Stephen Pollard
system that would be easily scannable and easily referenced by the authorities.
But when it comes to governments and computer software nothing is ever straightforward. The number of botched government technology schemes are legion. When Mrs May was home secretary, for example, the Home Office totally messed up a plan to draw together all the relevant data on people coming to the UK (information such as airline passenger logs, airport information, entry and departure dates, criminal records and such like).
Other nations have managed to find workable software to run similar programs but typically – this same madness has been regularly repeated across Whitehall – the Home Office decided we could not simply buy an existing piece of software, we needed a new specially designed system. Eventually the software and the time and money spent on it were written off as useless. This example alone should be a cautionary tale when it comes to the plan to scrap landing cards but we never seem to learn.
This time round the problem isn’t useless software: it’s that we haven’t even got to the stage of having any software up and running. Because although the Government is consulting on a new digital system nothing is ready.
Yet it has already announced that it is planning to scrap landing cards and will do so more or less now. Before, in other words, any new system has been set up to replace them. Were it not par for the course for this – and to be fair the previous – government to make an utter mess of anything relating to technology and border controls, it would be scarcely believable.
As David Wood’s words make clear: landing cards are not some irrelevant relic from the past but a useful and necessary tool for the intelligence services. And in the fight against terrorism any small edge that we can have is important.
It defies all common sense that the Government would consider abolishing landing cards before setting up their replacement. It’s not as if they even cost much to run. The Home Office, which administers landing cards, says it will save just £3.6 million a year.
But in its consultation document the department says it plans to scrap landing cards now even though no digital replacement can be ready until the new year at the earliest.
UNDER the proposed new system passengers will instead have to fill out “advance passenger information” such as name, date of birth, passport number, gender and the country issuing their passport. Much like the ESTA (electronic system for travel authorisation) form which everyone travelling to the US has to fill out.
There’s nothing wrong in principle with converting the system into a new digital form – quite the opposite in fact. But as Tim Loughton, the former acting chairman of the Home Affairs select committee puts it: “It defies logic at a time when so much effort is being put into improving border security to remove a longstanding tool like this without a proper replacement and for what is a relatively small saving.”
Yes we need a new and better system than landing cards but scrapping them until we have that system is simply mad.
‘No new system set up to replace them’