Brexit: Border Controls

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Wednesday 19th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I hope the noble Lord will be pleased to know that we have recruited, and are in the process of training and bringing up to speed, 900 Border Force officers. In addition to that, we are preparing for the summer and EU exit. He will also know that, in respect of e-passport gates, we have expanded eligibility to include the B5J plus Singapore and South Korea, increasing e-passport gate capability, which should make travel through the border a lot more streamlined.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, 169 illegal immigrants were picked up in the channel over the last week, more than there have been for a considerable time. We do not know how many might have got ashore whom we do not know about; we know that our minor ports up the east coast and around the channel are not properly monitored or covered by shipping assets or drones. Clearly, the system is not working: we do not have a waterproof system to stop people getting into this country. Will the Minister tell us whether we are increasing assets? It is all very well having good intelligence and deals with the French, but we need assets to be able to stop, monitor and cover these areas.

[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.