Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the Minister for Legal Migration and the Border's Oral Statement of 8 May 2024 on Passport e-Gates Network Outage, Official Report, column 592, if he will publish a report of the investigations into the failure of passport e-gates on 7 May 2024.

It has never been Government practice, for reasons of law enforcement, to comment on operational issues relating to border security and immigration controls. This includes offering commentary on the performance of border systems and of ePassport Gates data specifically.

The Home Office has a number of contingency arrangements in the event of a system failure, including technical and business contingency measures.

In the UK, all arriving passengers need to establish their eligibility for admission. Every passenger is required to establish their nationality and identity. To maintain a safe and secure border, a passenger’s passport or national identity card is checked electronically. The eGates and face-to-face checks are two methods of conducting the same process.