Draft Immigration (Leave to Enter and Remain) (Amendment) Order 2023

Richard Graham Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2023 General Committees

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Immigration (Leave to Enter and Remain) (Amendment) Order 2023.

The draft order is required to enact a minor change to the legislation that sets out the form and manner by which leave to enter the United Kingdom is granted and refused. It will amend the eligibility criteria for people seeking to enter the UK via an automated e-passport gate or e-gate so that eligible accompanied children as young as 10 may do so. The lower age today is 12. The change is needed to enable a limited trial to take place in February, which will examine whether the lower age limit for entry via e-gate should be 10, rather than 12. To carry out that limited exercise in law, the order is necessary. The proposed proof-of-concept exercise will take place during the school half-term at three airports: Stansted, Heathrow terminal 5 and Gatwick’s north terminal. Once completed, the Home Office will make an assessment of whether the lower age limit of 10 should be adopted more widely.

The Government’s ambition is for our future borders to make the maximum use of automation. The majority of passengers will routinely cross the UK border using automation as their only point of contact. Increasing in a controlled manner the number of passengers eligible to use an e-gate is therefore a logical step. Members of the Committee will be aware that some form of automation is already used by large numbers of people passing through the UK’s border. There has been a significant widening of the pool of nationals eligible for e-gate entry in recent years. A previous amendment to the Immigration (Leave to Enter and Remain) Order 2000 in May 2019 extended e-gate eligibility to visitors from Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the USA.

The continued use of e-gates should be seen in the context of the development of our new global border and immigration system, which makes better use of data, biometrics, analytics and automation to improve security and the fluidity of UK borders. The use of e-gates is an important part of that approach.

For eligible families with young children, there are obvious advantages in being able to use entry via an e-gate, in that they may enter the UK swiftly and effectively without having to queue to be seen by a Border Force officer. That, in turn, benefits others by minimising time in queues and bottlenecks at busy airports, especially at peak times such as the school summer holidays.

We need to answer a number of important questions before a permanent lowering of the lower age limit can be considered. Those include whether children aged 10 or 11 have the ability to use the technology effectively and, indeed, whether the technology is able to process young passengers. For those and other considerations, we will first conduct a short trial, which will be monitored closely by officials. The results will be analysed rigorously.

We at the Home Office take seriously our statutory duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. We will use the live trial to consider whether there are any unintended consequences for the welfare of younger passengers, such as any anxiety if separated temporarily from parents at the e-gates. To be clear, no permanent decision on whether to extend e-gate eligibility to younger passengers will be made until we have considered such issues.

The amendment will enable us in law to allow eligible passengers younger than 12 to use an e-gate, but it does not confer a right on those passengers to do so. It does not mean that passengers aged 10 and 11 must be able to use an e-gate at any UK port with that facility. Eligibility will be limited to accompanied 10 and 11-year-olds of eligible nationality at the three participating ports only for a 14-day period. At other ports, the lower age limit will remain, as currently set, at 12.

In summary, the draft order enacts the most modest of changes to its parent legislation, but allows for a significant next step to be taken in developing a secure and smooth border that demonstrates to the rest of the world that the UK is open for business, as well as making the lives of families that little bit easier.

I commend the draft order to the Committee.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend the Minister give way?

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend is just in time. I will give way.

[Richard Graham]

I am very grateful. On a pedantic point, paragraph 7.7 of the explanatory memorandum answers the question,

“Why is it being changed?”,

with the answer that

“The 2000 order is being amended to lower the minimum age of e-gate eligibility from 12 to 10.”

With respect, that is not why the change is being made; the answer to that is given is paragraph 7.4. Will my right hon. Friend agree to amend paragraph 7.7 to say, “The 2000 order is being amended to improve security, passenger flow and customer experience, especially during half-terms and holidays”? Then we would all be absolutely clear about what is happening and why.

[Robert Jenrick]

The notes make the point that the reason we are changing the law in this way is to allow younger passengers to pass through the e-gates. However, I would be happy to make those changes to the explanatory memorandum so that everyone is abundantly clear about all the good things that will flow from this faster and more efficient processing at our borders, including a better experience for families of many nationalities entering the UK.