Draft Immigration (Leave to Enter and Remain) (Amendment) Order 2018

Neil Coyle Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2019 General Committees

[Caroline Nokes]

We continue to keep that under review with our key partners, including Heathrow Airports Ltd, Gatwick and Eurotunnel. Critically, for some of those locations, I am very alive to the challenge around physical space—I was about to say infrastructure, but it is space—and making sure that arrivals halls can accommodate more gates. We continue to keep that under review, because as far as I am concerned it is absolutely imperative that we make sure that entry into the UK is secure, swift and efficient, and that our passengers have the best experience that they can.

However, the hon. Gentleman is right to make that point, and I reassure him that I continue to meet regularly with our partners to make sure that we can have as many e-passport gates as possible open at any one time, and that they are open at the right times. A key factor is making sure that we work with partners so that we are conscious of the scheduling of flight arrivals and any delays that might build up in the airline system, so that, when people arrive in the arrivals hall, the right number of Border Force officers are present, to enable as many gates as possible to be open.

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

If the Government are intent on keeping the policy under review, will they also consider extending access to e-gates to other countries, particularly Commonwealth members, who feel somewhat aggrieved at not being given low-risk status?

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[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. Some colleagues might think that when they call a Westminster Hall debate, it has zero effect; I am pleased to say that the Westminster Hall debate that I secured on 12 October 2011 at 4.30 pm, which called for just this change, has finally led to it. I assumed that I had been simply ignored, but it turns out that the report of that debate has gone into the depths of Government and resulted in this very sensible policy.

I specifically welcome this measure in my role as the Prime Minister’s trade envoy to Canada, because one of the principal issues raised with me on my visits by Canadians who come to the UK, not just for business but as visitors, is the delays they experience at the border. In fact, for many visitors, particularly from a country such as Canada, which shares so much with us—intelligence and security, our “Five Eyes” partnership and even a Head of State—it is a very unwelcome feeling to arrive in the United Kingdom and be told that they have to go through this much more strenuous system.

I was surprised to hear the shadow Minister say that we do not make exceptions on the basis of nationality at our border when that is exactly what we do. What we have at the moment is a border system that says, “If you are white, you will be treated differently than if you are non-white”, because we prioritise European Union citizens over everybody else, and that is a—[Interruption.] I will give way on that point, of course.

[Neil Coyle]

It is absolutely outrageous to suggest that there are only white citizens living in EU member states. That is a massive insult to the 40% black and minority ethnic community in my constituency, let alone the BME communities across all the other member states of the European Union.

[Andrew Percy]

If the hon. Gentleman, instead of shouting, had allowed me to continue to develop my argument, he would have heard me go on to say that, absolutely, the European Union has a diversity of population, but overall it is overwhelmingly a white club and it provides—