Border security ‘not effective nor efficient’
Ex-inspector points to arrivals chaos with exit gates stuck open and officers yelling instructions
THE protection of Britain’s borders and airports is “neither effective nor efficient”, a former immigration inspector has warned as he said the Home Office “must do better”.
At inspections of Heathrow, Stansted and Luton airports, David Neal found posts were left unmanned, staff were distracted and guidance was ignored. Poor communication posed a risk to border security and officer safety, he said.
In a report on the use of hotels for asylum seekers, he pointed to “lack of grip and poor leadership”, with “basic bread and butter checks” in several areas not being completed.
The Government published 13 reports yesterday, having sacked Mr Neal for “breaching the terms of his appointment” by disclosing “unauthorised” information on border security to the media.
The former chief inspector of borders and immigration had broken ranks to say the department was suppressing 15 reports that exposed security risks.
He claimed he was fired “for doing my job” of unveiling “inconvenient” truths about the failings in the system.
After inspecting airport e-gates he said: “I believe the protection of the border is neither effective nor efficient.”
In another report, he wrote there was a “lack of grip and poor leadership in a critical area of business”, saying: “The Home Office must do better.”
In his report on the three London airports, Mr Neal found border posts were unmanned and staff were distracted by “a lack of focus and poor infrastructure”, while Home Office guidance calling for at least two roving officers to 10 or more gates was not followed at all.
In one case, inspectors saw the exit doors on one gate become stuck open, creating an opportunity for a passenger to pass through without any checks. This was quickly rectified by a monitoring officer.
A lack of equipment also hindered effective communication, increasing the risk both to officers’ “personal safety” and the “security of the border”.
At Stansted, Mr Neal reported that staff were so short on radios they were forced to shout messages to each other within earshot of passengers, throwing up potential security risks.
In his annual report, covering April 2022 to March 2023, Mr Neal accused the Home Office of a “culture of defensiveness”, claiming he had experienced “significant pushback” while drafting inspection reports, including responses which “have gone way beyond” just checking factual accuracy.
He said officials would be happy to put a “positive goss” on failures if left to their own devices, adding: “To put it bluntly, if the Home Office does not want to change, it will not.”
“The only meaningful way of determining whether a recommendation has been delivered is to review it as part of another inspection”.
In a separate report, the former inspector found that customs channels at East Midlands Airport were also left unmanned, with no officers witnessed intercepting passengers. He warned a “lack of anti-smuggling capability” at Britain’s airports poses a “major concern” – raising questions as to whether the border is “secure from a goods perspective”. At hotels for asylum seekers, Mr Neal found there was a reliance on private contractors to self-report that Disclosure and Barring Service checks were in place, with only “periodic spot checks” by the Home Office – which is “really not good enough”.
He pointed to at least 467 cases of children going missing from hotels since 2021, with 147 still unaccounted for as of September last year. Mr Neal added that there is “no evidence” of a Home Office strategy to end hotel use.
He also noted that 7,500 asylum seekers had been effectively left in “indefinite limbo” because they were considered for the Government’s Rwanda deportation scheme but couldn’t be sent, with some waiting two years for decisions.
Mr Neal said: “I think it’s a real positive that these reports have been published. I think it bodes well that the Home Secretary has gripped his officials in getting these reports published so quickly, it’s only a week since I was sacked. But I think there are real questions to be asked about why it [took] the sacking of a public official to expose what should be routine.”
A Home Office spokesman said: “We recognise that independent scrutiny, such as that provided by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI), plays an important role in ensuring we have a well-functioning immigration system.
“We take ICIBI reports very seriously and work has been under way to implement the recommendations in these reports since we received them, regardless of the fact they haven’t been published.”