Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Department: Home Office

Oral Answers to Questions

Giles Watling Excerpts
Monday 8th January 2018

(6 years, 11 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Gillian Keegan Portrait Gillian Keegan (Chichester) (Con)
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8. What steps she is taking to upgrade Border Force boats.

Giles Watling Portrait Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)
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17. What steps she is taking to upgrade Border Force boats.

Lord Mackinlay of Richborough Portrait Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)
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21. What steps she is taking to upgrade Border Force boats.

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Ben Wallace Portrait Mr Wallace
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By the end of the financial year, the Border Force maritime fleet will have six CPVs and three cutters in the UK, plus two cutters deployed overseas to deal with the issue upstream—one in the Aegean and one in the central Mediterranean. Border Force has invested £108 million in new technology and capability to deal with some of those challenges and will commit a further £71 million this year.

Giles Watling Portrait Giles Watling
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While I was volunteering with the lifeboats at Walton-on-the-Naze, I learned how important local maritime knowledge is. I believe that such intelligence would be useful to Border Force when solving and preventing crime. Is Border Force engaging with other agencies, including the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, the coastguard and pilot boats, to share intelligence, tackle crime and keep our coastline safe and secure?

Ben Wallace Portrait Mr Wallace
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The key to improving our coastal security is better collection and exploitation of data. Some of that happens through full-time people, but it also happens through the many volunteers who populate the coastal paths and watch stations of our communities. That is why Border Force has set up the multi-agency general maritime intelligence bureau to bring together the existing organisations of HM Coastguard, HM Revenue and Customs, Border Force, the Ministry of Defence, and the bureaux linked directly to the National Maritime Information Centre.

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John Bercow Portrait Mr Speaker
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Order. If everybody asks a short, one-sentence question, and if replies are correspondingly brief, far more people will be able to contribute—it is not magic—and then we will spread the happiness across the Chamber.

Giles Watling Portrait Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)
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T2. Thank you, Mr Speaker. I apologise for not wishing you a very happy new year from the sunny shores of Clacton-on-Sea.Does my hon. Friend agree that sheer numbers of police is not the whole answer in tackling crime? In Clacton, Tendring District Council and Essex police have established a successful community safety hub with some 47 partners. Will the Minister please come to sunny Clacton to see how the scheme has been working and to look at some of the successes that we have achieved for ourselves?

Nick Hurd Portrait The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Mr Nick Hurd)
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The answer to an invitation to visit sunny Clacton-on-Sea is, of course, yes.