Border Checks Summer 2011

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Margot James

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right: we need to hear Brodie Clark’s evidence to the Select Committee on Home Affairs, which will be important. However, we also need to know what it says in the instructions that the Home Secretary’s office gave to the Border Agency. That by itself should clear a lot of this up. What did she decide? What were her instructions to the Border Agency? Has it accurately reflected those instructions or not? She should publish that information and those data. Let us get to the bottom of what has been going on.

Thirdly, the Home Secretary needs to provide us with more information and assurances about resources. It is clear from the internal memo and from the Border Agency that staff were under pressure. One internal management e-mail says:

“If we aren’t using level 2”—

the reduced level of checks—

“the assumption is we won’t be using secondary staff to support any pressures…as you know, this is a message we have put out time and time again…We cannot continue to pull resources from other parts of our business when we are not making use of all the tools available to us”.

In other words, the Border Agency was not allowed to ask for extra staff when things got busy unless it had already downgraded to a lower level of checks.

People do not like queues when they come back from holiday—the kids are crying, it is very stressful, or perhaps they are late for a business meeting—but they stand there, looking at all the empty booths, and thinking, “Why aren’t the extra staff put on? Why aren’t the extra lines open?” Now we know the answer: because the Border Agency has been told that it has to cut the checks that are in place. Some 6,500 staff are going from the Border Agency, with 1,500 going from the border force, including more than 800 this year alone. The Prime Minister told the House with great pride that the level of staff was returning to the level of 2006. Really? I have to say that I do not think that border controls were strong enough in 2006. We were right to strengthen them and to keep strengthening them. [Interruption.] If Government Members really want to roll back the clock and reduce the checks and border controls that are in place across this country, they are completely out of touch with their constituents across the country, who want to see proper immigration controls in place.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Lady think that the border controls were ever strict enough under the last Government? Let me tell her that my constituents will never forgive that Government for letting in 2.2 million people, a population twice that of our nearest city, Birmingham.

[Yvette Cooper]

It was right to increase and strengthen those border controls and to increase biometric checks. However, if the hon. Lady wants to intervene again, I have to ask her: does she agree with the pilot that her Home Secretary introduced, which reduced those biometric checks and removed checks against the watch list for EU children?

[Margot James]

I will not presume to comment on the decisions that the Home Secretary made, but I will say this. It was quite—[Interruption.]