Call for action over fears of summer chaos at airports
HOME Secretary Priti Patel has been urged to take immediate action to prevent chaotic scenes at airports in the coming months.
It’s feared that a shortage of Border Force staff during tourism’s all-important summer season will lead to a repeat of the long queues and flight cancellations seen over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend.
Conservative MP Henry Smith, who leads the cross-party Future of Aviation group, warned Ms Patel that the sector’s postpandemic recovery is being “held back by staff shortages at all levels”.
Karen Dee, chief executive of the Airport Operators Association (AOA), confirmed that “queues at the border are a real concern”. She believes such delays will “undermine people’s willingness and confidence to travel”.
In a letter to the Home Secretary, Mr Smith states that the industry suffered “devastating loss and financial difficulty” during the pandemic and expresses concern that the “Border Force may still be some 250 officers short by summer 2022”.
The pro-brexit MP wants the Government to take action to speed up passport control and avoid further problems with electronic security gates
(egates). Last year there were major queues at Heathrow, Manchester and Edinburgh airports following an IT failure.
Mr Smith is pushing for improvements to the software used on egates to “prevent national outages”.
He wants engineers based on-site at each
terminal at peak times to maintain the system. The Crawley MP also wants children under the age of 12 to be able to use egates.
Ms Dee of the AOA stressed the importance of getting the right measures in place.
She said: “The border is our welcome to the world. It is vital that, following the pandemic and Brexit, the UK puts its best foot forward at the border and shows we are once again open for business.
“With ongoing resource constraint in Border Force, queues at the border are a real concern this summer. This could undermine people’s willingness and confidence to travel, so soon after a pandemic that devastated UK aviation.
“Airports are working closely with Government to ensure that Border Force is doing everything possible to prevent this.”
A Government spokeswoman said: “The safety and security of the public is of the utmost importance and we continue to work closely with airports to minimise passenger wait times and deploy staff where they are needed most.
“This approach is working as, despite Easter being one of the highest periods of
‘Queues at the border are a real concern’
inbound travel during the past two years, Border Force were able to successfully deliver a secure and effective border control with little to no disruption to passengers.”
The number of Border Force staff has been increased by three per cent to more than 9,300.
The Government claims Britain has “one of the most efficient borders in the world” and states it is working to learn from past incidents and “committed to making sure all passengers can have the safest and most hassle-free journey possible”.