Monday, November 14, 2011

UK border checks were waived for travellers in private jets, emails reveal

Leaked documents show extent that checks on European visitors were relaxed under 'pilot scheme' authorized by Theresa May

Thousands of passengers from all over the world arriving on private jets were allowed into Britain this summer without any passport checks as a matter of official policy, according to leaked UK Border Agency emails.

The internal UKBA documents show that immigration and customs staff were instructed not to meet passengers arriving on private charter flights, including executive jets, as part of the "light-touch" targeted approach to border checks secretly adopted this summer.

The emails also reveal the extent that full passport checks on European passengers were scaled back under the "limited pilot scheme" that was authorized by the home secretary, Theresa May, on 28 July.

The home secretary confirmed that the "limited" pilot scheme had in fact applied to all ports and airports in Britain.

The level 2 checks, which suspended the checks on biometric passports of EU travellers, were used hundreds of times each week during the summer.

May said on Monday night, in reply to 14 questions posed last week by Keith Vaz, the Commons home affairs committee chairman, that the 'lighter touch' checks were used at the following ports: Aberdeen, Belfast, Birmingham, Bournemouth, Bristol airport, Calais, Cardiff, Coquelles, East Midlands, Edinburgh, Exeter, Gatwick, Harwich, Heathrow, Leeds Bradford, Liverpool, London City, Luton, Manchester Airport, Newcastle, Newhaven, Norwich, Plymouth, Poole, Portsmouth, Prestwick and Stansted.

In the first week of the pilot scheme the checks were relaxed on 100 occasions across the country. This rose to 260 occasions in week six of the pilot and 165 occasions in week nine, which ended on 9 October.

The emails show that the "lighter touch" checks were being used by UKBA local managers in "sharp bursts" to redeploy staff to higher-priority targets such as suspected drug smugglers and clandestine entrants and to "mitigate pressure of excessive queues".

The disclosures come as the departed head of the UK border force, Brodie Clark, prepares to fight to clear his name and retain his pension when he appears before the Commons home affairs committee on Tuesday. He is expected to challenge the home secretary's claims to the Commons that he is to blame for the passport check scandal by going beyond ministerial instructions.

The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said the leaked UKBA emails contained startling new information.

"Last week the home secretary told us that no one had been waved through without checks this summer. But these documents show passengers on private flights weren't even seen," she said.

"Last week the Home Office wouldn't admit to having figures about how often checks were downgraded. Now we know those figures exist, and that checks were downgraded 260 times in one week alone – potentially for hours at a time." Cooper said the facts should be released immediately: "As long as she refuses to do so, and keeps running away from media interviews, people will think she has something to hide."

The emails detail UKBA staff at Durham Tees Valley airport raising concerns about a new policy of not being "allowed physically to see the passengers" arriving on private charter flights.

Although passenger details had been filed in advance, no passport checks were to be done on arrival nor checks against watchlists.

"We have no way of checking whether the handling agent information is correct or even if the number of people on the plane matches the number we have been advised," says the concerned official.

He says that airport staff continued to feel uneasy about an instruction "that is at odds with national policy and is creating an unnecessary gap in border security which if exploited by the unscrupulous, could bring the agency into disrepute".

In reply, the UKBA management tell him that the instruction was not against national policy but was actually part of a new national general aviation strategy covering private flights which meant that arrivals did not have to be met.

He was also told the policy was being implemented at many airports across the country. The instruction to abandon the checks was dated 2 March 2011.

The UKBA staff protest that the "no checks" policy was "creating a situation where we are not able to secure the border as robustly as we would like to, for no justifiable reason".

The official response said it was appreciated that the move to the pre-clearance of private flights could "be perceived as a step down from meeting 100% of GA [general aviation] arrivals in Durham Tees Valley, but we are confident that through application of robust risk assessment and risk testing ... we are responding proportionately to the risk posed by general aviation".

The UKBA response also assured the staff there "will be no accusation of dereliction of duty as long as the procedures have been followed".

The reply adds that the term general aviation covers all flights other than military, scheduled and regular cargo flights.

The Treasury estimates there are 80,000-90,000 private flights a year arriving in Britain.

http://www.guardian.co.uk

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