Examination of Witnesses (Questions 449-459)
Mr Liam Byrne MP, Mr Brodie Clark, Mr Tom Dowdall
and Mr Tom Dodd
12 DECEMBER 2007
Q449 Chairman: Minister, welcome. We are at
the final evidence session which we are holding with regard to
our inquiry into Frontex. You have no doubt been briefed about
the way the Committee has been carrying out this inquiry. We did
visit Warsaw and we did visit the Ukraine/Polish border, and we
have been to Heathrow to look at things going on there. We have
had various witnesses as well. Would you like to invite your colleagues
to introduce themselves for the record?
Mr Byrne: My Lord Chairman, on my right is Brodie
Clark, who is the Strategic Director for Border Control for the
Border and Immigration Agency. On his right is Tom Dowdall, who
runs our European operations at the Border and Immigration Agency,
and on my left is Tom Dodd, who has oversight of our policy for
border control in the agency as well. I thought I would bring
everybody along this morning so that we could have as informed
a discussion as possible.
Q450 Chairman: That is fine. We have
met the two outside gentlemen before in this inquiry. This evidence
session is broadcast over the internet. We will send you a transcript
of the evidence in case there are any corrections or alterations
which you would like to make and if there are questions you cannot
answer or would like to think about we would be delighted if you
would like to write to us afterwards, but fairly quickly please.
This Committee is not enamoured with the speed with which the
Home Office deals with some of our problems and because we are
starting to draft our report very soon I hope you will not delay
in sending us additional evidence. You will know that the Court
of Justice will very shortly be pronouncing about the legalities
of the UK's relationship with Frontex and I wonder if you would
like to comment on that and talk about the position of the UK,
which is, of course, not a Schengen state, and our aspirations
to participate fully in Frontex. It would be helpful if you would
talk about the current dispute and the relationship you see between
Frontex and the UK.
Mr Byrne: I should start by welcoming your appointment
to the chairmanship of the Committee because I do not think we
have had the chance to meet in this context before. I should say
too that I think this is very auspicious timing because obviously
the European Commission is looking in some depth at this question
of Frontex next year and so we are very much looking forward to
the Committee's considered views and advice on this question to
very much help us shape our own perspective on whatever recommendations
the European Commission brings forward next year. We are genuinely
very grateful for the work you are doing. There are just three
things that I would say about the legal position. As the Committee
knows, our position is that we think we have the right to participate
in Frontex because we think we have a treaty right to do so. Secondly,
the test that the Advocate General set out we thought was the
right test. We very much welcome the fact that the Advocate General
said that we do have the right to participate in Schengen building
measures where we are able to participate in those measures autonomously,
as it were. What we were then disappointed about was that the
Advocate General went on to say that participation in Frontex
was not an autonomous measure, so we liked what the Advocate General
said about the test but we did not like the way that the Advocate
General said the test would be applied. Whatever conclusion the
court comes to we think both outcomes are pretty manageable for
the UK. Obviously, we would like to be a full member because we
think that we have got a great deal to give to strengthening Europe's
external border. We think that our border security systems are
amongst the best in Europe and we think that we have got the right
kind of views about how Frontex should develop over the years
to come and we think that those views are shared by a lot of the
north European nations. If the European Court says that we cannot
participate as a full member then we will obviously continue to
seek to involve ourselves in operations on a case-by-case basis,
as the Frontex board is allowed to permit us to do, and we will
continue to exercise influence in whatever way we can. We have
an excellent working relationship with the leadership of Frontex.
We think our views are well respected and I think we do have this
coalition of interest, in particular with north European states,
so, come what may, we are reasonably confident about the future.
We think Frontex is important and we would like to commit to it.
Q451 Chairman: Perhaps you would
like to expand a little further. What is the downside of our exclusion
from full participation? How does it manifest itself? It does
seem to us rather curious that we could host Torino and Agelaus,
given that the UK is not at the EU external border, which is strictly
speaking the remit of Frontex activities. It seems rather curious
that we are not in but we can participate.
Mr Byrne: I will ask Brodie Clark in a second
to comment on the two operations because he oversees them. What
is the downside? I think we can divide this into two. There is
the operational and there is the strategic. On the operational
side we obviously think that we have a great deal to give. We
think that our staff are first-class and we think that in pure
operational terms Frontex operations would be stronger for the
participation of Border and Immigration Agency staff, so although
we can continue to participate as approved on a case-by-case by
the management board, there is not the full contribution that
can be provided by the UK in the same way as if we were full members,
but we think that is pretty manageable. On the strategic side
we have obviously got views about the way that Frontex should
develop and it would be easier to help influence the development
of Frontex along those lines if we were a full member. If we are
not a full member I do not think that is a lost cause. I still
think that we will be able to influence Frontex quite seriously
by sheer force of argument, so, as I say, because we have worked
very closely with Member States on a day-to-day level, for example,
I work very closely with my opposite number in France, Brice Hortefeux,
we have a very close, shared interest in many of the operational
priorities that Frontex has because, with the advent of juxtaposed
controls in northern France, that does put pressure on the Pas
de Calais. Over the next ten or 15 years that particular part
of France is seeking to go through some pretty major regeneration
and we have a shared interest in helping that part of France prosper
and that means that the more we are able to work together with
the French government upstream, if you like, the easier that job
becomes both in terms of managing the pressure on the Pas de Calais
but also in terms of Kent, so I just cite that by way of example
to underline this point that we do have a coalition of interest
and that is why I think we will continue to be able to exercise
a degree of influence over the way that Frontex develops. I sometimes
detect a slightly different agenda between north Europe and south
Europe. I think some of the southern European states have perhaps
some different ideas about the way that Frontex should develop
but, as I say, through the partners we have, particularly in northern
Europe and through our own experience, we will be able to exercise
quite a degree of influence over the future of Frontex by sheer
force of argument and coalition of interest. That might be something
the Committee themselves have found.
Mr Clark: If I may add to that, we from the
operational side of the Border and Immigration Agency are very
keen to retain that position in terms of operational co-operation
and collaboration, so in that sense we provide staff on occasion
for operations, we provide equipment for operations, we provide
expertise and we think in many areas we provide best practice
in terms of the operations. You mentioned two particular operations
and that really is predicated on the understanding that the border
itself is not just the primary arrivals control at the airport
or the arrivals area from shipping or from Eurostar. The border
increasingly is being extended right back into the hinterlands
of countries and much of what we have been achieving in terms
of exporting the border is about information and data that we
have been able to share and exchange in order to secure the border
itself. These two operations, one in respect of the 2006 Winter
Olympics and one in respect of unaccompanied children, represent
areas where we think there are huge win-wins in terms of our collaboration
within Frontex and we continue to look for opportunities so that
we can develop those and work positively with Frontex to take
those forward.
Q452 Lord Harrison: Good morning,
Minister. It is rare for a minister to drop two hints in the first
answer to any question but I will follow up what you said about
your implied anxieties that the southern states might have a different
view of the way forward in the future for Frontex and ask you
what you mean on that and to elaborate. I wonder if I could therefore
bring forward a question I had in mind to ask later anyway, which
might exemplify your anxieties. When we visited the Ukraine/Poland
border recently we learned that, of course, the Poles were doing
a very good job in learning from and strengthening Frontex, but
their objectives, for instance, in terms of unemployment in Poland
as a result, interestingly, of the exit of Poles to this country
and therefore a requirement to bring some Ukraines into Poland
to supply those jobs, might illustrate an example of where the
Poles might view Frontex differently because they have a more
Polish view of a neighbouring country than they do of the European
Union as a whole which might be expressed by us and other countries
within the European Union. What is the nature of your anxiety
about the southern states and does that illustrate the possible
problem you are alluding to?
Mr Byrne: The thought that I had in mind was
slightly different from that one although that is a very interesting
perspective. My concern with Frontex is that it tries to run before
it can walk, so I am less interested in Frontex leaping ahead
and assembling some kind of great bureaucracy at its headquarters
where we try and move faster towards any sense of a European border
guard that is somehow co-ordinated out of Frontex headquarters.
I just think that is a step that is too far. I would much rather
see Frontex beginning to strengthen its practical ability to conduct
operations which add value to the border security operations of
Member States. If you were asking what I would like Frontex to
evolve into, I would set three benchmarks before we go too much
further. I would like to see much more effective planning of operations.
I would like to see much more effective evaluation of operations
because, as I think you are about to come onto a bit later in
your questions, one of the great difficulties with immigration
control is that once you stop one route you begin displacing traffic
to other routes and that means that you have to have effective
evaluation of your operation so that you understand what the displacement
effects are and you can move assets much more dynamically as a
result, and we do just need to see that co-ordination of assets
and operations conducted in a more effective way. This is a very
British perspective but we are very interested in just getting
the basics and the practicalities right before we start leaping
ahead into bureaucratic headquarters and anything more grandiose.
Let us just get the basic operational stuff right, and that has
implications, does it not, for the way Frontex evolves and the
priorities that it is given over the next three to five years?
Those are, if you like, my interests in what Frontex does over
the next three to five years.
Q453 Lord Harrison: I am very grateful
for that. In fact, I think the Minister has answered one of my
later questions, but perhaps on the Polish/Ukraine one, which
is slightly separate, you might like to give that some thought.
Mr Byrne: Yes, absolutely.
Q454 Lord Marlesford: Minister, this
very interesting document, Security in the Global Hub,
I wonder if you like to talk a little bit about it. There are
various points that arise. First of all, I do not know if there
is a hard copy available. All we were able to get was a photocopy.
I found it odd that there is not a date on the front; there is
only a tiny date at the back. It seems a rather amateur production.
I do not know if you would like to comment on that.
Mr Dodd: It was produced by the Cabinet Office,
not by the Home Office.
Q455 Lord Marlesford: What I would
like to ask is, is it a statement of government policy? I see
in the introduction, by the Prime Minister, obviously, that it
has 14 recommendations, some of which require legislation, according
to the document itself, or is it a Green Paper, a White Paper?
What is it and what are you going to do with it?
Mr Byrne: It is a statement of government policy
so I suppose it is more akin to a management report about what
managerial arrangements will be made with regard to our arrangements
at the border and what the consequences are and the lines of direction
of further policy development. Just to set it in context, this
is part of a sort of multi-part border security architecture which
we have evolved over the last 14 months, and that border security
architecture starts with much tighter arrangements abroad, what
we would call our offshore border. That encompasses biometric
visas, which will complete their global rollout in the new year.
It includes the visa waiver test which we are now running on every
country around the world to check where we need to introduce new
visa regimes. The third part of the system is the introduction
of passenger screening systems so that in time all passenger manifests
will be screened against our no-fly lists and our intercept lists.
The fourth part of that architecture is then much tougher organisational
arrangements with policing at our ports and airports, and that
is where a unified border force comes in, and the fifth part of
the architecture is ID cards for foreign nationals here at home
so we can acquire much greater purchase over illegal working which
we know is the root cause of much illegal immigration. This is
part of what has been about a 14-month programme of reform. It
is a vital part of it, and I know many members of the Committee
have called for these arrangements for some time. The next step
will be for me to produce an action plan for the Chancellor, whom
I met last week to discuss this, and the Home Secretary, and we
will begin making the organisational changes in the new year but
we will have a number of follow-up reports which we will need
to publish about how the recommendations will be implemented.
Q456 Lord Marlesford: Have you any
idea of the dates for the publication of the follow-up reports?
Mr Byrne: They will begin in the new year because
that is when we start the process of integration. We will start
the process of integration by folding in UK Visas to the Border
and Immigration Agency and thereby introduce much tighter arrangements
between what is effectively Britain's offshore border control
and the Border and Immigration Agency. The next key milestone
is for Customs operations at the border to be integrated into
the Border and Immigration Agency. We have earmarked April/May
time for that work, but I suspect there will be five or six reports
that we have to publish, including reflections on legislation
over the 12 months beginning in January.
Mr Clark: From where we currently are there
are huge opportunities around in terms of this report and in terms
of the restructuring that has been proposed, and I think the benefits
around a much more rational set of processes at the border between
the various agencies and the Government make an awful lot of sense,
issues around efficiency that can be gained by looking at one
workforce rather than a number of workforces make a lot of sense,
issues around one face of the Government at the border into the
country make a lot of sense, and I think operationally, again,
people within the Border and Immigration Agency are very enthusiastic
about this, as are many of our colleagues across in the detection
part of HMRC.
Q457 Lord Marlesford: This leads
very well into my next question. Mr Clark referred to huge opportunities.
I would like to refer to huge gaps, and in particular the gap
when you have given somebody temporary permission to come into
the UK and you have no way of knowing whether or not they have
departed. I know that in terms of the e-borders system you have
just let a big contract, we know about that, and we know that
they are going to start doing e-border scrutiny pretty soon and
they are doing it quite a lot in coming in, but the information
we have been given is that by December 2009 60% of passenger movements
will be monitored. That is in two years' time and if about 100%
of passenger movements coming in are monitored that leaves a pretty
small percentage for the going out, and even by December 2010
when you say it will be 95% of passenger movements, as we know
that a lot of the people coming in are going to be done it still
leaves a gap going out. How did it come about that you have this
enormous gap after 10 years of responsibility for the system?
Mr Byrne: I think the relevant policy dates
back even beyond ten years because it was in 1994 that the Government,
then under a different party, began dismantling exit controls.
It was obviously this administration that finished the job, and
I think, frankly, it was a mistake to do so. I think that one
of the most basic requirements of a border control is the capability
to count people in and count people out of the country, and I
think a lot of the debate that we have seen in the media over
the last three or four months about numbers, whether the population
is growing too quickly or too slowly, has been well informed;
much of the debate has been ill informed, but the debate would
have been much easier if we had been able to present to the public
a much clearer picture about the number of people that were coming
and going. That is why, when John Reid asked me to take this job
14 or 15 months ago, one of the first things that we concluded
was that we needed to introduce systems for counting people in
and out of the country very quickly. We were also ambitious though
to make a second set of changes at the same time. If you are trying
to count people in and out of the country effectively, you had
better make sure that the person you are counting in is the same
person as you are counting out. That is why we do think that the
biometric security arrangements are so important because we want
to be able to block individuals down to a single identity. We
have now rolled out biometric visas in about 110 countries. We
are at the point now, I think, of just having issued our millionth
biometric visa and some of the results are pretty interesting.
We are finding about a 1% hit rate where people are giving us
fingerprints which we are able to match against fingerprints we
already hold. There are quite a lot of people who are not being
straight with us about the identity they possess. We think the
arrangements for biometric identification need dovetailing with
the arrangements for counting people in and out of the country.
It has taken us the best part of the last year to go through the
procurement exercise for this new system for counting people in
and out and it has taken us the best part of the last year and
a half to introduce biometric visas as well. Part of the reason
though that it is going to take a bit of time to roll these systems
out is that the system depends on the electronic transfer of passenger
manifests between carrier systems and the government. There are
obviously some carriers, if you take the ferry operators or the
Eurostar operators, which are not running passenger booking systems
which record the names of passengers. If you take a group of my
constituents getting on a coach going to Calais for the day, the
ferry operators may not have their names. Part of the requirement
of introducing the system is going to be some cost for carriers
in building these systems that record people's names and so on.
It is an ambitious exercise and obviously the passenger growth
in and out of Britain is enormous. We think that by 2015-16 passenger
movements in and out of Britain will have almost doubled what
they were in 2000, so it is a big exercise and that is why the
old paper-based systems were not really going to cut the mustard.
I agree with your basic analysis that it is a basic requirement
of border control that you count people in and out of the country.
I would share your frustration too that it is going to take a
bit of time to get the full systems in place and that is why we
will probably prioritise which routes these systems will apply
to. Candidly, we will look at which routes we are most worried
about and we will put the passenger screening systems on those
routes first. The point at which we hit 100% high risk groups
will be substantially in advance of 2010. We will also be counting
in and out the lion's share of foreign nationals much quicker
because, according to our analysis, most are moving on planes
as opposed to by sea or by rail.
Q458 Lord Marlesford: I am very glad
to hear that. Your approach is very encouraging. In the meanwhile,
with this three year potential gap still, are there any other
ways in which you can ensure that you know whether or not people
who have been given a temporary permission to come have left other
than by counting them out?
Mr Byrne: There are, yes, because we have a
pilot system called Semaphore which is already up and running
that is slightly ahead of schedule. It is screening about 30 million
passenger movements at the moment. What we are now doing as part
of the reorganisation of the Border and Immigration Agency is
bringing together what was called the Managed Migration Directorate,
migration control, that bit of the business that is responsible
for extending people's permission to stay in the UK and UK visas
so that there is an enforcement resource of their own and an integrated
connection with border control. In effect, what the individuals
responsible for issuing visas will now be able to do is watch
whether people are indeed leaving the country when they are supposed
to be leaving the country and begin commissioning enforcement
activity if they are not. We are at the early stages of putting
together this model. I am sure we will not get it right overnight
but to my commitment is that, as we start counting people in and
out of the country, we will also be commissioning enforcement
activity for those people who are breaking the rules.
Q459 Lord Marlesford: Could you at
least use for example a driving licence system so that if somebody
is stopped for speeding who should have left there is a flag that
can be sent to the Immigration Department?
Mr Byrne: Yes, absolutely. There is a strategy
that we published in March 2007 called "Enforcing the Rules",
which we published just before our strategy for securing the border.
We said in that document that we would be exploring with a number
of government agencies how we can, in the language we used at
the time, shut down the privileges of Britain if you are here
illegally. That means looking at how we share data with DVLA,
with local authorities, with the National Health Service and the
Security and Industry Authority for example. Some of the controversy
that we have seen over SIA in the last month or two I am afraid
we set out to create. Where the Border and Immigration Agency
has data about those people who are here illegally, we should
be sharing it. Government is a big business but it should also
work together cohesively where it can. That is hopelessly ambitious
I know. It might be helpful for Brodie Clark to comment on the
successes which the Semaphore system is already generating because
there have been something like 1,400 arrests already as a result
of this piece of work.
Mr Clark: It is worth saying that Semaphore
and e-borders when fully up and running will be checking people
in and out so that covers your point about people leaving the
country. It will not just be counting; it will be checking against
a number of watch lists which will allow us to identify whether
follow-up action or intervention is required. We are at 30 million
at the moment and we have quite deliberately within that 30 million
sought to—
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