APPG write to Home Secretary urging action on border
Today, Henry Smith MP, Chair of the APPG for the Future of Aviation has written to the Home Secretary urging the Government to take action to alleviate problems at UK border at airports.
https://www.express.co.uk/travel/articles/1603667/Priti-Patel-airports-summer-holidays-travel-chaos
The full text of the letter is below:
Dear Priti
I am writing to you in my capacity as Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Future of Aviation, regarding the recent disruptions that we have seen at UK airports.
As I am sure that you are aware, the COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented negative impact on the aviation, travel, and tourism industries, and together with my colleagues in the APPG, I have long campaigned for, and welcomed the Government’s recent actions to remove all remaining restrictions on international travel.
After more than two years of devastating loss and financial difficulty, the Easter holidays represented a vital opportunity to finally regenerate the sector’s recovery which is being held back by staff shortages at all levels, which I am sure you will agree it is vital that the situation is remedied as soon as possible ahead of the summer.
One way in which the Government could intervene and help alleviate the disruption is by ensuring full and appropriate staffing levels to manage increased passenger numbers. I am concerned to hear that Border Force may still be some 250 officers short by summer 2022 and would welcome an update from you on the current recruitment outlook. Further measures to support strained resources include government action to:
Improve eGate software to reduce transaction times and increase the flow rate of eligible passengers; accelerating the programme to add resilience to the system to prevent national outages.
Ensure all eGates are online at all times, with engineers based onsite at each terminal at all peak periods ready to respond to an outage bringing much needed capacity back online faster, ensuring resilience of the system when it is needed most.
Ensure that when eGates are taken out of service for planned upgrades, the timings of these outages are considerate of arrival flows to ensure minimal disruption.
Broaden the eligibility of children under the age of 12 to use eGates, as is the case in Australia.
Share Border Force’s planned staffing levels with local airport and port representatives regularly to enable (air)port authorities to include these in their planning processes.
Ensure airports have a minimum protected number of officers so that disruption at one airport does not lead to disruption at others as resource is shifted about.
Improve Border Force’s use of airline and airport data, including on expected passenger numbers, which is routinely provided at airports to local Border Force teams.
I would welcome the chance to discuss these issues with you and your ministerial team further, as well as how the Home Office can work more closely with the aviation, travel, and tourism sectors to ensure that the industry is able to recover and rebuild.
Yours sincerely
Henry Smith
Member of Parliament for Crawley
Chair, All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Future of Aviation