable?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

As I just said, we have strengthened both our field intelligence capabilities and our search capabilities for smaller ports. As the noble Lord said, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link and, of course, as we strengthen some ports, people will try to find inroads into the smaller ones.