European Entry-Exit System Requirements: Port of Dover

Debate between Natalie Elphicke and Clive Efford

Wednesday 15th December 2021 Westminster Hall

[Clive Efford (in the Chair)]

Before we begin, I remind Members that they are expected to wear face coverings when not speaking in the debate. This is in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. I remind Members that they are asked by the House to have a covid lateral flow test twice a week if coming on to the parliamentary estate. This can be done either in the testing centre in the House or at home. Please give each other and members of staff space when seated and when entering and leaving the room.

[Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the application of European Entry and Exit System requirements to the Port of Dover.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak about border issues in Dover. For once, this is not about small boats and illegal migration, on which my hon. Friend the Minister and his ministerial colleagues often hear from me, but about European border requirements and legal border controls operating at the port of Dover and other designated locations within the UK. More specifically, it is about the impact of those legal border controls as a result of the upcoming introduction of the digital borders programme by the European Union during 2022, in the context of the Schengen free movement area.

I will set out the context of the debate, which is what happens at, and through, the port of Dover. The port of Dover is the most successful port of its kind in the UK. It is of fundamental strategic and business importance to the whole country and will be well into the future. More than £144 billion in value of freight is transported through the port each year. The port manages a third of all UK trade with the EU, and together with the Eurotunnel, those combined routes—known as the short straits—manage almost 60% of all trade with the EU. The port is beautiful to behold, with a sheer operational efficiency, pace, speed and excellence that saw, pre covid, the port processing 1,000 lorries per hour and a passenger per second when combining inbound and outbound volumes. Few places anywhere have this level of speed and efficiency.

I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Minister has joined me at the port of Dover in the past and seen its operations at first hand. Those operations are possible not only because the port is really good at it and has been doing it a long time. It is the shortest route to market, and the market is competitive, and those competitive forces have required efficiency and excellence. I commend chief executive Doug Bannister and the Dover port team for all they do, which is fundamentally possible because border controls between the EU and the UK are part of this well-oiled machine.

Post Brexit, in spite of the many doomsters, gloomsters and fearmongers, trade flows between our nation and its European neighbours continued uninterrupted and unimpeded, other than the appalling consequences to my constituency when the French unilaterally and unreasonably closed the border before Christmas 2020, which predated our leaving the EU. That resulted in gridlock for Dover and the surrounding area. It meant residents struggling to get essential food, including meals on wheels, and to get to work or to hospital. It is a reminder of the realities of managing that level of lorries and passenger traffic and its impact on the Dover community, the whole of the Kent community and goods and services for the entire country. That is why I do not think it is good enough to allow the entry-exit system implementation to continue to be discussed slowly at the comfortable pace of the respective officials on each side of the border. Discussions between officials have been going on for some time. We do not need more discussions; we need practical, operable solutions that work in a juxtaposed context.

The work needs to be stepped up. It is vital that the Government are proactive and energetic in their diplomatic engagement to move things forward at greater pace and to bring forward a solution, which is now a matter of urgency, not just for Dover but for the country as a whole. Border controls are an essential and central part of the effective trading environment at Dover. I am in Westminster Hall today because border controls are about to change in a matter of months, and how they will work in a juxtaposed control setting at Dover has still not been settled. Let me set out in some detail what the border controls are now and how they will change, and say why a practical and operable solution is urgently needed and vital.

Currently, there are special border arrangements to support frictionless trade and border security between France, Belgium and the UK under the Le Touquet agreement and the Canterbury treaty, which are not EU agreements but bilateral agreements between the respective nation states. Under them, each country’s entry checks are made before exit and not after exit. By way of example, the French border security team—police aux frontières, or PAF—operate as PAF in Dover and carry out entry checks before exit from the UK to France. Likewise, the UK Border Force operates in Calais and carries out entry checks before exit from France to the UK.

I am sure that many of us, if not all of us, who are here today have experienced this system, which has been in place for many years, perhaps at Dover, or at St Pancras when taking the Eurostar. It is often the starting point for that fun family moment when someone says their first, “Oui, monsieur. Merci,” and when the smaller ones are encouraged to practise their polite manners in French.

That approach has been implemented for a very serious reason. It has been extremely successful in maintaining frictionless trade and in tackling people smuggling and other criminal activities at each of our borders. That is an approach and an agreement that has continued post-transition from the EU and it works very well.

Moving forward, both the UK and the EU will bring in digital borders, but not at the same time. The EU digital borders system—the European entry-exit system, or EES controls—is due to become operational in less than 12 months’ time. The UK equivalent is scheduled for 2024-25. That is really too far away and it is vital that our own UK digital borders programme is accelerated. We must not fall behind and we need to ensure that we are ready.

These new EES rules are part of Europe’s smart borders system, which will require biometric checking for every individual each time they cross an EU external border. The UK is such an external border and a third country for the purposes of these controls. There are further parts of the smart borders system to follow, including the European travel information and authorisation system, or ETIAS, which is in effect a new priority partner short-visa system for the non-Schengen countries, which include the UK. ETIAS is also due to come in in 2022.

In due course, as I have said, the UK will have its smart borders system, which will accordingly require changes in France, Belgium and other countries. The problem with the EES, to put it at its simplest, is that it has been designed for airports, by which I mean individual foot passengers. It has not been designed for people travelling in groups, it has not been designed for people travelling in vehicles and it has certainly not been designed for gateways operating juxtaposed controls.

The current EES design requires every driver to be stopped and every passenger to have their biometrics submitted and recorded either in or outside the stationary vehicle or in a purpose-built facility. In practical terms, what does that mean? At the moment, it would mean every passenger and every driver stopping and getting out of their vehicle in live lanes of heavy traffic in a port that manages the greatest number of vehicle movements in the United Kingdom every single day. That is not just impractical and dangerous—it simply will not work.

The matter was raised with the Home Secretary at a recent Kent MPs meeting with her, and it remains urgently important to resolve. It has been raised repeatedly by Kent MPs over the year with the Home Office, the Cabinet Office and the Department for Transport, as well as being raised by the port of Dover, Getlink—which runs the channel tunnel—and other operators. The House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee has also expressed concern in its letter to the Home Secretary on 22 November 2021—so a very short time ago—about unpreparedness. It raised concerns that there could be sustained delays and disruption. The Committee specifically highlighted concerns about traffic and trade disruption, which could occur on the short straits if the operational issues are not satisfactorily, and speedily, resolved.

To date, we, and the port of Dover, have struggled to establish where the ministerial lead sits, whether that is in the Cabinet Office or the Home Office, so I am pleased to see the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) here today. These issues require close working between the Home Office and the Cabinet Office, and they may, indeed do, require a greater degree of diplomatic engagement to accelerate and bring forward operational solutions.

The port of Dover is the most successful port of its kind in the UK. More than £144 billion-worth of freight is transported through the port each year. It accounts for a third of all UK trade with the EU, supporting thousands of local jobs in Dover and Deal and hundreds of thousands of jobs across the UK. The port of Dover is a national asset that has a huge role to play in post- Brexit global Britain. What Dover and the short straits do simply cannot be replicated elsewhere. That success has been built on trade running smoothly. That success has continued post-Brexit.

We need to see that success continue with necessary decisions and investment, including upgrading the A2 and planning for the EU's new digital borders system when it becomes operational next year. With the clock ticking, it is now urgent that the Government sharpen their focus on implementing the new digital borders system seamlessly in a juxtaposed context. Otherwise, they risk big delays at the port, travel chaos in Kent and real damage to the British economy. It is a Brexit consequential in that the relationships to discuss and resolve have changed along with leaving the EU, and therefore it is an issue that ought to be properly funded, in whole or in part, from the transitional funding arrangements.

As with other transitional arrangements, the consequences of an operable solution not being found could place the whole of Kent at risk of traffic management gridlock, and leave the country and its businesses short of supplies. It is therefore of utmost importance to our country, county and East Kent that the operational, legal, diplomatic and practical solutions for EES and ETIAS are resolved as soon as possible. We have navigated the Brexit transition so successfully, but it would be extremely damaging for the EES issue to result in exactly the adverse outcome for traffic, the community and the country that we have sought to avoid, and have avoided—namely gridlock in Kent, and goods and trade disruption across the UK. It is vital that the issue is now progressed at pace and with urgency. This important issue will have huge implications for my constituents and residents across Kent, as well as the wider British economy, if it is not effectively and properly addressed at the earliest opportunity.

I will conclude by asking my hon. Friend the Minister several questions that would help the port of Dover and ferry operators, as well as hauliers and trade manufacturers, to understand how the system will work in practice. First, when is the target date for detailed guidance on the operational framework for the new arrangements expected to be available from the current Border Force and PAF discussions? Secondly, will hauliers have to stop and exit their cabs at the frontier controls, and will tourists have to exit their cars and coaches? If so, how will the consequential public safety concerns, and the inevitable delays that will result, be managed? Thirdly, what consideration has been given to forms of pre-clearance away from the port—whether on the factory floor, at the departing place of manufacture, at service stations or at border facilities, such as those at Sevington, Ashford and the White Cliffs Dover site?

Fourthly, do the checks need to be made physically by the frontier police, or can they be made by a remote entry system? Fifthly, what is the current state of discussion with France and/or the EU on EES and ETIAS implementation? Sixthly, given the state of current discussions, what do Ministers hope will be the eventual outcome or agreement, and within what timescales? Seventhly, does my hon. Friend the Minister agree that a successful outcome is in the interests of the EU and France as much as the UK, because frictionless trade and strong borders result in the freest trade and the greatest mutual benefit? Finally, does he agree that this should be paid for as part of the post-transitional Cabinet Office budget or another borders budget, instead of potentially needing to be paid for by the port and ferry operators?

I appreciate that my hon. Friend the Minister may not have all the answers to those questions to hand. Indeed, that is the reason for requesting this vital and urgent debate. Will he meet me and Kent colleagues in the first week of January, so that we can now make rapid and determined progress to resolve this issue? Finally, will the Minister join me in congratulating the port of Dover on its immense contribution to the nation, and on the excellent and efficient operations that it runs for the benefit of UK plc?

[Clive Efford (in the Chair)]

Before I call the Minister, I remind the hon. Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke) that it is the convention of the House that the Member in charge does not get to wind up at the end of a 30-minute debate.