Examination of Witnesses (Questions 128-139)
Mr Tom Dodd and Mr Tom Dowdall
17 OCTOBER 2007
Q128 Chairman: Good morning, everybody,
and a particular welcome to the two Toms sitting at the table.
Thank you very much for coming. As you know, this is a witness
session on the record. It is being recorded and you will be sent
a transcript in due course to check. This is part of this Committee's
inquiry into Frontex. I am very grateful to you for coming and
also for the extremely helpful written evidence which the Home
Office sent us, for which, no doubt, at least one of you must
be responsible. Before we start, could I warn you the acoustics
in this room are almost as bad as my hearing, so could I please
ask everybody to speak up. I wonder whether we could start. Mr
Dowdall, I think you are the UK delegate to the Frontex Management
Board, am I right?
Mr Dowdall: Yes, I am indeed.
Q129 Chairman: With that in mind, and there
will be later questions related to that, could I ask you both—and,
please, come in as you wish, either of you—to give this
Committee a brief overview of the current system of border controls
in the UK, focusing in particular on the roles of the different
agencies and co-operation between them.
Mr Dowdall: Thank you very much, my Lord Chairman.
Just as a brief introduction from me, my name is Tom Dowdall,
Director within the Border Control Directorate of the Border and
Immigration Agency. I have specific responsibilities for the border
control operations that take place at the frontier between the
UK, France and Belgium, which we know internally as "juxtaposed
controls", and that is the border control operation which
takes place at Calais, Dunkirk, the Eurotunnel and also the Eurostar
services between Paris, Brussels, Lille and the UK.
Q130 Chairman: Do your responsibilities
go back to the days of Sangatte?
Mr Dowdall: No, they do not in terms of that
area. I have been a senior manager within border control for five
years. During the difficulties that we had at the time of Sangatte,
which was at a peak in 2002, my responsibility was for the airport
side in effect, thank goodness.
Mr Dodd: If I could just come in there, my Lord
Chairman.
Q131 Chairman: I should have welcomed you
back.
Mr Dodd: Yes, thank you. It is a great pleasure
to be here again. I am Tom Dodd, Head of Border and Visa Policy,
and I am responsible for the policy relationship with Frontex.
Could I also say we very much welcome this inquiry into Frontex,
particularly in advance of the Commission review of Frontex next
year. We are here to try and assist the Committee in any way that
we can this morning.
Mr Dowdall: My Lord Chairman, to answer your
specific question about the UK borders, the UK borders currently
are managed principally by three agencies, the Border and Immigration
Agency, HM Revenue & Customs and the police in the form of
Special Branch. The responsibilities of border control extend
to the admissibility of people into the UK. For those who are
non-EU passengers, it is working, indeed, with our UKvisas colleagues
in granting of leave to enter and determining the admissibility
of passengers to the UK. For EU and UK passengers, it is ensuring
that those passengers who cross our frontiers have a right to
do so and are the rightful holder of the documents they provide
in order to cross the border.
Q132 Chairman: Have the new arrangements,
which I think most of us have now witnessed at the airports, changed
the tripartite relationship that you referred to?
Mr Dowdall: The new relationships—Sorry,
in terms of what?
Q133 Chairman: I mean the new arrangements
for arriving at Heathrow, which most of us have witnessed over
the last month or two, have they changed this relationship that
you referred to between the three organisations?
Mr Dowdall: No, it has not. Obviously there
is the work going on that has been commissioned by the Prime Minister
and is being carried forward by Sir Gus O'Donnell in looking at
the relationship between the three agencies through the Unified
Border Force. The specific relations in terms of the checks and
controls that we have in place at our airports and seaports, I
guess it is certainly to deal with both the immigration threat
but also our concerns about the terrorism threat to the UK.
Q134 Chairman: Your reference to Sir Gus
O'Donnell really takes me on to the next question. Is there something
either of you or both of you can tell us about the O'Donnell Review
and quite how it fits in with the UK attitude generally to Frontex
and immigration?
Mr Dodd: Yes. As you know, the Prime Minister
announced in July the decision to integrate the work of BIA, Customs
and UKvisas and to establish a Unified Border Force. He asked
Sir Gus O'Donnell to look at this and he is doing so at the moment
and he is due to report at the end of October. Obviously I cannot
prejudge what he is going to say and what ministers decide to
say on the basis of his report. I do know that report is considering
our wider border relations, so it is not just looking at the UK
frontier but also beyond the frontier and things like Frontex,
our relationship with key EU partners and so on. Separate from
that, we are doing some pilot work, particularly with Customs,
in six key ports around the UK to see how we can bring together
a single check for both customs and immigration purposes and that
work we are going to pursue, in a sense, in parallel to the review
as part of our step to improve integration with the other border
agencies.
Q135 Chairman: I realise you cannot pre-empt
the outcome of it, but is Sir Gus O'Donnell's review taking Frontex
as part of its agenda?
Mr Dodd: I think it will include references
to Frontex, yes. It is clearly looking at the UK border and one
of the guiding lights of our philosophy of border control generally
is to export the border as far away from the UK as possible and
hence Frontex is part of that process, so it will include references
to Frontex.
Q136 Lord Marlesford: Could I ask a supplementary
on that, Lord Chairman. This review, what is the genesis of it?
Was it a suggestion from the Home Office? It was announced by
the Prime Minister, I know. Was it the Home Office that wanted
it or the former Home Secretary who wanted it? How did it come
about that we are suddenly having it?
Mr Dodd: I think I said the Government wanted
the review rather than any particular minister. Possibly, it came
in in a particular context of the terrorist incidents over the
summer and those, I think, inspired a fresh look at our border
arrangements. It was generated by Government as a whole rather
than by any specific individual.
Q137 Lord Marlesford: Not by the Home Office?
Mr Dodd: Clearly the Home Office was party to
that decision, but Number 10—
Q138 Lord Marlesford: It was not your idea?
Mr Dodd: We have been working on ways to improve
the integrity of border co-operation with other border agencies
over a number of years, so I would see this as very much consistent
with that approach of integrating agencies.
Q139 Baroness Tonge: Could I just ask, of
the three branches of our current system of border controls, who
carries arms and what sort of arms do they carry? Do any of them
carry arms, the Special Branch of the police, you said, Customs
and the immigration service?
Mr Dowdall: Neither the Border and Immigration
Agency nor HM Revenue & Customs are armed officers. As I understand,
it is not usual for Special Branch officers to be armed. However,
the other elements of policing in airports in terms of dealing
with both criminal threats and the wider physical security, including
counter-terrorism, means that those officers are armed and visibly
so.
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