Theresa May will split UK Border Agency

You may remember that last year Brodie Clark resigned from the UK Border Agency after it emerged that passport checks at various ports had been relaxed without ministerial authority. Mr Clark denied this, and is currently pursuing a claim of constructive dismissal against the Home Secretary. On Monday the chief inspector of UKBA, John Vine, published his report. The findings have been described as damning. In response to this Theresa May has announced that she is splitting UKBA and creating a new border force, headed by a chief constable.

Past is Prologue

Politics not Reform

A lesson from history will show us that what the Home Secretary proposes is not as radical as it first appears. She is taking advantage of a complex situation to promote a political agenda, which is a reasonable thing for a politician to do. But that shows us she is not reforming anything; she is taking her chance.

The set of circumstances that led to Brodie Clark resigning have produced a report that allows Theresa May to centralise the powers of immigration officials back to the Home Office. But this is a mistake. As Simon Jenkins says in today’s Guardian:

Efficient control must rely on the judgment of frontline staff, and supervisors who can permit risk. They will not permit risk if being sacked, reorganised and second-guessed by distant ministers when things go wrong.

It is almost a cliché of modern politics that the immigration controls are “not fit for purpose” and that every two years the Home Secretary will reform the system.

 A history of acronyms

To demonstrate how silly it is getting here is a list of the different agencies that have been part of the Home Office since 2006 to deal with immigration.

2006 – John Reid announces that the Immigration and Nationality Directive (IND) will be moved out of the Home Office

2007 – IND becomes the Border and Immigration Agency (BIA)

2008 – BIA then gets incorporated into the UK Border Agency (UKBA)

2012 – UKBA will now be split, with border control as a new “law enforcing” agency

The UKBA also included parts of HMRC, and some port staff. So in six years we have gone from IND to BIA to UKBA and now to something else …

And despite all this change, there is still a tension between the politicians and the front-line staff.

Timing and implications

As Matt Cavenagh has pointed out today, the Olympics are weeks away; the time for reforms was after the election. This is going to create confusion and complication just when the government needs the border control to work as well as it can.

And although it is obviously an effort to try to reduce immigration in accordance with government targets it is hard to see how it will differ greatly from the UKBA. It has been described as a “law enforcing” body. But we don’t yet know what that means.

What will change?

People entering the country after next month (when the split is happening) will need to be aware of a few changes.

First, one of the main complaints of the report, which Theresa May picked up on, is that people using Eurostar are not subject to passport checks. People coming here from France on the train can expect border controls to be enforced more rigorously.

Border control will be more rigorous. With Olympic concerns and a police chief constable heading the force it is a fair bet that border controls will be more rigorous. That means leaving more time for passport checks, having all relevant documents available, and not taking any risks or cutting corners.

The main change is that ministers will be making decisions about the level of checks made at borders, there will be fewer suspensions of checks to ease queuing.

Anyone who doesn’t have as much proof as possible of their right to enter the country would be well advised to ensure that they obtain the relevant passport stamps of documents. This was no officials can be in any doubt about their ability to let those people into the country.