Brexit: Customs and Border Staff

Viscount Waverley Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Asking rational questions is perfectly legitimate; noble Lords tend to ask rational questions, and that is totally legitimate. There is a wide range of views in both your Lordships’ House and the other place but I think we all accept the outcome of the referendum.

[Viscount Waverley (CB)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that a UK border official at Charles de Gaulle airport once told me that when a passport on occasion appears in front of them that is illegal, they give it back to the French authorities and that passport often reappears, carried by somebody else, in order to try to get access to the UK?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Viscount tells me something that I did not know, but the e-gates are actually very accurate at marrying up the person with the identity in the passport.