Immigration (Stranraer/Cairnryan)

Thomas Docherty Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

I am pleased that I have managed to secure this debate this evening. That said, I am disappointed that it has needs this action to try to secure answers from the Minister. That, along with a number of freedom of information requests, has meant I have had to bring my concerns to the Floor of the House.

My concerns are about one of the most irresponsible cuts this Government have imposed—the withdrawal of UK Border Agency funding from the police ports unit protecting the Galloway ports in my constituency. At the end of this week, I will be attending the official opening of Stena Line’s new terminal building on Loch Ryan. This has replaced its old base in the heart of Stranraer, where ferries have crossed the Irish sea for 150 years. There is also a ferry port operated by P&O just a few miles further round the loch, in the village of Cairnryan.

The Galloway ports are the second busiest ports in the UK, and they have more immigration issues than anywhere else in Scotland. Even though they are entry points to the UK mainland, they are internal ports and a well-known route for illegal immigrants seeking to gain access, and for organised criminals to smuggle contraband goods or illegal drugs. It is well recognised that those last issues were a regular source of funding for terrorist activity in the past.

The chief constable of Dumfries and Galloway constabulary has described the ports as a

“nexus point for illegal immigration”.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has been a champion for Dumfries and Galloway for the 13 or 14 years that he has been a Member. I am disappointed that not a single Scottish National party Member has bothered to come to support his case tonight. He has mentioned the chief constable. Will he say whether there have been any further cuts recently to the number of police officers in the region, from which the ports might have suffered?

[Mr Brown]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I will come on to that point.

The chief constable’s comments did not stop the Government deciding last summer completely to withdraw the UKBA funding that paid for three officers in Dumfries and Galloway police’s ports unit. That funding had been put in place in 2006. A former Home Office Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), visited the Stena facility with me early last year and agreed that we needed to increase the resources to ensure security. She was astonished by what she witnessed.

Just a few weeks after the general election, the position was turned on its head and the Government announced the complete withdrawal of the UKBA funding. Clearly what had changed was that the Government had embarked upon deep cuts, whatever the price. That was confirmed by the UKBA’s regional director for Scotland and Northern Ireland, Phil Taylor, who admitted in a letter to the Scottish Government’s Justice Secretary that the cuts at the Galloway ports were due to the

“government’s requirement to bear down on the cost of the public sector”.

It is pertinent to note that the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch was based on witnessing at first hand the difficulties at the ports. The decision to terminate the UKBA funding at the ports was decided without anyone having the decency to visit the facility to witness how the system operated. In fact, no Minister, not even the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland who represents part of the region—I appreciate the fact that he has turned up this evening—has visited the Galloway ports, despite imposing major cuts on them.

I come now to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty). It is worth mentioning the role of the SNP Scottish Government in this. Although they have been quick to join the chorus of criticism of the UK Government’s cuts, they themselves cut the equivalent of 14.5 officers from the ports unit over the previous couple of years. The crocodile tears from the Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, who visited the ports to discuss security issues yesterday, are shameful in the extreme. The truth is that the Galloway ports have suffered from a double whammy of cuts, first from the SNP Government in Edinburgh and then from the Conservative-led coalition Government.

Today I call on the UK Government to consider either reinstating the UKBA financial support to the Dumfries and Galloway ports unit or providing UKBA staff at the ports. The case is overwhelming and I want to highlight three areas. First, the Government must take heed of their own national security strategy, which identified a

“significant increase in the levels of terrorism relating to Northern Ireland”

as a tier 1, or priority, risk to the country. It makes no sense to recognise an increased threat and then to essentially downgrade the security at the route on to the mainland through the Galloway ports.

Secondly, Dumfries and Galloway constabulary has revealed that the scale of the illegal immigration is worse than had been measured previously. Indeed, a UKBA study earlier this year found that the number of illegal immigrants detected at the ports had rocketed by 65% since the previous year. The Government clearly decided to cut the resource based on an estimation of the number of illegal immigrants passing through the ports. Surely the Minister must concede that if the facts change, so must the conclusions. The most recent figures show that the number of immigration cases between 1 September and 10 November increased by 20% compared to the same period last year, and that whereas in the past one in every six people who were stopped were non-EU citizens, that has now increased to one in five.

Thirdly, the cut at the Galloway ports was made with the assurance that greater effort would be put in at the Northern Ireland end. That approach has so far failed. In September, Dumfries and Galloway police told me that

“a lack of checks/coverage at the Northern Ireland side…has led to more offenders getting through the Northern Ireland ports undetected.”

It is clear that the UKBA failed properly to plan how the ports would cope with the withdrawal of the funding support. New procedures came into place only in September this year, 10 months after the cuts. That should have been done before any decision was taken but it was not, because the cuts were rushed through in a matter of weeks. The consequence is that the Government not only reduced security at the ports but left us exposed for almost a year as they decided how to try to compensate for that.