UK e-borders scheme failing to make immigration checks

The Home Office's flagship "e-borders" programme, which has taken 10 years to develop and has so far cost more than £500m, has yet to deliver significant benefits to controlling immigration and has had only a limited impact on tracking terrorists, an official watchdog has concluded.

John Vine, the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, reveals in a report published on Wednesday that high-profile e-borders alerts are not even being routinely used to stop "high-risk individuals" – such as terror suspects, war criminals and those who have previously been deported from Britain – entering the country at ports and airports, apart from Heathrow.

The e-borders programme, which requires passengers to provide airlines with their personal details before they travel to and from Britain, began in 2004.

The declared intention was to "export the border" to improve immigration control and to ensure passengers considered a threat to Britain could be prevented from boarding their flights. But it is thought that only two airlines have so far signed up for the pre-departure screening checks needed for such no-fly lists to work.

Vine's inspection report also reveals that a programme designed to implement the coalition's pledge to track the movement of all passengers in and out of Britain actually covers just 65% of such movements.

Those excluded include some scheduled flights from within Europe, most train and ferry passengers and thousands arriving on private jets and boats.

Security services, counter-terrorism officers and the police told Vine full 100% coverage was vital to track the movements of terror suspects and other national security targets in and out of Britain.

The independent inspection report is highly critical although some of its most sensitive details, including part of the independent inspector's own preface and two of its top three main recommendations, have been redacted or deleted by the home secretary, Theresa May on grounds of national security. This is the second report from Vine, a former chief constable of Strathclyde, that has been censored in this way.

MPs on the Commons home affairs committee on Tuesday demanded to see a full, unredacted copy of the report but were told the home secretary had decided it would only be shown to the prime minister-appointed intelligence and security committee.

The chief inspector's report nevertheless reveals that the national border targeting centre based in Salford, the database hub that stores and checks the details of 15 million to 20 million passengers a month, is under such pressure that 649,331 alerts about potential drug and tobacco smugglers generated by the system were deleted without being read between April 2012 and January this year as it prioritised immigration alerts.

"This is unacceptable," says Vine adding that the deleted smuggling alerts accounted for three-quarters of all the customs work generated by the national targeting centre and had a significant impact on the ability of border staff to seize drugs and arrest smugglers at the border. Vine added: "I was surprised that the use of e-borders information to export the border, by preventing the arrival of a passenger because they had either been deported or excluded from the UK previously, was not happening."

Vine says e-borders information has resulted in the arrest of thousands of people wanted by the police over the past decade. But planned increases in passenger data collection had not been able to deliver more than 65% coverage because of problems involving European law and the difficulties of collecting advance passenger data from rail and sea operators and private flights had not been anticipated.

He says that while the high-profile alerts generated by the system – requests to stop at the arrivals gate those who have been excluded from Britain or previously deported – were being used at Heathrow, they were not being acted upon at any other airport or port.

At Gatwick and Luton, border force officers were not even aware that they should deploy staff to meet such passengers at the arrival gates. Vine found during his inspection that at least one foreign national prisoner, who was subject to a deportation order, managed to get back into the country without being stopped.

He adds that border force officers on the arrivals desks told him there was little added value in the majority of e-borders immigration alerts because the information was already available to them through the Home Office warnings index.

"Despite being in development for over a decade, and costing over half a billion pounds, the e-borders programme has yet to deliver many of the anticipated benefits originally set out in 2007," says Vine.

"The Home Office should now define clearly what the aims of the e-borders programme are ahead of the new procurement exercise and be transparent about what e-borders will deliver and by when."

The programme has been hampered by a legal dispute in which the original contractors, Raytheon, sued the Home Office for £500m after being sacked shortly after the 2010 general election. The Home Office submitted a counter-claim in a dispute that has already cost £150m and is expected to take many more months to resolve.

Vine's report is published just as May prepares to publish an immigration bill this week designed to "create a hostile environment" for over-stayers and other illegal immigrants. The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said the report demonstrated that the e-borders system had simply ground to a halt.

The immigration minister, Mark Harper, responded by saying passengers travelling to Britain were checked across a variety of databases before departure and upon arrival: "We now take advance passenger information from 78% of those travelling to the UK by plane, and require this information from 100% of those travelling from outside the EU.

"We have the best coverage of any country in Europe, but we are working to improve our coverage further. We will take the findings of the independent inspector into account as we continue to develop our advance passenger information policies and coverage."