Border Checks Summer 2011

Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

It is with regret that I follow the poisonous personal attack that I have just had to listen to. I have to say that I did not come into the House to hear debate at that level.

I am not going to speak for long, because the main issues surrounding this debate have been well rehearsed already, but I would like to cover just a few. The Home Secretary has clearly stated that the approved pilot for an intelligence-led approach to border checks did not put national security at risk and was approved by the security services. It seems to me that pursuing an intelligence-based policy to improve both the efficiency and effectiveness of border checks is a perfectly sensible starting point. Indeed, the recent Select Committee report on the UK Border Agency called for it to improve its use of intelligence, following the report of the independent chief inspector of the UKBA, John Vine—a Labour appointment—which found that the agency’s approach to the use and management of intelligence had been poor.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

I agree with the hon. Lady about the importance of an intelligence-led approach. Does she agree that it would be a great shame if the furore around this incident meant that the UKBA did not go ahead with intelligence-based approaches, because they would make our border more secure by applying resources more efficiently?

[Nicola Blackwood]

I think it is important that we continue to approach intelligence-based processes rationally.

I am not opposed to the principle of giving border officials greater discretion in assessing risk. These border officials are professionals who, for the most part, work in very difficult circumstances, and even the best policy framework cannot allow for every situation and cannot replicate the experience of a border official who has their eyes and ears fixed beadily on the individual in front of them. However, that discretion must be exercised within an evidence-based policy framework that has been set out by Ministers and properly scrutinised by Parliament. As I understand it, that was the intention of the pilot but, as we have been hearing, it was not what John Vine found was actually happening on the ground.

We hear from whistleblowers in the UKBA that border checks were being relaxed at the request of BAA staff when queues were long. We hear from Brodie Clark that controls have been relaxed since 2008, not in favour of queue management but for a reason which he does not state. I look forward to hearing his evidence to the Select Committee. Rob Whiteman insists that Clark confessed that he had been relaxing the controls on a regular basis without ministerial approval. Most worrying from my perspective is that we find that since at least 2007—under the previous Government—agency operational instructions have contained a paragraph that apparently gives border force duty directors the authority to relax checks for health and safety reasons. That might be completely justifiable in certain extreme circumstances, but I do not think it is possible to get a proper picture of what has been going on with border checks without knowing how often these controls were relaxed on the grounds of health and safety, what criteria and processes were used to trigger such a relaxation, what the reporting mechanisms are and whether they have been properly followed. In particular, this raises the question of whether this power has been misused.

Although I am only too aware of the potential implications of the agency’s failure to implement border checks properly, the statistics on how many people have passed through the borders during this time are truly sobering. A measure of comfort can be taken from the fact that the chief executive did take immediate action when this came to light, which has triggered full-scale parliamentary scrutiny and three independent investigations, and I hope that they will take into account ministerial decisions and, in particular, the recent claims that border checks have been relaxed to level 2 without ministerial approval or oversight since 2008. I think it highly unlikely that that would have been the agency’s response previously; I suspect we would have come up against something closer to an attitude of, “Least said, soonest mended.”

However, when I said a “measure of comfort”, I meant a small one. The truth is that even in the relatively short time that I have been a member of the Home Affairs Committee it has become abundantly clear that the UK Border Agency is an organisation with deep-seated problems that date back well into the previous Government’s time in office, and an organisation that seems to have encouraged a culture of deniability. Again and again, the Committee has found that the UKBA has failed to record and account for its responsibilities. For example, when we asked for reasons for the 1,300 outstanding cases of difficulties with deporting foreign national prisoners, the agency could not account for 350 of those—it simply had not recorded the data. The agency was not able to tell the Committee how many individuals had been removed as a result of action taken by intelligence units in 2011, because the data for allegations and removals are kept on two different databases.

[Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Lady is quite accurate in what she is saying about the concerns of the Home Affairs Committee, across parties. However, would she not have expected Home Office Ministers, understanding the deep-seated concerns of Members of this House, to be absolutely on top of all the detail and to ensure that they knew everything that was going on in the Department?

[Nicola Blackwood]

I would have hoped that they were trying to get on top of it, just as I would have hoped that Ministers in the last Government were trying to do.

I realise that the picture is not all doom and gloom—the agency has made progress on legacy cases, as we have already heard today. There was a backlog of more than 450,000 asylum cases under the last Government, which has been reduced to 18,000, and there was a significant reduction in foreign national prisoners released without being considered for deportation, from more than 1,000 to just 28. However, those examples show just what a low base the agency was coming from, and how far it still has to go if there is any hope of its being properly capable of protecting our borders and assuring our national security.

What worries me most about this incident as much as the facts, which are worrying in themselves, is that they are indicative of a wider cultural problem within the agency, endorsed by at least some senior officials: that short-cuts and papering over the cracks are a justifiable way of dealing with the work load, and that transparency is a concept more honoured in the breach than in the observance.

The Select Committee will play a part in trying to get to the bottom of contradictory claims coming out of the UKBA. The three investigations will do their bit, but they will only get to the bottom of what happened when. Although we must pursue those issues vigorously, I do not believe that we will stop seeing scandals in the agency until we have genuine reform of both the systems and the culture of an organisation that we need to be able to trust with protecting our borders.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—