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A border police

Any country that is serious about its security must have properly policed borders. As an Island this should be easier for the UK than most other countries, but under Labour - we don’t know who is entering or leaving the country. This is unacceptable and why the Conservatives announced this week that we are making plans for the development of a dedicated Border Police Force. Lord Stevens, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, will lead a working group to develop the proposals in detail.

There is currently no single UK wide force charged with securing our borders, preventing and detecting illegal immigration or tackling people trafficking. Instead, we have at least six separate agencies including HM Revenue and Customs, the Immigration Service, the security services, port police, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency and the Metropolitan Police.

All of these bodies are staffed by dedicated officers, but they report to different Cabinet Ministers, often do not communicate effectively with each other and lack overall co-ordination.

Labour’s priorities are all wrong. Their solution is to foist an ineffective and ruinously expensive ID card scheme on us. ID cards are a bad idea. The scheme will waste up to £20 billion without performing the most basic task – securing our borders.

The Conservative’s proposal to scrap ID cards and spend some of the money saved on the creation of a fully integrated Border Police Force will have one clear focus: To check people when they come into the UK and to check when they leave.

The new Border Police will be the Country’s eyes and ears and will take whatever steps are necessary to protect the security of our borders. The proposal has widespread support, including from Sir Chris Fox, the former Head of the Association of Police Officers; Sir Ian Blair the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Force and the Cross Party Home Affairs Select Committee.

I have personally observed how lax the border controls are when you travel into this country by boat. Both in terms of our security and in terms of a fair but managed immigration policy.

We need a border’s policy – it is astounding that it is not in place.