Queen’s Speech

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford]

My Lords, I rather agree with the noble Lord who has just spoken: it is a little curious that we should have had to use two days of precious parliamentary time to point out to the Government the folly of introducing such an ill thought-out piece of legislation to replace your Lordships’ House. I am going to use my brief moments on another commitment in the gracious Speech—that to,

“establish the National Crime Agency to tackle the most serious and organised crime and strengthen border security”.

That at least is something about which the entire electorate mind a great deal.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, in questioning whether we really need to reorganise the Serious Organised Crime Agency, SOCA, which only started work in 2006. I had the opportunity on 28 March of visiting SOCA with EU Sub-Committee F, which does home affairs, and I was pretty impressed with what I found there. I noticed that the committee’s report on the ELMER money-laundering database had had quite a considerable influence on the practices and what SOCA was actually doing about that, but I do not have time to cover that now.

What I really want is to focus on “strengthen border security”, and to talk about the UK Border Agency. Border security is a crucial element in the defence of the realm and therefore of the highest importance. Every year some 80 million people come in and out by air, 11 million by sea and about 16 million by the Channel Tunnel. However, border security is actually one of Whitehall’s biggest failures, not just under the present Government but going way back—at least to June 2006 when the now noble Lord, Lord Reid, with all the authority of the Home Secretary, publicly denounced the immigration department of the Home Office as “not fit for purpose”. Since then, things have got worse, much worse. The civil servant in charge at the time was of course promoted to be Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence.

Over a period of years, I have documented, through Written PQs, the failures of the UK Border Agency. Let me make it clear that the UKBA is not underresourced. It employs over 20,000 people. The problem is in the management of those resources. I have met Mr Rob Whiteman, the new chief executive, and I think that given a free hand and political support he could be quite effective.

I have four criticisms of the UK Border Agency. First, it has proved grossly incompetent. We have all seen the recent shambles of the queues at our airports. The much vaunted e-Borders system has cost £357 million in the four and a half years to October 2011 and is still only partly operational now: only just over half the people who go in and out of the country are covered by it, and it is not expected to be fully operational until 2015. The Home Office could learn a thing or two from Mr Ken Livingstone. Whatever else you think about him, he introduced his e-congestion charge system and it worked extremely well from the word go, and that must have been every bit as big.

The previous Government also scrapped exit checks, which it is said cannot be reintroduced until 2015. Well, if you do not have exit checks, you do not know who is meant to have gone out of the country, so it is a shambles. There are huge gaps in the monitoring of passports.

Secondly, the border force is undisciplined. Others may have seen a report in the press of an incident during the shambles. Angry crowds had gathered and eventually a posse of immigration officers walked in to fill empty desks. Not surprisingly, people who had been waiting for more than an hour gave them a slow handclap. What happened? They walked out again. What arrogance. What insensitivity.

Thirdly, the border force is luddite. The much vaunted iris recognition system has been seen as a threat to immigration officer jobs and is now largely abandoned. Hong Kong has had a superb e-border agency system for more than 15 years. The United States, which I visit quite often, also has a system which works very well.

Fourthly, and most serious, the UK Border Agency is deeply and systemically corrupt. The British government machine has always had a well deserved reputation for integrity, yet in the past six years more than 25 members of the UK Border Agency have been sent to prison for the serious offence of misconduct in public office. They were not minor offences. I will give just half a dozen examples: in March 2008, a Mr Uzoma John-Ayo was sentenced to nine years; in September 2009, a Mr Ali was sentenced to five years; in March 2010, a Mr Quarco was sentenced to nine years; in April 2010, a Ms Eworth was sentenced to six years; in November 2011, a Mr Shoyeju was sentenced to seven years; and in December 2011, a Mr Rammakrishnan was sentenced to eight years. Those are big sentences; they were not sent to prison for little things. If that has happened in one agency, it is appalling.

What should be done? I would be delighted to give the Minister my detailed ideas, but here are one or two for starters. The UK Border Force, which was in March separated from the UKBA, should be put under the operational command of a senior, three-star, retired military commander. I saw Mr Brian Moore, currently in charge of the border force, being interviewed on television recently and I am afraid that I was not impressed. That is probably unfair, but it is necessary to have in command somebody who is really good.

Secondly, the profile and screening of those recruited to the UKBA and the border force should be reviewed urgently. I suggest an emergency review of the integrity of existing staff. Next, the staff should be subject to the same disciplinary system as the police and should not be allowed to take the sort of industrial action which they have taken and which they quite often threaten. Finally, a fresh management team should take a grip on the e-Borders system, integrating it fully with the passport system to secure our borders. I am glad that the Home Affairs Select Committee of the House of Commons is looking at the borders system. I hope that we will co-operate closely with it and that the Government will do something serious about it pretty soon.