Home Office's e-Borders programme has delivered some significant benefits, but still has some way to go to deliver anticipated immigration control benefits
The Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, John Vine, has today published his report examining the Home Office's e-Borders programme.
You can read the report here.
The Chief Inspector found the results of the programme to be mixed.
In a press release, he acknowledges that e-Borders has delivered significant benefits for the police, enabling them to arrest thousands of suspects and wanted individuals, but the programme still has some way to go to deliver many of the original benefits to immigration control that were anticipated.
"Despite being in development for over a decade, and costing over half a billion pounds, the e-borders programme has yet to deliver many of the anticipated benefits originally set out in 2007."
"It is no longer an aim of the programme to facilitate risk based controls, which would have seen the levels of immigration checks on arrival tailored to the perceived risk posed by passengers, nor has it delivered a system to count all foreign national passengers in and out of the UK," John Vine said.
The press release notes that the Chief Inspector was pleased to find that:
• e-borders information had resulted in the arrests of thousands of individuals wanted by the police in connection with various offences, including murder and rape
• e-Borders information was also being used successfully to identify individuals who had left the UK voluntarily following an adverse immigration decision
• e-borders high profile alerts were being used to intercept high risk individuals at the arrivals gate at Heathrow
• the ability to conduct travel history searches was a valuable tool in helping with immigration casework decisions
However, the Chief Inspector was concerned to find that:
• the original e-borders business case had not anticipated risks relating to the compatibility of the e-Borders scheme with European law, nor the lack of alignment with rail and sea operations
• as a result e-borders had not delivered the planned increases in passenger data collection, and only 65% of all passenger movements into and out of the UK were covered
• 649,000 alerts relating to potential drug and tobacco smuggling were deleted from the system without being read over a ten month period, which had a significant impact on the ability of staff at the border to seize prohibited and restricted goods
• e-borders high profile alerts were not being used to intercept high risk individuals at any other ports aside from Heathrow
• the majority of e-borders immigration alerts added little value, because the information was already available to the Border Force Officers at the port of arrival
• contrary to its 2006 business case, e-Borders data was not extensive enough to count foreign national passengers in and out of the UK
• no consistent reporting regime was in place to inform Border Force of intended passenger arrivals by unscheduled sea travel (ferries, boats or ships)
• the move away from the concept of risk based controls meant that faster processing times, based on e-Borders, had not been delivered
For media, the focus was on the fact that the Chief Inspector's report found that fewer than two-thirds of passenger movements were covered.
BBC News highlighted this as one of the reports main findings.
The Daily Mail also highlighted how the report found "[s]ome 70million passengers a year – one in three of the total – are arriving without undergoing background checks because of European Union data protection rules."
For the Daily Mail, the electronic borders system has "descended into a shambles".
The Times led with how the "[n]ew £500m border control lets passengers flood in unchecked".
The Guardian led with the finding that 650,000 smuggling alerts were deleted, and the Guardian headline described the e-Borders programme as "chaotic".
The Telegraph also focussed on this finding in a piece headlined "Drugs ignored in favour of immigration checks as 650,000 alerts unread and deleted."