EU Council, Security and Middle East

Henry Smith Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Although the hon. Gentleman clearly spent a lot of time on the Bill, he seems to have ignored one crucial point, which is that TPIMs include exclusion zones; I think it is the relocation powers he is referring to.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I commend the Prime Minister on his statement. Will he give a little more information on when airlines will be required to introduce more stringent checks on suspects and foreign terrorists to block them from entering ports such as Gatwick and others around the UK?

[The Prime Minister]

I can quite understand, given my hon. Friend’s constituency interest, why he asks this question. At the moment, we have good security co-operation, but on a non-statutory basis, with countries flying into the UK. These measures will put it on a statutory basis that if they do not have proper passenger checks, share information in a timely way or have proper security checks, we can legally prevent a plane from taking off from or landing in the UK. These are the sorts of arrangements that the Americans already have in place. It is time for us to have them too.