Passport e-Gates Network Outage
Debate between Iain Stewart and Tom Pursglove
Tom Pursglove
I am very grateful to the shadow Minister for the tone with which he has approached today’s statement and the response on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition. I reiterate the thanks and appreciation that were reflected in his remarks on Border Force staff and the teams within the airports, who worked alongside the airlines to support passengers during this period of disruption. Again, I place on record my sincere apologies to all passengers who were affected by this issue last night. I can understand their frustration, and I sincerely apologise for it.
The hon. Gentleman specifically asked whether the contingency plan that was in place worked. Of course, we will always learn lessons from contingencies, evolve those models and make sure we are responsive to feedback. However, I think it is fair to say that overall, the contingency plans did work last night, with that strong partnership underpinning them—working with the airlines and airports, with leadership from Border Force teams. He also asked whether border security was compromised. I can confirm that it was not: proper checks were undertaken in the way that we would expect, just not in the automated manner that people would wish to see, with greater manual processing of cases but relying on the underlying systems. Again, that demonstrates that the contingency plans that we put in place for incidents such as this one were robust and did work. The response was triggered within six minutes; the operational contingency then began within an hour. That has subsequently been assured as well, to ensure that the integrity of the border was maintained at all times.
Turning to the security breach aspect of this issue, let me again be clear that this was not a cyber-attack, but the hon. Gentleman is right about the need for us always to be vigilant when it comes to border security and making sure that the IT systems that underpin it are able to withstand those sorts of pressures. We continue to factor that into the work that we are taking forward through our future borders endeavour. When it comes to the root cause of what has happened—how we got to this point in the first place—as soon as the fix was put in place, the posture changed to getting us to a place where we better understand that root cause. That work is ongoing, and it would not be right for me to speculate on it, but I can absolutely assure the hon. Gentleman that we will get to the bottom of this issue.
As for the specific technical issue last night, I am assured that the technical team are confident that there is now a permanent fix to that issue. When it comes to e-gate reliability in general, more than 90 million passengers use e-gates each year, and we are world leading in their use. This is an extremely rare occurrence; as the hon. Gentleman will recognise, one can never guarantee that any IT system will be 100% reliable 100% of the time, but that is why it is imperative that robust contingencies are in place to underlie all those systems, to maintain the integrity of our border.
As a Government, we are clear that we must never compromise border security, and we did not: the border was operational, albeit slower than any of us would like, for which I am sorry. This incident also demonstrates why automation at the border and e-gates are such an important part of the way in which people enter the country: without them, we would see the sort of operation that we saw last night all the time. In fact, last year, over 90% of people cleared the border within 30 minutes, which demonstrates just how integral e-gates are and why we place a real emphasis on making sure they are available. As I have said, we will get to the bottom of this.
Finally, the hon. Gentleman asked about the EU entry-exit system. In recent weeks, we have had a number of opportunities to debate that system in the House. An enormous amount of cross-Government work is going on at the moment to ensure we have the best possible plans in place. The Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman)—who is in his place—and I are working very closely together on this matter, alongside colleagues from across Government, as well as engaging thoroughly with our EU and French counterparts. We have made real progress in recent weeks, and we will continue to sustain that effort.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
May I press the Minister a little further on the reliability of the airports’ contingency plans when we have failures such as this one? As he has alluded to, this is not the first time that this has occurred. I would be interested to know what lessons learned from previous handlings were deployed on this occasion, particularly for supporting passengers who are elderly, have disabilities or young families, or require additional care and support, so that they do not suffer unduly during delays.
Tom Pursglove
My hon. Friend the Chairman of the Transport Committee is right to raise those concerns about passengers and their experiences. As I say, this was a highly regrettable situation, but the response swung into action very quickly. It is fair to say that we always iterate and always learn. We probably will not have got everything 100% right in the immediate response, but there was a genuine effort, co-ordinated by Border Force, with the airlines and airports, to support passengers, particularly vulnerable ones. Individuals who were at airports last night have said to me that they were impressed by the contingency arrangements that were in place, but there are always things that we can learn from these efforts, and we will do exactly that. Our contingency plans always have to be iterated; we always have to be responsive. The integrity of our border is of the utmost importance, and supporting people—particularly vulnerable people—when things go wrong is at the forefront of our considerations.