Britain’s immigration system has gone into intensive care, with serious doubts that a pledge to introduce 100% exit checks on all passengers leaving the country can be in place by the general election, say MPs.
The Commons home affairs select committee says a failure to introduce a system of “counting everyone in, and everyone out” of Britain within the promised timetable may increase security risks and illegal immigration.
The MPs’ latest six-monthly report on the state of the immigration system says that while more than 80% of those leaving the country by air face exit checks, they barely exist at all for the tens of millions of passengers who leave Britain by rail or ferry each year.
The MPs’ report says this week’s disclosure by the outgoing chief inspector of immigration, John Vine, of a forgotten backlog of Home Office files on overstayers has helped to push the total backlog of unresolved immigration cases to more than 304,000.
The committee’s chairman, Keith Vaz, said: “Our immigration system has left A&E and has entered intensive care.”
The expected failure to meet the promise to count everybody in and everybody out of the country is the second significant immigration pledge that is likely to be missed.
The home secretary, Theresa May, has already conceded that she will not meet the target of getting net migration below 100,000 by the time of the general election.
The MPs say they have been assured by the immigration minister, James Brokenshire, and Sir Charles Montgomery, the head of the UK Border Force, that 100% exit checks would be in place by 31 March 2015.
“We hope they can deliver this, and expect them to inform the committee if this no longer looks likely, and in particular to update the committee on this target,” they say in their report.
“It is very important that the system to carry out checks works efficiently, so that it can meet what are understood to be the aims of the policy, without introducing unnecessary queues and delays,” they warn.
“Any queues that develop as a result will be highly visible and could have a serious negative impact on business, trade and tourism. Transport operators have voiced serious concerns about the opportunities such delays offer to illegal migrants to attempt to board vehicles,” the committee adds.
The MPs say they share the concerns of the ferry and rail companies, such as Eurotunnel, that they will not be able to meet the official timetable to get the checks in place.
The official termination of the hugely expensive e-borders programme this year lies behind the delay in imposing exit checks.
At present, exit checks against official no-fly lists and warnings indexes for most air passengers are carried out by requiring them to supply their passport details in advance when they buy their tickets. But there is no advanced passenger information required for rail passengers and only 20% coverage for ferry passengers.
“To deliver exit checks, the Home Office needs to find a mechanism that can count all of the rail and maritime passengers as they depart the UK by the end of March,” they say.
Brokenshire disagreed with the committee’s assessment, saying the government was building an immigration system that was fair to British citizens and legitimate migrants and which had reduced the number of migrants coming from outside Europe by 50,000.
“Comprehensive exit checks are a crucial part of our work to build an immigration system that works in the national interest. These checks, which will be in place by April 2015, will increase security and target migration abuse,” he said.
“We will consider the findings of this report carefully and respond formally in due course.”
