UK Border Agency

Lord Hughes of Woodside Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

I take note of what my noble friend has to say. We inherited these machines and will try to make sure they operate as well as we can. Whether it would be right at this stage to spend very large amounts of taxpayers’ money on installing new machines is another matter. Obviously, as my noble friend says, we want to reduce delays, because delays cause major annoyance to a great number of individuals and cause damage to business. We will do what we can. At the same time we need to maintain border security, which is one of the reasons why we want to make sure that biometric details on passports are properly read.

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

I am not sure whether I heard the Minister correctly. Did he say that there was a cut of 5,000 in the staff required, but no discussion about the effect of those cuts? It is a bit rich now to come to the House and say, “We’re going to try to find out the optimum number”. Surely that is a dereliction of duty.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, of course there has always been discussion about how many people are needed to maintain the appropriate level of protection at our borders. However, very difficult decisions have to be made in this, as they do regarding the police and other matters. Obviously, it might be a matter on which John Vine would also want to comment in his report. That is a matter for him: he is independent. The important thing is that Ministers made appropriate decisions at the time of the spending review about what was appropriate, which, in terms of making decisions, we have had to do across the whole of government.