I spent part of yesterday evening reading part of the independent Inspector’s report on his investigation into border security checks – a headline grabber if ever there was one; the media had left me with the impression that men with beards, wearing turbans & silken pantaloons, with golden scimitars tucked into their belts, had been waved through without let or hindrance.
But no. The Border Police have been letting in coach loads of Brownies & old ladies without proper checks, contrary to the Home Secretary’s specific instruction. And not checking out the skiers coming home on Eurotrain.
I jest – a little. The report tells another sorry tale of confusion over requirements & responsibilities, contradictions between health & safety, promises of shorter queuing times, & a rush to implement expensive new biometric computer solutions without proper testing or training. None of which was helped by changes of minister under the last Labour government & then again of course after the election.
In her statement to the House of Commons the Home Secretary promised new arrangements, which specify a minimum level of mandatory checks for all c100 million passengers arriving in the UK each year & make clear that no unauthorised suspension of checks is acceptable under any circumstances. Interim arrangements were put into effect by a message sent to all Regional Directors by the new Chief Executive of the Borders Agency last November.
The Inspector was able to report that, at least between November & the end of January, the Chief Executive had not been troubled by any requests for any suspension of checks, thus demonstrating that, together with much closer monitoring of what staff are doing day by day, we may have confidence that any suspensions will take place only with the authority of the most senior manager in the Agency.
I look forward to hearing whether the Chief Executive was able to sleep undisturbed throughout the busy February half term period, when many of the problems reported by the Inspector have arisen in the past.
Fortunately it won’t be his problem in future, since the Border Force has been hived off from the Borders Agency & will have its own Director General who reports directly to ministers.
And, in addition, from next year, ‘the new National Crime Agency will be charged with improving our intelligence capability at the border, investigating serious and organised border crime, and tasking law enforcement assets across all the relevant agencies.’
So that’s alright then. We will all be able to sleep easy.
I spent my time on the bus today devising a new fantasy system of immigration control, one which will obey two fundamental rules of security.
First, that the universal application of the highest & strictest protections in mundane situations itself constitutes a risk to security by encouraging boredom, cynicism & sloppiness.
And secondly, that checks should be unpredictable.
So my system is completely random. Nobody, not even the Immigration Officer, knows what checks will be applied to the next person at his desk or coming down the steps of the school bus. Instead the computer will tell him, ordering a randomly generated number of checks from the available menu. And to make it even more clever, the sampling fractions will themselves vary at random.
There will be some randomly generated questions along the lines of ‘What is the name of the Home Secretary/Have you ever eaten mangoes/When did you last see your father?’ FYIO: this is merely a dummy, which serves no purpose other than to confuse & alarm potential malefactors.
And of course, through his responses to the instructions, the Immigration Officer/Border policeman will be continuously monitored in real time.
It will not be a massively huge computer system.
It could probably even be an app.
Sadly, no minister, even if they had time to get a grip on all the issues during their brief tenure in the office, & understood it, could possibly support such a system. The public & press simply would not stand for it. It would be politically impossible.
