Examination of Witnesses (Questions 440
- 454)
TUESDAY 1 DECEMBER 2009
MR BRODIE
CLARK AND
MR MARK
FUCHTER
Q440 Mr Winnick: I have been looking
at the annex to the memorandum which you have submitted jointly
with Revenue and Customs and you have illustrated some cases.
For example, we are told that in 2008 UK Border Agency officers
arrested four passengers attempting to smuggle 20 kilograms of
cocaine which was taped to their bodies as they disembarked from
a P&O cruise liner in Southampton, and they were jailed for
a very long period of time, 48 years. Is that common?
Mr Clark: People seeking to strap
drugs to them or put them inside their bodies does happen. It
is a way of bringing drugs illegally into the country. It is not
accounting for the biggest volumes of drugs coming in, that comes
in through freight, but the work that happens at ports and airports
is designed largely to deal with the tourists coming in who are
behaving in that sort of way, and we have increasingly rolled
out technologies that help our staff, whether that is in the form
of x-ray capability, whether that is in the form of particular
pieces of x-ray machinery that can look inside the body, and we
are increasingly deploying sniffer dogs. We now have 40 to 50
sniffer dogs that we deploy at particular ports at particular
times. I would want to link it up to the expression that was used
earlier about intelligence-led and targeted because we cannot
be at all points of potential entry at the same time. We have
to target in line with the intelligence, the information and the
material we get from other agencies, and indeed from ourselves.
Q441 Mr Winnick: You mentioned Operation
Airbridge as working with the Jamaican authorities. Is Jamaica
the main culprit when it comes to drug smuggling cocaine into
Britain?
Mr Clark: Operation Airbridge
has been a huge success and has stemmed much of that drug movement
from Jamaica to the UK. There are other counties which feature
as very significant.
Q442 Mr Winnick: Would you like to
mention one or two of the countries which are also main culprits?
Mr Clark: I think the source countries
tend to be South American; that is where the cocaine comes from.
You will have heard that many times. There are a number of routes
from South America: one route is across to the west coast of Africa,
and that is why we have Operation Westbridge in Ghana; another
is to Spain; and then another is straight into Europe. Those are
the routes from the west that come to the UK, and we use intelligence
and targeting to know at which time we need to give the greatest
emphasis in terms of deploying our resource.
Q443 David Davies: I wondered to
what extent you feel comfortable, to use a phrase, in stereotyping
people. Obviously it is not something you want to do too much
but, on the other hand, there does seem overwhelming evidence
that certain nationalities are more involved in this crime than
others.
Mr Clark: You will have heard
some of this on your visit yesterday. I do not think that the
source and the illegal activity associated with drug trafficking
necessarily fits with particular nationalities. The organisers
may well do and the countries of origin are quite clear, but the
ranges of nationalities that are detected at the border coming
through are many.
Q444 David Davies: Let me just play
Devil's advocate with you for a minute. There are some people
who might suggest that political correctness and a fear of being
seen to be racist or stereotyping is preventing you from targeting
people who are more likely to be involved in drug smuggling than
others. Although you may talk about a range of nationalities,
is it not the case that people might well have a British or an
EU passport but will be two or three generations removed from
the countries which are causing us a problem? Jamaica, I am afraid,
may well be one of them.
Mr Clark: Being politically correct
is of course important, but that does not get in the way of a
proper intelligence-led and profiled activity in which we target
people coming into the United Kingdom, and my staff know that.
Q445 David Davies: Do you collect
records of the IC Code (that is the code that the authorities
use to determine ethnicity) of those who are arrested for smuggling
drugs and, if so, would you be willing to let us have those figures?
Mr Clark: The nationality of those—
Q446 David Davies: Not the nationality,
the ethnicity?
Mr Clark: I do not know the answer
to the question. If we have that, we will.
Q447 David Davies: When the police
arrest somebody, they make a note of their ethnicity. Do you do
that?
Mr Fuchter: In terms of seizures,
we do not collect the ethnicity; we will collect the nationality.
With arrests for criminal investigation, the ethnicity certainly
used to be recorded; I am sure it still is.
Q448 Chairman: I think on the form
that we were shown yesterday—and to explain to those who
were not at that meeting, the Committee visited Heathrow Airport
Terminal 4 to look at your operation there—for a voluntary
inspection there was the question of ethnicity, but of course
you target according to flight origins, do you not? You know there
are certain countries, and you mentioned Jamaica for example;
otherwise you could not, with a force of 9,200 people, target
absolutely everyone. You have to have a degree of targeting. We
accept that. We had evidence from the police today and they gave
us age groups that they targeted, so presumably you do targeting?
Mr Clark: We do have targets,
yes. Indeed we target. Part of it is for countries where we have
intelligence that would suggest that—
Q449 Chairman: I think what Mr Davies
wants to know is whether you have profiles of certain people who
you are more likely to want to stop than not. We understand the
flights issues, but as for profiles, for example looking at this
Committee now, if you were deciding to search one of us, would
you have a target that would make one more likely to be searched
rather than another?
Mr Clark: Yes, indeed we do, Chairman.
We do have profiles in that sense and we need to advise our frontline
staff what they are looking for, and that is based on the intelligence
that we glean and that is turned into the kind of package and
targeting process that frontline staff can deliver on our behalf.
Chairman: We will not ask you which one
of us you would want to search!
Q450 David Davies: Are you able to
write to us with details then of the ethnicity of those arrested
for drugs smuggling?
Mr Fuchter: That information is
currently held by HMRC. I assume that is available.
Q451 Chairman: Any information of
that kind would be very helpful to the deliberations of the Committee.
Thank you very much.
Mr Fuchter: Just to make a point
though, there is nothing in the immediate characteristics about
any Members of this Committee that would influence our targeting
either way.
Q452 Bob Russell: That is disappointing!
Mr Fuchter: It is where you have
been, where you travelled to, who you may have connected with,
et cetera.
Chairman: A very diplomatic answer, Mr
Fuchter.
Martin Salter: Could I just advise you
that David Davies has got Eastern European connections and therefore
should be your number one target given the trafficking routes
through Central Europe.
David Davies: And Chinese ones as well.
Martin Salter: Exactly.
Chairman: Mr Davies' antecedents should
be left on one side. Martin Salter; we know you are from Reading.
Q453 Martin Salter: Yes, therefore
a target. Your joint submission states that you are looking to
extend European co-operation building on the success of the Airbridge
and Westbridge models. We recently had a visit to Prague looking
at human trafficking, but obviously the patterns of smuggling
are the same whether it is guns, whether it is contraband, whether
it is humans or drugs. Surely you are looking at more than just
rolling out models around Airbridge and Westbridge in terms of
cross-EU co-operation. Can you give us a bit of a flavour of your
plans and ambitions and aspirations in that area?
Mr Fuchter: Firstly just to remind
you that we are working closely with SOCA so SOCA will be doing
more overseas than we are, but as well as extending the bridge-type
model and project if we can, particularly with other like-minded
EU Member States who may want to collaborate with us—and
that is the point we mention there—we will do things like
offer training overseas. We did train, for example, Brazilian
customs to enforce cocaine controls at their outbound controls
at some of the international airports there. We will collaborate
with other EU Member States on specific projects. For example,
we recently sent deep rummage teams to the EU border in Greece
to reinforce operational activity there and again to help train
and mentor.
Q454 Chairman: Mr Fuchter and Mr
Clark, thank you very much for giving evidence today. On behalf
of the Committee, whenever we have sought meetings—we went
to visit Calais, we went to Heathrow Airport yesterday—Mr
Clark in particular you have been extremely helpful in facilitating
our visits. We are extremely grateful for your help and if there
is any further information you can give to this Committee, we
would be very happy to receive it. Thank you very much indeed.
Mr Clark: Thank you.
| 
