May opts to split fiasco-hit Border Agency

The official investigation into last year’s border checks fiasco found confusion, poor record-keeping and ambiguous instructions were rife in the UKBA and border force staff were acting without ministerial approval.

John Vine, the independent chief inspector of the UKBA, found about 500,000 Eurostar passengers boarded trains in France and arrived in the UK without being checked against the warnings index of suspected terrorists.

He also found border security checks had been suspended regularly and applied inconsistently over the past four years.

One scheme at London’s Heathrow Airport let students from supposedly low-risk countries in even when they did not have the necessary entry clearance in a move which was both “potentially discriminatory and unlawful”.

Home Secretary Theresa May told the House of Commons yesterday the UK Border Force would become a separate law-enforcement body.

Mrs May said: “The Vine report reveals a border force that suspended important checks without permission; that spent millions on new technologies but chose not to use them; that was led by managers who did not communicate with their staff; and that sent reports to Ministers that were inaccurate, unbalanced and excluded key information.”

The Home Secretary admitted the border force had been a troubled organisation since it was founded in 2008 and “needs a whole new management culture”.

She added its work was “too great for one organisation” and from next month the UK border force would be split from UKBA and become a separate body, with its own ethos of law enforcement, that was accountable directly to ministers.

Wiltshire Police Chief Constable Brian Moore will be appointed as its new head after his predecessor Brodie Clark was suspended and then quit in November amid the row over lax border security.

Mr Clark admitted using guidance designed for health and safety emergencies to suspend fingerprint checks at the UK’s ports, actions which had no Ministerial authorisation, but accused Mrs May of blaming him for “political convenience”. He insisted he was “no rogue officer” and launched a constructive dismissal case.

In the official report into the problems, Mr Vine said: “Communications between the agency and ministers and between senior managers and operational staff was poor.

“There was a lack of clarity in the language used with consequent ambiguity when decisions were converted to operational practice.

“This was compounded by instructions to staff that did not always accurately reflect what ministers had agreed.”

He added that record-keeping was also poor and there was “limited staff understanding at ports as to why accurate and detailed records needed to be maintained”.

Checks against the Home Office warnings index were not carried out on about 500,000 European Economic Area (EEA) nationals travelling to the UK on Eurostar services from France, Mrs May admitted.

She told MPs while these passengers were “judged to be low risk and they still had their passports checked... the fact remains that these suspensions were completely unauthorised and that is simply not acceptable”.

Secure ID, the system for checking the fingerprints of foreign nationals who require a visa to come to Britain, was also suspended 482 times between June 2010 and November 2011 without approval.

Between January and June 2011, a biometric chip-reading facility had been deactivated on 14,812 occasions at a number of ports, with the UKBA unable to explain why.

Mrs May said around 100 million passengers enter the UK each year and the report was “clear that the risk to the border needs to be kept in perspective”.

“No one was waved through, everyone had their passports checked and warnings index checks were almost always carried out so that those who had previously come to the attention of the authorities would still be identified and refused entry,” she said.

But shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said: “Last summer’s border fiasco was a disgrace.”

And she added: “The Home Secretary is still passing the buck. Unless she recognises the responsibility of Ministers she will fail to prevent future fiascos, and she will fail to keep our borders secure.”