Terrorism: Aviation Security

Debate between Lord Malloch-Brown and Baroness Neville-Jones

Monday 1st November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, it certainly is the intention that in due course we will be able to record not only incoming travel but outgoing travel as well. The noble Lord is right to say that that is not happening at the moment. It is certainly not happening electronically. I cannot give him, I am afraid, a precise date, but I can say that we are doing our very best to speed up the introduction of e-Borders to enable us to have this information. That would not have necessarily borne directly on this episode, but of course everything helps in giving us greater information about those who are travelling. As I said at the beginning, it is relevant to know not only about cargo but about those who are potentially travelling in the same aircraft.

[Lord Malloch-Brown]

My Lords, is there not a tremendous disproportionality between the attention with which an individual passenger’s luggage is microscopically examined and what she described as the trusted consigner, whose large packages cannot be examined in anything like the same detail? A second contradiction relates to the long-term interest that we share in the foreign policy of this. We have had many tragic examples now and many budgerigars in the mineshaft, so to speak, of Yemen’s role—growing role, sadly—in international terrorist incidents and of the links between Yemen and Somalia, which she mentioned. I ask her to take to her colleagues the concern of all of us that we look at this not just as a border security issue but as a development issue, an intelligence-gathering issue and a diplomatic issue, which we must not shy away from just because of its difficulty.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, on the noble Lord’s first point, the House would agree that we clearly have to increase the capacity to understand and guarantee that cargo travelling around the world is not a danger to the aircraft that it is in or, indeed, to any people who happen to be on that aircraft. As regards what he said about Yemen, the Government are in full agreement. As your Lordships know, the UK is a leading member of the Friends of Yemen, a group that seeks to underpin and help the Government of Yemen to increase the welfare and economic situation of the people of Yemen. A number of countries are contributing to that and a programme is being formulated that should help to put the Yemeni Government on a much more coherent policy of economic development. Other things are happening, including bilateral actions by the UK. Obviously, one policy object is to increase the local Government’s capacity to combat terrorism and engage in effective counterterrorism. As I said, the Prime Minister assured the President of Yemen of our continued support. However, underpinning that is quite a lot of technical assistance to that Government to enable them to, in a sense, take charge of their own affairs, because ultimately the Yemenis have to create conditions in which terrorists do not flourish on their soil.