Rail and ferries are ‘weak link’ on UK border, says think tank

Illegal immigration is still a problem and the state must do everything within reason to deter it

RAIL and ferry routes into the UK are a “weak link” in the country’s borders because authorities only receive information about passengers once they have checked in for their journeys, according to an influential think tank.

A report by Policy Exchange states that the system for seeking advance data from those entering or leaving the UK by ferry or train is a “pale shadow” of the scheme followed by airlines.

It calls for rail and ferry operators to be obliged to send information “far earlier” to the Border Force in order to enable “proper checks to be made”.

While airlines provide the passport details of passengers to the Border Force’s National Border Targeting Control Centre 24 hours before a flight, or 30 minutes for “last-minute passengers”, data on ferry and rail passengers is sent to the authorities once an individual has checked in, the report states.

“It takes two hours to be processed, by which time a fugitive might have left the country,” it adds. “Brexit provides an opportunity to close this loophole.”

The report also recommends rolling out a new identification system for EU citizens to the entire UK population, and paying failed asylum seekers more to leave the country, in order to help make the UK’s borders “fit for purpose”.

Describing the “loophole” in relation to trains and ferries, it states: “The Travel Document Information for rail and ferry passengers is only sent to the National Border Targeting Control once an individual has checked in, rather than 24 hours before a flight in the case of API [Advanced Passenger Information], leaving insufficient time for proper checks to be made.”

In an article for The Sunday Telegraph, David Goodhart, the co-author of the report, also warns that the recent scandal over the Government’s threats to deport members of the Windrush generation “must not lead to a radical watering down of the so-called ‘hostile environment’” for illegal migrants.

Italy’s deputy prime minister said last night that the EU was “swindling” Britain out of the Brexit the public voted for. Matteo Salvini told The Sunday Times that Theresa May should be prepared to walk away without a deal.

Britain is a country that wants to remain open, but does not want its population to change too fast. It is a delicate balancing act for the UK border infrastructure. And despite the refrain of being “not fit for purpose” – either too laissez faire for not deporting enough illegal immigrants, or too draconian for harassing legitimate residents caught up in the Windrush scandal – we are edging in the right direction.

It is seldom recognised that most of our immigration is now temporary, mainly students and workers who return home. Annual net immigration is running at over 250,000 a year but the number granted permanent residence (excluding EU citizens) is just 60,000 a year. If the Government had taken permanent residence as the annual “tens of thousands” target, rather than net immigration, it would have comfortably met it.

In any case, having spent months talking to dozens of people from top to bottom of the Home Office for a report published tomorrow for the think tank, Policy Exchange, I come away reassured that the border is working far better than 10 years ago. The visa flows (there are 2.6 million visas granted every year) are under tighter control; since 2008, more than 1 million non-EU citizens have happily used a biometric residence permit (an ID card) to regulate their rights; the UK is a world leader in E-gates, helping to keep queues down; exit checks of a kind have been reinstalled; the number of new illegal immigrants is rising at its lowest level for two decades ( just 15,000 to 20,000 a year by my calculation).

After the surge in newcomers after Labour’s 1997 victory, and then after 2004 with the East Europeans joining the EU, the system was overwhelmed. This is no longer the case, thanks in part to the controls introduced by Theresa May as home secretary.

The Windrush scandal was an error of over-zealous control, and my report has suggestions for avoiding a repeat of this egregious mistake, but Windrush must not lead to a radical watering down of the so-called “hostile environment”. Because the correct term for the hostile environment is simply the internal border. In a country like Britain, which has tens of millions of annual arrivals, most without the right to stay or work (a figure that will rise after Brexit to include EU citizens), not having strict internal controls – sub-contracted in part to employers, landlords, public service staff and so on – is equivalent to not having a border at all.

For various reasons to do with the lack of ID cards, the English language and an open labour market, the UK has long been a magnet for illegals, and there are probably at least 500,000 in the country now. And if we want to stop this number creeping ever higher, a national ID system for both temporary immigrants and citizens is the long-term answer. Putting this back on the agenda is the one good thing to come out of Windrush.

In the meantime, Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary, needs to get on to the front foot and not allow his agenda to be set by anti-border ideologues exploiting Windrush. Illegal immigration is corrosive. It makes inner-city Britain less law-abiding and most negatively impacts recent legal immigrants. Action against it should be more confidently linked to minimum wage enforcement, private landlord licensing and action against modern slavery.

We can deport more people (only 6,000 people left involuntarily last year, excluding prisoners) but that is not the only way to reduce the illegal population. A general amnesty is undesirable but we should consider regularising those who have been here, living in the mainstream, for more than 10 years (rather than 20 as at present).

And why not pay people to leave? It costs 10 times more to remove an illegal against their will than to persuade someone to go voluntarily. Also, could that swollen foreign aid budget not play a role here, subsidising enterprising illegals to set up businesses in their home countries?

This is the era not of the abolition of borders but of the smart, digital border. Just 0.3 per cent of public spending goes on the border function, but even after Brexit numbers will continue rising and they will require more monitoring, not less. To achieve the balance we all want between smooth flows across the border and protection from threats to our security, whether terrorists or illegal workers, we need more investment, continuing reform and cooperation from civil society in managing that unavoidable internal border. FOLLOW David Goodhart on Twitter @David_Goodhart

READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/opinion