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

Robert Jenrick 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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

I am pleased to answer the questions raised by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Aberavon, and by the hon. Member for Weaver Vale as swiftly as I can.

I will come to the question from the hon. Member for Weaver Vale first, on why we have chosen to limit the age change to two years. There is no precise science behind that, other than working with our providers of software to look at which ages we think can be robustly detected through facial recognition, and the likely time gap between when an individual has received their passport—and therefore had their photograph taken—and the age at which they would be passing through the e-gate. We have concluded that 10 is an age at which we could safely do that, because it is very likely that the software that we have available to us will be able to accurately detect a child’s identity on the basis of their face, even if that individual or their parents had taken out their passport the maximum period before then.

It may be that, in time, we can lower the age again, but we are taking a cautious, safety-first approach in only doing so by two years at this point. The data suggests that e-gates are extremely robust and can identify an individual’s face, even that of a relatively young child, as well if not better than the human eye. A 10-year-old should therefore be able to pass through the e-gates and the level of recognition will be as high, if not higher, than if they had been processed by a Border Force officer. We may be able to go lower in the years to come, but we have chosen to make a relatively limited improvement at this stage.

The shadow Minister asked about the ICIBI. I meet with the ICIBI periodically, and am open to it conducting reviews of any Home Office activities. Should the ICIBI wish to make further inquiries into Border Force’s presence at ports, I would be happy to support it in doing so and to ensure that Border Force officers provide it with any information that it requires. In my relatively short tenure at the Home Office, I have not, to the best of my knowledge, received any such request; if I do, I would be more than happy to ensure that it is facilitated.

We take our safeguarding responsibilities extremely seriously. We do not envisage safeguarding issues with the limited reduction in age from 12 to 10, but the purpose of the trial is to investigate and to see whether any issues emerge, which is why we are taking it comparatively slowly. Only accompanied children will be able to pass through the e-gates. The measure definitely will not apply to unaccompanied travellers, although I appreciate that safeguarding concerns can still arise where an individual arrives with an adult. Border Force officers will continue to be present and able to assist, and during the trial there will be officers there to support young children if they encounter difficulties. They will ensure that the trial operates effectively and will intervene where it does not. Of course, they will be specifically tasked with keeping an eye out for some of the issues that the shadow Minister raised, such as signs that an individual has been trafficked or that somebody is entering the UK in a difficult situation or under duress. Should they need to intervene, Border Force officers have a wide range of sources of data at their disposal. Despite leaving the European Union, there has been no material deterioration in the data sources available to them. There is no evidence of issues there.

We will support the roll-out as quickly as possible. The evidence is that the measure will be welcomed by families and should be able to be rolled out swiftly. We do not anticipate there being any issues, and we believe that most children of the ages of 10 to 12 will be able to navigate the process. Those of us who are parents will appreciate that 10 and 11-year-olds are as, if not more, tech-savvy than many of their parents, so I expect that they will be as good as, if not better than, many adults at going through the e-gates. If we can learn from the trial in time for wider roll-out before the summer holidays, that would be all the better. I hope that we will be able to do that.

I will not detain the Committee any longer. I am grateful to the shadow Minister and others for what appears to be broad support. To conclude, the draft order will implement a very limited change to the secondary legislation that will allow for a well-managed proof of concept exercise in a safe and controlled environment. I commend it to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.