OPEN DOOR BRITAIN( cont.)
First SUE REID exposed how easy it is to sneak into Britain by boat. Now she reveals our many small airfields are just as vulnerable to terrorists and illegal immigrants
THE danger posed by our open borders was revealed this week when I hired a small plane to fly me across the English Channel to Britain’s South Coast without undergoing proper identity or security checks. Within 18 minutes of taking off from an airstrip in Calais, the plane was able to land at a quiet airfield near the white cliffs of Dover — and I continued my journey to London.
My short trip showed the shocking ease with which illegal migrants, terrorists or foreign criminals can still slip into the UK by private plane, despite claims by successive governments that our border controls are being tightened.
Crucially, I found a major flaw in the passport-checking system both in France, when I boarded the plane, and at the end of the flight, when I walked through a nearly deserted Lydd Airport in Kent to hail a taxi.
My breeze into the UK made a mockery of the border security that is meant to protect us.
It also underlined a warning made to the Government a year ago that thousands of tiny planes and boats enter the UK every year without their passengers being vetted.
Theresa May, who was then Home Secretary, was informed by MPs that gaps in our border security are easily exploited by anyone who wishes to harm us and our way of life.
In response, the Home Office promised to increase checks on all passengers travelling to Britain on private aircraft.
Officials said computer systems to vet passengers would be improved to identify impostors.
The procedure involves general aviation reports (GARs), which must be filed by pilots before a flight from abroad, detailing all passengers’ names and their passport numbers. If this is not done, it is illegal for the plane to make the journey to the UK.
Yet my flight from Calais to Kent on Thursday exposed glaring holes in the system.
It followed a similar exercise last September when I hired an inflatable boat with space for eight on the South Coast and travelled to France past a Navy warship, stayed the night in a hotel and returned to Dover — without a single check or question.
This time I decided to test the air route, after it was revealed this week that a rogue pilot- cumpeople-trafficker had dropped three illegal Albanian immigrants at a tiny airstrip in Seething, Norfolk, after flying them there from Germany.
The former flying instructor from Lithuania had been hired for 5,000 euros, but the plot was foiled after a member of the public reported suspicions about what turned out to be two test flights last May. Border police then monitored the Lithuanian’s activities and caught him the following month.
The pilot was put on trial at Norwich Crown Court and jailed for six years for assisting people smuggling. The judge said: ‘Small airfields . . . are defenceless . . . in my judgment there are dozens of small airfields in East Anglia which are extremely vulnerable to this sort of people smuggling.’
On Wednesday, Mail photographer Jamie Wiseman and I arranged to fly with a reputable charter company operating out of Lydd Airport, 14 miles south of Ashford in Kent and 70 miles from London.
For £1,220 the firm offers flights from France which can take just 15 minutes, depending on the weather.
The company’s boss agreed to send a pilot and plane to collect us at Calais airport, a few miles away from the town centre, at 11am the next morning.
He explained that by law we had to give our personal details for the GAR form at least 24 hours before take-off. These included our names and passport numbers — but significantly (and routinely, it would appear), no photograph or copy of our passports was required.
According to the government website, GARs can be submitted online to the Home Office or by email to the HMRC National Coordination Unit.
It also states that ‘information is automatically sent to the correct Border Force Office, which covers both Customs and Immigration’ as well as to ‘the correct police force(s) that require it, which includes Special Branch’.
I duly emailed the charter company, giving my correct name, Susan Reid, but deliberately adding the wrong passport number in order to test whether checks would be made properly.
In accordance with the rules, our details were forwarded by the company to border officials working for the Home Office.
If the immigration control system was working properly, someone would have spotted that the name and passport number didn’t match.
This should have alerted them to the possibility of either a genuine mistake on my part, or that a bogus passenger might be planning to travel to the UK who could be a threat to security.
If Home Office promises are to be believed, I ought to have been stopped by a suspicious official before I left Calais.
At the very least, I thought border officials or even a member of Special Branch, the police unit that monitors home security, would be waiting at Lydd to question me about my real identity.
In fact, nothing of the sort happened. I could have been a foreign criminal, an ISIS terrorist or an illegal migrant.
We breezed through Calais airport without being stopped. At 10.40am on Thursday we parked our car there and walked to the small terminal, where we spotted our pilot. He had ‘Air Crew’ printed on his jacket. He had flown from Lydd and arrived at 10.24 in a Piper Chieftain, which can take nine passengers.
There was not one police officer or border official to meet us, either French or English. There was no one to check our luggage. No electronic scanners or sniffer dogs. No body searches.
Although it was mid-morning, the terminal was nearly empty apart from some men in the coffee bar.
Our pilot shook my hand, led us to the plane and talked us through the safety drill.
We took off a few minutes later, heading first over Calais itself and then over the cleared stretch of land where the infamous Jungle camp, housing 5,000 migrants waiting to get to the UK, once stood.
The area is still a magnet for migrants. Indeed, French authorities said recently that between 30 and 50 arrive there every week.
If they could afford it, all would surely jump at the chance to take the same route I did. In fact, compared with the fee of up to £13,000 charged by people-traffick-
My bag might have held drugs or guns
ers to smuggle a migrant illegally across the Channel in a lorry, our £1,220 air fare looks cheap.
It wasn’t long before we landed at Lydd, as clouds threatened.
I felt tense. Surely a border official would be waiting to question me about my fake passport details. The false number would, I thought, have been run through the computer and sounded a security alert.
But no. It took less than a minute to walk from the plane to the terminal with my overnight bag. Again, as in Calais, there was no visible security.
I could have been carrying large sums of money that I was intending to launder, drugs or guns.
The absence of checks was despite government guidance that all passengers must have the correct documents, including a passport, to enter the UK and to comply with customs requirements.
There were merely two female receptionists at an information desk — so I asked them for a taxi to Ashford railway station. Fifteen minutes later, I was on my way.
This seemingly lax security is perhaps explained by the government website that covers what it calls our ‘ Border Force’s expectations of airfield operators’. It says: ‘ On arrival: Border Force and the police do not legally require [flight] operators to check the details of the passports of arriving passengers and crew against information provided on a GAR. Border Force also does not legally require operators to ask passengers or crew if they have goods to declare for customs purposes.
‘Similarly the police do not legally require operators to question passengers or crew for police purposes. If an operator carries out such action, they do so on a voluntary basis.’
Clearly, the border and security system is a farce. Particularly disturbing is that Lydd Airport, while small, is not a grass airstrip or flying club — of which there are hundreds in Britain — which must be harder to police. It is described on its website as a fully licensed port of entry to the UK.
The site says: ‘Lydd Airport has direct contact with Border Force, Customs and Special Branch throughout our operational hours. We require all pilots to fill out a GAR for themselves and all their passengers on board the aircraft for departing and arriving flights from abroad.’
It is precisely the size of airport where you would expect incoming passengers to be checked properly.
Others have previously raised concerns, though. Last year, David Bolt, Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, issued a major report on small air and sea port security.
It said that during the previous two years, 170 suspicious people had entered Britain without being checked against a list of possible terrorists and criminals when they should have been. Of these, 134 had arrived at small airfields.
Mr Bolt blamed ‘ inconsistent’ checking of suspect flight paperwork — such as GARs — by Border Force officials.
His criticism coincided with a whistleblower’s warning that illegal migrants were using light aircraft to breach border controls, particularly on the East Coast.
I asked the Home Office last night why deliberately faked information on my GAR form did not ring alarm bells. A spokesman said it could not make public how many of the forms border and security authorities receive each year, or what proportion are checked.
The department later added: ‘Border Force works with domestic and international partners to gather intelligence and target suspicious activity in the skies and seas. We carry out detailed risk assessments and our officers physically meet any flight considered to be high risk.
‘Border Force also carry out regular visits to airfields around the UK to conduct checks on lower-risk traffic and to maintain relationships with the aviation community.
‘We use ever- changing methods against criminals looking to bring harm to communities in the UK.’
Alan Dunn, the whistleblower who took early retirement from Border Force after 30 years’ service, sounded the alarm that migrants and people smugglers were two or three steps ahead of those guarding our ports and airfields.
For centuries, the 21-mile-wide strip of water that we call the English Channel has successfully protected this country.
Now, as I discovered this week, that is no longer true — because we have a border-control system that is clearly not up to scratch.
Overwhelmed by sheer numbers and understaffed it may be. But is that really any excuse for offering an open door to Britain?
I just walked up to the desk and asked for a taxi
I could have been a criminal or a terrorist