Heathrow Airport: Border Control Passenger Safety

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Tuesday 25th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord is right: this is a 21st-century problem that we may well be living with for the rest of our lives. It is absolutely right that we look at the best and latest technology to try to mitigate risk and reduce the impact on the things that we love doing, including global travel. However, the image that he cited is a little far away at the moment, I am afraid: we are struggling to get accurate tests from a gob of spit, let alone from the air in an airport cabin. However, we are meeting with the firms who are investigating these kinds of technologies; that is done through the innovations and partnerships department of test and trace, and we are hopeful that those technologies will emerge.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests in the register. It is very welcome that red-list passengers will now be separated, but, the longer the queues, the more likely the infection is to spread. It cannot be right to take 10 minutes per passenger to clear them through the system. Surely we can use the kind of evidence that is being used in other parts of the world, get our act together and, with the help of this excellent Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, put pressure on the Health Secretary and the Home Secretary to put even more resource in, and, above all, use technology and the experience in the rest of the world to get this right.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The noble Lord is entirely right: this is exactly what we have sought to do—namely, to front-end a huge amount of the administrative burden into the passenger landing form through the CMS computer system so that all the bookings, details and testing are pre-prepared before anyone arrives in the terminal. None the less, travel in the days of a pandemic is a complicated affair. Some people are trying to skip out on their responsibilities, and therefore there is an administrative burden. We hope to roll out e-gates for both the amber and red lists, once the red-list terminals are open. This will take a great pressure off the passenger point.