Draft General Aviation (Persons on Board, Flight Information and Civil Penalties) Regulations 2024

Feryal Clark Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2024 General Committees

[Feryal Clark (Enfield North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Dr Huq. I welcome the regulations. I am not here to stand in the way of measures to assist Border Force, polices forces and other agencies to do their job and, once implemented, the regulations should ensure that they have complete and timely access to a range of advance passenger information to ensure that immigration controls are properly enforced. The requirements for flight operators to submit advance passenger information online should promote compliance with immigration law across the general aviation sector.

The statutory instrument establishes that failure to comply with the requirements will be subject to financial penalties of up to £10,000. I am interested to know how the decision to set £10,000 as the maximum amount for civil penalties was arrived at and what specific steps the Home Office and other Government Departments plan to take to monitor the implementation of and compliance with the rules. Will the Minister ensure that Parliament and the public will be kept up to date on how effectively the rules are enforced?

I am concerned about the capacity of Home Office officials, particularly Border Force, to adequately police compliance with the new rules. At present, only around 50% of advance passenger information is submitted electronically. To ensure that the remaining 50% or so of flights have correctly submitted the required information, there may well be a need for Border Force to maintain a significant presence at several airfields where there are typically no officers stationed.

Home Office data provided to the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, David Neal, showed that last year UK Border Force failed to check the occupants of hundreds of private jets arriving at just one airport. The Minister told the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), that the Home Office cleared 100% of high-risk general aviation flights either remotely or in person. Will he confirm what percentage were in person?

Will the Minister provide reassurances on the levels of Border Force funding and personnel that the Home Office plans to allocate to supervising the roll-out of and subsequent level of compliance with the regulations across the general aviation sector? There has been a decade of cuts to immigration enforcement. With that in mind, will he confirm what the total budget and headcount of Border Force have been in every financial year since its establishment as its own command in 2012? Of the total headcount, how many officers in each year were engaged specifically in monitoring and enforcing compliance with immigration controls in the aviation sector? If the Minister has that information, he can give it to us in Committee, but I understand that he might not have it all to hand so am happy for him to write to me.