Memorandum submitted by Dover Harbour
Board
On the general political front, the PM's statement
was clear and strong, albeit misguided. Even were the legal hurdles
to be swept away overnight, it would not be possible for systems
and procedures to be in place by the end of the year. As it is,
my understanding is that the legal obstacles still exist. He also
implicitly launched an Authority to Carry scheme, which would
also certainly be illegal for EU citizens as we understand it.
The exchange with Gary Streeter of your committee
was also of interest:
"Mr Gary Streeter (South-West Devon) (Con):
On e-Borders, the Home Affairs Committee heard some impressive
evidence quite recently that showed that introducing e-Borders
in ferry ports attracted a number of fairly insurmountable practical
and logistical problems. The Prime Minister now anticipates that
the scheme will be in place by the end of the year. Has he overcome
these practical problems—and if not, is there any point
in closing the front door and leaving the back door open?
The Prime Minister: My hon Friend the Minister
for Borders and Immigration, who deals with these issues, says
that coach operators are met regularly. We have dealt with the
problems that they have raised as a result of the operation of
the system, and these problems are perfectly capable of being
worked out."
I would not say that the "problems have
been dealt with", either generally for ferry traffics or,
very specifically, for coach traffic. A coach workshop was held
in Dover in November which merely stumbled over the same impractical
ground we'd walked before.
The following extract from the Justice and Home
Affairs (Post-Council Statement) released on Thursday does not
suggest that any of the EU issues were resolved, merely that the
UK had "identified" them:
"In the second session on counter-terrorism
the presidency welcomed the US Secretary of Homeland Security
Janet Napolitano to the informal Council. She gave a brief summary
of the Detroit incident, stressed the importance of information
exchange and in particular passenger name record data for collective
security, and called for the work of the EU-US high level group
on data protection to be formalised into a binding agreement.
I said that the Detroit incident should serve as a wake-up call.
Al-Qaeda's capacity to carry out unimaginable acts was now known
and we had a responsibility to close identified security gaps
speedily. I identified a number of areas for EU action, including:
the need to collect advanced passenger information on intra-EU
flights; expedite an EU PNR agreement where we needed a clear
legal framework that included intra-EU flights; proposals on allowing
scanners as primary screening tools; targeted capacity-building
to countries where there was an al-Qaeda threat and we should
not forget the work currently being done to reduce radicalisation
and recruitment. Other delegations also called for an EU PNR instrument,
stressed the importance of work with third countries, and highlighted
the need for research and analysis of information."
At the Maritime Carriers' Connectivity Working
Group meeting on 21 January, the UKBA policy lead indicated that
they thought the Commission had got it "wrong" in some
places and they were going back and seek better clarification.
Sadly, they have still not released the e-mail & correspondence
exchange between UKBA and the Commission, referenced in the Commission's
letter. Sight of these would certainly assist in better understanding
the detail of the Commission's concerns and the corresponding
reassurances purported to have been given by UKBA. Perhaps the
Committee might like to ask for sight of these?
[At this meeting yours truly raised the whole
subject of "trust" between the industry and the e-Borders
project. Worthy of note is the fact that not only have the above
documents not been released to us, it is still the case that we
have not seen the legal advice which Lin Homer undertook to share
with us when giving evidence to the Committee last July. The Committee
may wish to pursue this as well, particularly in relation to what
the advice actually said and when it was received.] Separately
from all of this, the British Ports Association (of which we are
a leading member) has received a visit from the team who will
be "rolling out" the IT infrastructure to ports, over
a two-year period they say, ie 2010-12. Regrettably, this is solely
about "wiring up" the immigration officers' equipment
and is not concerned with possible changes to port layout to accommodate
any eventual e-Borders solution.
However, it does highlight the disconnect between
one part of the project and the wider e-Borders programme.
February 2010
|
