Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
Ms Meg Hillier, Mr Tom Dodd and Mr Kevan Norris
19 MARCH 2008
Q20 Lord Dear: But the one million, or thereabouts, that you mentioned, are all individuals?
Mr Dodd: There are a million names on the warning index. Of course, these are people who could, for example, have been found to have overstayed their visa, as well as criminals we are looking for.
Q21 Lord Dear: Anyone of interest, at whatever level?
Mr Dodd: Yes. Also, over quite a period of time.
Q22 Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts: So, by 2013-14, any question as to whether people have been extraordinarily rendered through the UK becomes clear; we will have all that information as well?
Mr Dodd: That is a good question. I cannot speak on behalf of the Foreign Office. Rendition clearly is not something that I am responsible officially for.
Q23 Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts: We are talking about flights through the UK.
Mr Dodd: The Government has made some statements about rendition. We will be capturing all passenger data by 2014.
Q24 Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts: Anyone who lands in the United Kingdom will be captured?
Mr Dodd: Anyone who lands in the United Kingdom will be captured.
Q25 Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts: Even if they do not leave the plane?
Mr Dodd: Military personnel on military flights are not being captured through e-Borders because they are exempt under military law.
Q26 Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts: Transit passengers?
Mr Dodd: If we have civilians, we have provision in law to capture data on civilians on military flights. We are also talking about passengers who are coming in and out of the country, so a transit passenger who does not actually enter the UK would be caught through e-Borders.
Q27 Lord Mawson: Does this mean, eventually, when you go sailing off the south coast to France and back that there will be some system introduced for those people so that you are able to monitor where they are going? Is that going to happen?
Mr Dodd: Yes, this is obviously something that we are working on in the e-borders programme and with the supplier, and about which we will be consulting relevant interested parties. What we are looking at is some sort of web-based registration system whereby if you are a sailor and you are going to France for the weekend, you would need to register your details on line, such that we could then, if need be, check that against our databases, etc.
Meg Hillier: My Lord Chairman, it is worth adding that different carriers are at different stages of their ability to collect the data; some are very advanced. The cost, for example, to give you a range of capability: the range of costs per carriers is from five pence per data transfer to 75 pence, which is an average of 14 pence per passenger journey. Different airlines are very experienced at this, but we are having negotiations and discussions with other carriers, including small craft.
Q28 Lord Dear: The question that concerns us is about the value of PNR in combating terrorism and it has led us to look at the letter, which I think you wrote to Vice-President Frattini, which gave some examples of the success of Project Semaphore. As far as we could see, none of the examples quoted in the letter were for terrorism and only some were for organised crime, the rest were for some sub-organised crime. Behind the question is the supposition that some would hold—not necessarily us—that it is really an expedition to get into things that are not actually terrorism or organised crime. I wonder if you would comment on that.
Meg Hillier: It has absolutely been a tool in tackling terrorism and I think it would be very helpful if we could have discussions, perhaps outside the Committee, about how we can share information appropriately. I have had some difficulty in talking to Mr Frattini about how we can publicly talk about thwarted terrorist attempts or intelligence that has been built up on the basis of this information, of which there is a great deal. I am sure it is not beyond the wit of us all to work out a way of sharing that appropriately with either a member of the Committee or in another way, but not in a public forum. We would be very happy to discuss with you, My Lord Chairman, how we can work to make sure that the Committee has got that comfort.
Lord Dear: That sounds like a very good idea.
Q29 Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts: You will understand from my earlier intervention that I have a particular interest in rendition and, indeed, in the US/UK Extradition Treaty, where there was an imbalance which was put through in a hurry because it was supposed to be developed as part of the fight against terrorism. The reality was that 30 out of 40 cases so far have been about financial crime. So, I am very concerned about the mission creep in these things. You mentioned that there have been 1,300 arrests and it would be extremely helpful if you could give us a breakdown of what these arrests are so that we can reassure ourselves that similar mission creep is not occurring here.
Meg Hillier: I am very happy to provide you with that. It has gone up to 1,700 arrests. It is difficult to be precise about which is from Advanced Passenger Information and which is from PNR without unpicking every single one, but I am happy to provide a full breakdown.
Q30 Lord Harrison: Minister, you made an offer to the Commons European Scrutiny Committee to provide case studies of arrests for offences outside the scope of the current draft. Is it possible that we could have those?
Meg Hillier: Again, I am very happy to provide them, My Lord Chairman, but it would have to be on a confidential basis for the Committee, not in public. But if I can just give you a flavour in general terms: if you look at serious criminals, for example, some sex offenders would be outside the scope of the current Framework proposal because an individual would not be part of organised crime and definitely from a UK perspective, that is a very serious issue.
Q31 Lord Harrison: Right, it would be very interesting to hear the developments on that. You do not want this proposal to restrict the ability of Member States to collect and process data for other modes of transport. Do you envisage using PNR data to cover land and sea transport—I think you alluded to that earlier—and would this include the Channel tunnel and rail transport by Eurostar? Could you also reflect on whether this would be practical and proportionate? I rather link that to the answer you gave in the third paragraph of your letter of 18 March to Lord Grenfell where you say, "It would seem sensible and practical to allow Member States to address their particular needs without compelling others to take exactly the same action." So, you are looking to get a kind of "bespoke" response in terms of Member States appropriate to their particular concerns. In some ways that seems very wise but is there a danger of some confusion or uncertainty about what is operating in terms of the decision to interact with the Framework? Might there be a source of confusion there?
Meg Hillier: I do not think there should be confusion. Some of it presents operational challenges for those carriers, as I have indicated, and so we are working closely with the different carriers. To make sure that this works effectively, we must be careful not to have any loopholes. As Mr Dodd said, we aim to have 95% onto our system by 2010 and that last 5% is, we have assessed, a fairly low risk. Nevertheless, when something is a loophole it becomes inevitably the higher-risk route and potential route for people who are undesirable to enter the country. We are working with those carriers now and I do not think that it should be difficult. As I indicated, there is a differing level of technical capability within the different carriers and sometimes within the different travel industries and that is what we are currently working through with those carriers.
Q32 Lord Harrison: So, that embraces the answer to the Channel tunnel and the Eurostar?
Meg Hillier: Yes, the Channel tunnel and Eurostar will be included in the PNR.
Q33 Chairman: Can I go back to Semaphore. Could you give us some idea, looking at those 1,300 arrests, what proportion of those you would not have been able to make if you were only operating under Advanced Passenger Information systems?
Meg Hillier: It is very difficult to differentiate without going through every case that we have picked up and pulling out exactly how it is done. Often it is a pool of information, so I cannot honestly give the answer to that. All are useful, but it is the combination of data that helps us solve that.
Q34 Chairman: Perhaps you could try and help the Committee a little; if you cannot be precise, just give us broad parameters.
Mr Dodd: For example, in 2007, we denied boarding to 58 people on the basis of PNR only. But, in most cases, as the Minister said, it is a "milkshake" approach from PNR data as to a number of other factors and information from which we have to make an assessment, which then leads to off-loading or on-board charging or prosecution.
Q35 Lord Mawson: With regard to that, how much work do you put into particular individual cases? My experience is on very large schemes and it is sometimes helpful to put a lot of detail into micro-examples of what exactly happens and what you know from one or two examples so that you understand what is happening more widely. What effort is put into really getting underneath the detail of one or two of these examples.
Meg Hillier: Ministerially, I am repeatedly asked for real-life examples, partly because scrutiny of all sorts helps, appearing before the Committee today obviously helps, but actually my work within Europe—as I am the Europe Minister for the Home Office—means that I am constantly asked that question. I am doing that from a Ministerial level, but Mr Dodd can explain other mechanisms.
Mr Dodd: We have a Joint Border Operations Centre in London where this information is collected and assessed. We have a number of officers who work there, who are looking at the data, looking for patterns in the data and issuing alerts. They can do some digging, but that might then be referred to a regional unit, which will do more intensive mining of the information, and they will dig quite far into this data. For example, in the PNR data, one of the fields is the credit card number used by the person who bought the ticket or tickets. That credit card number could have been used in a number of different cases by a suspected criminal to procure transport or some other service. The person who has bought a ticket may link himself or herself with some other people of interest and so you have a pattern which is essentially the pattern generated from the examination.
Meg Hillier: The Committee is very welcome to visit the Joint Border Operations Centre, if you feel that would be useful, because you can see what happens there. In fact, the LIBE Committee is coming to visit it.
Q36 Chairman: That could be very useful. Where is it?
Mr Dodd: It is near Heathrow Airport.
Q37 Lord Marlesford: I want to ask a very practical question, which arises from what Lord Harrison was saying in the first instance. PNR was introduced primarily as a system—and it is not the only system that the United States uses—which is used for air travel. The essential difference between the Eurostar, i.e., rail travel, and to a lesser extent, sea travel, and air travel, is that you have, in practice, to book ahead for air travel but you can turn up at a railway station and buy a ticket—you may have to pay a bit more than if you book ahead. I cannot see, in practical terms, how conceivably any PNR data from the process of buying a ticket for the Eurostar could be put usefully, for that journey, into your watch list.
Meg Hillier: Advanced Passenger Information, which is already collected, provides us with at least the length of the journey to check someone's information. That, on its own, can be very useful and we are talking very closely with those carriers about how that is done because we recognise and understand that people want flexibility of travel. You can still turn up to an airport and buy a ticket, so there is precedence for dealing with this.
Mr Dodd: Based on rail and sea routes, many people book ahead, so the number who turn up and go is a minority. There is a pressing need for us to have PNR data because obviously the journey time is quite small; the journey from France to the UK by train is about half an hour. If somebody turns up and buys a ticket and they are queuing for half an hour to get on that service, that still gives us another half an hour to flush that data through our system and get a match. The more warning we have of travellers, the more we are able to screen them and prompt interventions if they are required.
Q38 Lord Marlesford: But you do not anticipate that the introduction of PNR for such journeys will in any way inconvenience passengers. You mentioned credit cards, if somebody who does not wish to give more information than the minimal uses cash to buy the ticket , all they will then have to have is their passport, or ID card.
Meg Hillier: Equally, for many advanced purchases that could be the case.
Q39 Lord Marlesford: Sure, but the point is that the timescale is quite different; you turn up at the place and get on to the plane.
Meg Hillier: It is a challenge and we have got to try and get that balance about the convenience for the general passenger and risk, and making sure that we are not tightening down so much that it makes it impossible for the general passenger to travel freely. We are having quite intense discussions with these carriers to make sure that we get the balance right. When you travel on an aircraft now, most people are aware that they go through security screening, their bags are checked and they probably would expect that, even if they are not fully aware of it—though we are working with airlines to make sure that they are providing information about what happens to the data—people want to be reassured about that. If it is not happening effectively on trains, then we have a duty to protect the public and make sure that we get some good solutions. So, it is a case of "watch this space", My Lord Chairman; it is being worked on, but we have not quite got a resolution.
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