NI Border Agency 'Failing Over Illicit Goods'

A stark warning has been issued in an independent report into the work of the UK Border Agency in Northern Ireland.

The report said that there was too much concentration on passport control at the expense of preventing smuggling.

The Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency, John Vine spent six months examining how the agency carried out operations in Northern Ireland's seaports, land border and airports.

He has published three reports focusing on the Agency's operations in Scotland and Northern Ireland: border operations, countering abuse of the Common Travel Area, and the Agency's representation at first-tier appeals in Scotland.

Taking place between November 2010 and this January it focused on the deployment of detection staff to air and seaports, the risk assessment of small ports, the selection of people, vehicles and freight for searching and the treatment of passengers by Agency officers.

While he was pleased to find that officers were courteous and professional and that stakeholder relations were good with port operators speaking highly of the Agency and that frontline officers demonstrated a commitment to identifying and seizing illicit commodities, sharing information on trends and using local knowledge to good effect, there were problems.

He remains concerned to find that at airports, senior managers focused on concentrating the deployment of staff to passport control, potentially at the expense of detecting drugs and other illicit goods and there was no current programme to assess the threat posed by small ports and it was unclear who had responsibility for this work within the Agency.

He also said there were intelligence gaps regarding potential risks to the border.

"I found that the focus of staff deployment at airports was concentrated on the Primary Checkpoint (passport control), potentially at the expense of illicit commodity detection.

"I found that only 63 out of 683 threat assessments of small air and seaports had been conducted in the whole of Scotland and Northern Ireland, with none since 2008.

"At the ports inspected, I was surprised to find that the Agency had not made any seizures from freight containers for the 14 month period between the end of September 2009 and our inspection in November 2010.

"The Agency needs to improve the way it identifies and addresses threats to the UK border in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

"I have made seven recommendations to this effect," he said, noting that flights from Belfast City Airport and City of Derry Airport had been assessed as low risk, but that may no longer be the case.

"Yet there was little evidence of the risk being re-examined," he said, noting that, often the Agency's teams failed to reach their expected targets, especially when it came to contraband cigarettes.

The report therefore suggested that there was a weakness in the team's initial target setting.

It was a similar story when checking sea freight and even after a period of 14 months targeting containers in Belfast with no success, they still relied on the same search feedback and risk assessment.

No consideration was given to moving the team to other ports, despite the fact that the last major seizure was of cigarettes in a different port, at Warrenpoint.

Common Area

The inspection into how the two regions counter abuse of the Common Travel Area (CTA) took place between 1 November and 3 December 2010. It focused on the implementation of policy and guidance governing the CTA, joint working and relationships with stakeholders and delivery partners.

The Chief Inspector was pleased to find that generally there were good working relationships with stakeholders, particularly the Gardaí from the Republic of Ireland and that an ongoing operation to counter abuse of the CTA had successfully detected and identified immigration offenders.

He also said that passengers at the ports inspected had made no complaints of unfair treatment.

However, the Chief Inspector was concerned to find that the Agency did not know how many immigration offenders had been arrested but had subsequently failed to report to their local reporting centre and also did not know if any of the offenders who had failed to report had been recorded as absconders and was unaware of their current location.

Crucially, he also found that staff regularly prioritised their activities based on intelligence that was more than two years old and there was no specific targets to combat the abuse of the CTA and no guidance on stop and search operations at CTA ports.

Greater internal collaboration between Agency staff was needed, as a result.

"When a person has been given permission to enter one part of the CTA, they have free movement to all other parts within it.

"This freedom of movement can be exploited, as people take advantage of the lack of border controls to transit illegally between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland," Mr Vince said.

"Given the risks associated with the CTA, I am concerned that staff regularly prioritise their activities on intelligence that is more than two years old. I am also concerned that staff lack confidence in the legality of the powers they are using to counter abuse of the CTA. The UK Border Agency must be satisfied that the practices it employs are lawful."

"Overall, the Agency needs to improve its operations in controlling the CTA, through improved risk assessments, guidance and policy," he concluded.

See: Eight Million Illicit Cigarettes Seized

(BMcC/GK)