The chief inspector of borders and immigration has warned that ePassport gates are making it easier for people traffickers to smuggle children into the UK
Electronic passport gates at airports could be hampering the fight against people smuggling, a watchdog has warned.
David Bolt, the chief inspector of borders and immigration, said traffickers could be using self-service e-gates to smuggle children and modern slavery victims undetected into Britain.
He said there were not enough staff to monitor the gates and spot ‘vulnerable’ people arriving in the country, adding that ministers should have a ‘better idea’ of how many illegal migrants were in the UK.
And he warned that Home Office staff would have to process about 100 applications a day if they are to meet the demand from EU citizens wanting to stay in Britain after Brexit. Mr Bolt told MPs on the Commons’ home affairs select committee that the lack of Border Force staff monitoring e-gates could undermine the battle to crackdown on human trafficking.
Since March last year, the Home Office has been running a scheme which allows children aged 12 to 17 from the EU to use the gates, which automatically scan passports and compares them with biometric features of the traveller’s face. Previously, travellers had to be at least 18 to use the e-gates.
The move prompted fears that children and other vulnerable people travelling under duress – to be sold into prostitution or domestic servitude – could be missed because they are not seen at close quarters or spoken to by officials. Some smuggled children have relied on border staff seeing handwritten ‘help’ notes they have slipped into passports to save them.
Mr Bolt said: ‘The issue is whether the e-gates are dealing sufficiently with those more vulnerable arrivals, particularly the safeguarding aspects around children and maybe victims of modern slavery, who might be going through those gates and whether the level of coverage of those gates is sufficient to give assurance that those risks are being managed.’
Since March last year, the Home Office has been running a scheme which allows children aged 12 to 17 from the EU to use e-gates. Previously, the service was only available to those aged 18 and over
He also hit out at the Home Office’s failure to estimate how many illegal immigrants are in the UK, adding that although it would be ‘extremely difficult’ to be precise over the number, ministers should be given an estimate.
Mr Bolt’s intervention came after Home Secretary Amber Rudd told the committee last month that her department did not have a figure for the number of people in the country unlawfully.
Earlier this year the former director general of immigration enforcement at the Home Office said the figure was likely to run to more than a million. In an estimate 12 years ago, the Home Office put the total unauthorised migrant population in 2001 at 430,000. In 2009, the London School of Economics said the figure was between 373,000 and 719,000.
The Home Office has recruited an extra 700 staff to deal with European immigration casework and said it would hire a further 500 staff to start registering 3 million EU nationals in the UK by next April.
Mr Bolt said the staff would each have to deal with about 100 applications a day – one every five minutes. He told MPs that caseworkers would ‘feel the pressure’ and there was an ‘optimism bias’ in many of the Home Office’s plans.
Mr Bolt’s comments came after a border workers’ union boss claimed illegal immigrants in Britain had little chance of being caught. Lucy Moreton, general secretary of the Immigration Service Union, said: ‘If you are here illegally, you can survive very well, you access medical services, your child can go to school… the chances of us catching you are very, very slim.’