10% of foreign criminals can get into UK after EU database ditched

One in ten foreign criminals could now slip across the UK border after a fall in the number of ‘wanted’ notices received from EU nations, it emerged last night.

Britain negotiated a comprehensive package of crime and security measures as part of its transition deal with Brussels at the end of last month.

But part of the system relies on EU member states sending notices for ‘wanted’ criminals through interpol, the international policing organisation.

Home Office sources said the number of notifications sent through interpol from EU members since the start of this month is around 90 per cent of what was being received under the old system.

The potential information gap raises questions about foreign criminals being able to enter this country undetected because they have not been flagged by police or security services on the continent.

it has also emerged that EU nationals have been granted until later this year to switch over from using their national identity cards to enter the UK.

When Britain was in the EU, europeans did not need a passport to cross the border and were allowed to show ID cards instead.

That concession is being phased out under the transition agreement – but the cards will only cease to be valid for entry to the UK from October.

Home Office sources said that this would be a major boost to border security because ID cards are particularly subject to fraud.

EU nationals who are allowed to carry on living in Britain under the EU Settlement Scheme – which accounts for nearly 4.5million people according to the latest figures – will be allowed five years to switch over from ID cards to more secure biometric documents.

Sources have said the deal agreed with Brussels had replaced the vast majority of EU crime-fighting measures which Britain is no longer able to take part in.

Britain had proposed a way to carry on accessing one key database – known as the Schengen information System ii (SiSii) – but Brussels insisted it was impossible on legal grounds, they added.

Last month MPs heard senior police officers express grave reservations about their ability to keep track on foreign criminals when they lost SiSii and had to fall back on interpol.

Steve rodhouse, director-general of the national crime Agency, told the home affairs committee at the time: ‘i cannot be sure of the extent to which all and every EU member state will make use of the interpol route. it may be there is almost complete compliance, in which case the data gap will be minimal.’ He added: ‘But i think it would be right for me to raise prospect that there will be some EU member states, in some circumstances, who don’t use interpol alerts.

‘And of course, if the UK doesn’t have access that provides a gap for us.’

earlier this week, former Scotland Yard chief Lord Blair said Britain’s loss of access to EU crime databases had made the country ‘less safe’.

‘Britain is less safe’