Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when she plans to bring forward legislative proposals for Directive 2016/681/EU on the use of passenger name record data for the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of terrorist offences and serious crime to be transposed into UK law.

The UK has led the way within Europe in the processing of Passenger Name Records to counter terrorism-related activity, serious crime and other threats to the security of the UK border. The European Commission acknowledged that in its “First progress report towards an effective and genuine Security Union” (COM(2016) 670), published on 12 October 2016 which noted in relation to the implementation of Directive 2016/681/EU: “Member States now need urgently to build their Passenger Information Units (PIUs). So far, only one Member State (the United Kingdom) has set up a fully functioning PIU”.

Domestic legislation has provided the necessary framework to establish and operate this capability. To the extent that any additional legislation, regulations or administrative provisions may be necessary for the purpose of transposing the Directive, the deadline for their completion is 25 May 2018.