Immigration Queues (UK Airports) Debate

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Department: Home Office

Immigration Queues (UK Airports)

Keith Vaz Excerpts
Monday 30th April 2012

(11 years, 11 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Keith Vaz Portrait Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
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(Urgent Question): I think that that is most fair. Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting the urgent question.

To ask the Minister for Immigration if he will make a statement on the immigration delays at UK airports.

Damian Green Portrait The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)
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The Government’s priority is the security of the UK border. The right checks need to be carried out to control immigration, protect against terrorism and tackle crime. We maintain thorough border checks. Despite those robust checks, the vast majority of passengers pass through immigration control quickly.

Let me give the House the actual figures. Between January and March, the average waiting times across the UK were six minutes for UK and EU passengers, and 25 minutes for non-EU passengers. The latest internal management information shows that, in the first two weeks of April, 99% of UK and EU passengers queued for less than 25 minutes and 96% of non-EU passengers queued for less than 45 minutes.

At Heathrow, the information shows that those target times were met every day throughout that period for UK and EU passengers, and on 11 out of 15 days for non-EU passengers. Over the weekend, there were some breaches of acceptable waiting times at Heathrow. That was caused mainly by the severe weather, leading to flight diversions and changing flight schedules, and the bunching of arrivals.

However, I stress to the House that our information shows that queuing times bore no resemblance to some of the wilder suggestions. Border Force data show that the longest queuing time for immigration control was one and a half hours on Friday night at terminal 5 for non-EU nationals, and times for UK and EU nationals were significantly lower.

These times are too long. Passengers demand an efficient service and the British public demand tough border controls. We need both. That is why we are establishing a new central control room for the UK Border Force at Heathrow; why we are putting in place mobile teams that can be deployed rapidly across the airport to deal with pressures; and why within weeks we will be implementing new rostering and shift patterns, which will provide additional flexibility, so staff can be deployed individually to meet unexpected surges in passenger flows. We are also working with airport operators and airlines to ensure they provide more accurate passenger manifests and flight schedules to help the UK Border Force to deploy staff at the right time, in the right place, to meet demand.

On top of those permanent improvements, as passenger numbers increase in the run-up to the Olympics, the UK Border Force will increase its staffing at ports and airports. The important factor is to have staff flexibly deployed in the right numbers, at the right times. That is what we are doing. The UK Border Force will ensure that all immigration desks at Heathrow and other key ports and airports in the south-east are fully staffed during peak periods over the summer. A contingency force of appropriately trained staff will be sent to the border to provide extra help to ensure passengers are processed as quickly as possible.

Border security is Britain’s first line of defence—it must not and will not be compromised—but our border force is also the first impression presented to overseas visitors and those returning home. Therefore, while we maintain the right levels of security checks, we will always seek to improve performance. That is what I—and UK Border Force—are focused on doing. This country needs a secure and efficient border, and this Government will deliver it.

Keith Vaz Portrait Keith Vaz
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I thank the Minister for his response and for acknowledging that there have been delays at Heathrow airport. As he knows, there is considerable concern about the length of waiting times in immigration halls at our airports at peak times. Of course, we must ensure that proper security checks are carried out—we do not want a repetition of the case of Sheikh Raed Salah, who was banned by the Home Secretary but able to enter Heathrow airport—but the queues have sometimes been in excess of two hours and they are and have been a serious embarrassment.

The Home Secretary made a decision in the aftermath of the Brodie Clark saga to suspend all risk-based checks. Given that, why are border desks not fully staffed at peak periods and why are electronic gates, including iris scanners, so often broken? The Home Secretary has appointed Brian Moore as the temporary seconded head of the UK Border Force, and his post has been advertised. How many times has Mr Moore visited terminal 5 at peak times?

Will the Minister confirm reports that BAA has been asked to refrain from handing out leaflets to passengers that apologise for the very long delays and advise them how to complain about them? Does he accept that hundreds of people in the arrival hall after 12-hour flights will be extremely frustrated and angry at having to queue for two hours at unattended border desks and at using—or trying to use—broken iris scanners? Does that situation not pose a public order risk?

As the Minister knows, over the weekend, the British Air Transport Association, border staff and BAA have all called for urgent action. I acknowledge what he has said today about what he intends to do, but it is important for him to hold a meeting with all those affected—all the stakeholders—and if necessary to hold it at Heathrow airport.

The UK Border Force is re-hiring former border officers to help with the Olympics. However, excessive delays in our immigration halls are not only an Olympic issue; they affect travellers today. What further action does the Minister propose to take to ensure that the reputation of Heathrow as a world-class airport and a premier international tourist destination is not damaged?

In my view, the Minister has a choice. He either hires more staff or looks again at the risk-based policy, which the Home Secretary has said she is open-minded about. The third option, which is to do nothing, is simply not acceptable.

Damian Green Portrait Damian Green
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I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his question. I hope I reassured him in my opening response that doing nothing is precisely what we are not doing. We are doing quite a lot, as I will detail a little more in a moment.

The right hon. Gentleman asked some specific questions. In the few weeks he has been in charge of Border Force, Brian Moore has visited Heathrow twice, including over Easter—one of the peak busiest times of the year—to see precisely how Border Force coped over that difficult and challenging period. The answer was that, despite the predictions we had that Easter would mean gridlock at Heathrow, actually it did not. Heathrow coped well over Easter.

The right hon. Gentleman also asked about e-gates and iris recognition immigration system gates. The IRIS gates commissioned by the previous Government are being phased out because they have come to the end of their technological life. They are less reliable than the e-gates that we are replacing them with and which provide a much better passenger experience.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about risk-based controls. As he knows, I have said—as has the Home Secretary in front of the Home Affairs Committee—that the principle of risk-based controls is a sound one to explore, but he will know that, as the John Vine report showed, what we had, when we thought we had risk-based controls, actually were not risk-based controls. Information had been withheld from successive Ministers over the previous five years.

The right hon. Gentleman asked, quite reasonably, what we have done. I have mentioned some of the actions we have already taken. We have rebalanced staff across Heathrow’s terminals; we are opening the new control room to allow us to monitor and deal with demand across the airports, so Border Force staff will not be stuck in terminals, as they used to be; we have completed our recruitment to mobile teams that can deal with unexpected surges; and we are encouraging all eligible passengers to use the e-passport gates, and are now getting close to 50% of those eligible to use them doing so, which significantly improves the flow-through, particularly for UK citizens.

We have, as a result, freed up more experienced staff from those e-passport gates to man the non-EU desks and to help reduce queues there. We are cross-training more and more of our staff so that they can work flexibly across all areas of border control. So very significant steps have been taken in the past few months to make the airports work more efficiently, and I am sure that passengers and the House will see the effects of that in the coming months.