E-borders all at sea

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Some elementary oversights by the UK Border Authority in implementing the EU’s e-Borders programme give Keith Vaz little confidence that the scheme is viable in its present form.

The current debates surrounding the immigration cap serve to indicate the extent of political and public interest that surrounds immigration.

Particularly since the EU expanded its borders and fundamental freedoms to encompass Central and Eastern Europe, the need to account for the number of migrants in this country has been ever more vocalised by politicians and the media alike. The e-Borders programme was created as a system to meet this need. But does it work?

The e-Borders programme gathers information electronically on all travellers entering or leaving the UK, whether by air, sea or rail. The home affairs committee undertook an inquiry into e-Borders in the second half of 2009, and did a brief follow-up just before Parliament was dissolved in March. The programme is expected to cost the taxpayer £1.2bn and airline operators about £100m per annum. There is as yet no estimate for the costs to ferry and train operators. What do we get for this money?

While welcoming the rationale of the programme, we were very concerned that little thought appeared to have been given at design stage to the different ways in which airlines, ferries and trains operate, which rendered many of the requirements impractical or prohibitively expensive.

The logistical model used by the UK Border Authority (UKBA) was that for air travel, where the vast majority of passengers buy tickets and supply at least some information about themselves before arriving at the airport. This is not the case with ferries and trains, whose operators do not need, and therefore do not currently ask for, most of the information required under the e-Borders programme. Also, a high percentage of passengers do not pre-book but just turn up and take the next ferry or train – including most of the millions of lorry drivers carrying freight to and from the UK each year. There have even been suggestions that port facilities might have to be rebuilt to cater for the queues of traffic resulting from the need to collect passenger information at the point of departure.

Nor does the model used take into account the fact that trains make multiple stops where passengers can embark and disembark, leaving questions as to how it would operate efficiently if tunnel services expand beyond their current destination points, as hoped.

We were also very concerned that UKBA seemed to have skated over possible difficulties in complying with EU law and the national law of other countries, where information on incoming passengers would have to be collected. We considered that most, if not all, of the difficulties could be solved if UKBA adopted a more flexible approach.

More generally, in order to obtain information about passengers to the UK, carriers will need the cooperation of the port and legal authorities of other countries. Foreign port authorities may not be willing or able to re-organise their facilities to enable the carriers to obtain the required information from passengers.

More fundamentally, the collection of the data required by UKBA may be contrary to the data-protection laws of some countries, and it may also be in breach of the freedom of movement provisions of the Treaty of Rome.

All of these problems have persisted despite advice and representations from carriers and a successful pilot programme with the air industry. Given that many of the problems were identified at the start of the process, I cannot help doubting that the programme will be completed without being modified extensively.