This will NOT stop terrorism or criminality any more than ID Cards would have done. These individuals will always find other ways around the system.
No doubt another EU directive and a waste of public monies.
Frosty Welcome For UK Electronic Borders Plan
8:39am UK, Thursday March 11, 2010
Mark White, Sky News home affairs correspondent
Government claims over the roll-out of its new electronic border controls are “not credible”, according to opposition parties and some travel operators.
Ministers have said the e-Borders system will monitor 95% of passenger movements by the end of this year, but Eurostar and the ferry companies have told Sky News they have not even reached agreement with the UK Border Agency over a system of electronic checks which would be workable.
For the Government, e-Borders is the front line in the battle to keep the UK safe from terrorism, criminality and illegal immigration.
It works by electronically storing and checking the details of passengers against official watch lists.
Since going live in May 2009, more than 2,000 wanted people have been arrested at UK airports – 10 murder suspects were detained and almost 40 people arrested on suspicion of serious sexual assaults or rapes.
About half of all passenger movements are monitored by e-Borders now
It is terrorism watch lists which are a top priority for e-Borders and the government says there have been “significant counter-terror interventions” since the system went live.
But currently, only half of all passenger movements are monitored by e-Borders.
The Government has stated that all passenger traffic will be monitored under the system by 2014, with 95% monitored by the end of this year.
Tim Reardon, from the Chamber of Shipping, represents the ferry companies – who carry more than 20 million passengers in and out of UK ports each year.
He told Sky the current system would cause enormous disruption for ferry passengers: “The e-Borders system as the Government has proposed it offers the nasty prospect of extra hassle and extra cost to passengers, for no benefit whatsoever.”
Of the programme for implementation, Mr Reardon said: “There’s no prospect at all of that happening within the timescale that the Government has suggested. They have suggested that it will happen by the end of this year. It won’t.”
The e-Borders programme has also run into legal difficulties, with the European Commission ruling late last year that passengers within the EU cannot be forced to give advance details and any such scheme within EU borders would have to be done on a voluntary basis.
Conservative shadow immigration minister Damien Green said: “I think the e-Borders programme has proved an expensive fiasco. Britain desperately needs a proper way of counting people in and out of the country.
“We’ve had four years of the e-Borders programme and we’ve only hit 45% coverage and the Government is claiming that by the end of this year we will have hit about 95%. I think that claim is just not credible.”
But despite the difficulties, the government is pushing ahead with the scheme.
Home secretary Alan Johnson is to open a new control hub in Manchester that will collect, store and process millions of passenger details each month, checking them against official watch lists.
Ministers insist it is a system which has played, and will continue to play, a significant role in securing the UK’s borders.
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