Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make it her policy to increase the number of front-line staff employed to work at the UK border.

Border Force has recruited additional officers over the past two and a half years and currently employs 7,900 operational staff across the UK – an increase from 7,029 in 2012. Border Force officers work closely with the National Crime
Agency's Border Policing Command, which was created in 2013 and has over 300 officers based at UK ports and airports, to ensure that there is a single coherent strategy for border security, based on a shared assessment of risk and
threat.

Border Force has a clear operating mandate that sets out the checks required for both passengers and customs activity. Its workforce has become increasingly multi-skilled, dynamic and flexible; allowing for staff to be deployed to areas
of greatest need at short notice. This approach, which is similar to those adopted by other law enforcement organisations, ensures that frontline resources are concentrated where they are needed most.