Letter from Lord Adonis, Secretary of
State, Department for Transport, to the Chairman of the Committee
Thank you for your letter of 11 February 2010
following the Home Affairs Select Committee meeting. As most of
the issues raised fall to the Department for Transport, I have
agreed with the Home Office that I will provide the substantive
response.
As you have stated, the requirement to deploy
Advanced Imaging Technology machines, more commonly known as body
scanners, at Heathrow and Manchester airports came into effect
on Monday 1 February. I expect additional scanners to be deployed
at these airports and to be introduced at Birmingham Airport soon.
This will be followed by a wider roll-out of scanners in the coming
months. I am not able at the moment to give a firm timetable for
this process, which is currently under discussion with the aviation
industry. I will be happy to let the Committee have more information
once these discussions have concluded.
I should, however, make clear that the implementation
of body scanners is quite separate from issues of profiling. As
stated in the interim code of practice, passengers will not be
selected for scanning on the basis of personal characteristics
(ie on a basis that may constitute discrimination such as gender,
age, race or ethnic origin). I am committed to ensuring that all
security measures are used in a way which is legal, proportionate
and non-discriminatory.
You have also requested information on the training
of staff, in particular in "behavioural analysis". We
are currently looking at whether targeting certain passengers
for additional security measures at airports would be more effective
than selecting a proportion of passengers at random but no decisions
on this issue have yet been taken.
A trial of behavioural analysis techniques is
currently underway at Heathrow airport. We are following this
closely, and will look very carefully at the results. At that
point, we will be able to make a considered judgement about whether,
and how, such training should be rolled out more widely.
Training for UK aviation security staff is governed
by EC Regulations which can be, and are, supplemented where we
consider this is justified. Officials from the Department regularly
meet with industry stakeholders to review the effectiveness of
security training. Where the need for improvements is identified
these are introduced in consultation with industry.
On the subject of the recruitment of female
staff, I would say that recruitment is primarily the responsibility
of the employer, therefore no statistics are held centrally on
staff numbers of their breakdown. Any recruitment, for a particular
gender is covered by existing employment legislation which would
need to be carefully considered by an employer. We are not aware
of any overarching difficulties in obtaining sufficient female
security staff.
The Department expects airports to resource
security checkpoints adequately, and the evidence suggests that
this is generally the case. Some airports are subject to independent
regulation by the CAA, and this includes waiting times at security
queues with a target of reducing queuing times to 5 minutes or
less for 95% of the time at their airports. We do not, however,
seek to interfere in the manner in which airport operators resource
the deployment of airport staff, these being operational decisions.
I am copying this letter to the Home Secretary.
19 February 2010
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