Passengers face paying for passport checks under Downing Street plan to end Heathrow chaos

May 1st, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

Home Secretary summoned to a meeting with Prime Minister today to explain ‘unacceptable’ delays
Under the Whitehall blueprint, airlines would in future pay higher landing fees to help sort out border chaos – but there’s fears this will increase fares
Forty-five minute waiting time limit at Heathrow Terminal 3 was broken 107 times in just two weeks
Passengers forced to wait up to two-and-a-half hours… and it could be as long as FOUR hours during the Olympics

By
Jack Doyle, Ray Massey and Nick Mcdermott

PUBLISHED:

16:52 EST, 30 April 2012

|

UPDATED:

11:51 EST, 1 May 2012

Tough questions: Home Secretary Theresa May, pictured this morning, was summoned to a meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron today to explain 'unacceptable' delays

Tough questions: Home Secretary Theresa May, pictured this morning, was summoned to a meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron today to explain ‘unacceptable’ delays

Passengers face paying up for passport checks under a radical Downing Street plan to end the chaos at Heathrow Airport.

Under the Whitehall blueprint, airlines would in future pay higher landing fees to help sort out Britain’s border chaos.

But the fear is such charges would most likely be passed on to paying airline customers in the form of higher fares.

Today Home Secretary Theresa May was
summoned to a meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron today to explain
‘unacceptable’ delay.

‘As
you would expect, the Prime Minister wants to be kept up to date and
the Home Secretary wants to update him on the situation at Heathrow,’
said the the Prime Minister’s spokesman.

He
added: ‘We are seeing some unacceptable queues building up at Heathrow
and clearly we need to deal with that and we don’t want people to have
to wait for that kind of length of time.’

The meeting was held as ministers face further criticism of their handling of the chaos at Britain’s biggest airport.

British Airways boss Willie Walsh
accused ministers of not telling the truth about the length of delays
and said border controls were in ‘crisis’.

And, in a sign of mounting concern at
the top of Government, David Cameron reportedly told ministers they
must admit there is a problem.

Long wait: Passengers began to vent their fury at being stuck in queues at Heathrow Terminal 5's passport control

Long wait: Passengers began to vent their fury at being stuck in queues at Heathrow Terminal 5’s passport control

The PM told colleagues ‘we’ve got to grip this’, the BBC reported.

Ministers have been warned they face a
‘summer of chaos’ caused by long queues at passport control, with a
huge influx of visitors for the Olympic Games and the Queen’s Diamond
Jubilee celebrations.

Airlines and airport bosses have
weighed in with criticism of the length of border queues, and unions
have complained that staff cuts are causing delays.

Paralysis: The head of the UK's Border Force Brian Moore was asked how he would react if there were four-hour queues during the Olympics, he replied: 'So be it'

Paralysis: The head of the UK’s Border Force Brian Moore was asked how he would react if there were four-hour queues during the Olympics, he replied: ‘So be it’

Last night Labour published leaked
figures which showed 800 Border Force posts have been cut in the last
two years – or one in ten of the total. Another 700 are set to be cut by
2015.

Under the ‘pay for your passport
check’ scheme, airlines would fund extra Border Force staff through the
charges they pay the airport operator. It is understood No 10 contacted
BAA bosses to sound them out on the idea.

Critics said it was a way for
ministers to pass on the cost to consumers. And airport bosses dismissed
the idea as a potential solution to the chaos at Heathrow.

A spokesman for Heathrow operator BAA
said: ‘While the aviation industry is always ready to discuss long-term
innovative ideas for improving passenger experience at airports, the
immediate solution to immigration queues at Heathrow rests with Home
Office providing enough staff for the level of checks they have chosen
to put in place.’

Mr Walsh and Immigration Minister
Damian Green exchanged barbs in a radio interview, with Mr Walsh
attacking claims passengers were ‘confused’ about the length of delays.

Questions: Immigration Minister Damian Green faced angry MPs who hauled time before the Commons to make an urgent statement on the delays

Tirade: British Airways boss Willie Walsh launched an attack on the UK Border Agency, branding their performance 'pathetic'

Tirade: British Airways boss Willie Walsh launched an attack on the UK Border Agency, branding their performance ‘pathetic’

‘There is no confusion about the length of queues,’ the BA boss told the Today programme.

He added: ‘The Government has tried to convince people that we don’t have a crisis. The Government is misleading people.

‘We have a crisis, it has been there for some time and we need urgent action.’

Mr Walsh dismissed as ‘untrue’ Government claims that the maximum wait over the weekend was 90-minutes.

‘We have accurate, detailed information that shows that people queued for up to two hours and 31 minutes on Friday,’ he said.

Whitehall sources said Mr Green was
sent to Heathrow yesterday morning on Downing Street’s orders to keep
the story running in an effort to keep embattled Culture Secretary
Jeremy Hunt off the news.

At the airport, waiting times at
passport controls were much shorter, and Mr Green announced that 80
staff would be redeployed to carry out border checks from tomorrow – a
move dismissed by unions as a ‘sticking plaster on a serious injury.’

Shadow transport secretary Maria Eagle
said: ‘Instead of getting a grip on the shambles at Heathrow, we now
discover that the Prime Minister is planning to shift responsibility to
the aviation industry.

‘There is now a real fear that these
additional costs end up on ticket prices, meaning passengers face higher
ticket prices as well as lengthy delays.

‘It is completely unacceptable for
families to pay the price for the Government’s incompetence through more
expensive holidays and delayed journeys.’

Anger: Frustrated passengers forced to wait more than two hours at Heathrow jeered immigration officials

The crisis began last week when
travellers endured intolerable queues at passport control after arriving
at Heathrow. Some reported delays of up to two-and-a-half hours.

Border
officials were accused of trying to cover up the problem by demanding
passengers be stopped from taking pictures in the arrivals hall.

Delays
of up to two hours continued yesterday. Furious passengers at Terminal
5, which is mostly for British Airway passengers, found only one
immigration desk was manned for non-EU passport holders wishing to enter
the country.

The chaos
continued as leaked documents revealed that the official 45-minute
waiting time for passengers from outside Europe arriving at Terminal 3
was broken 82 times in the first two weeks of April. The longest wait faced by non-European passengers was 91 minutes.

European
passport holders, including British travellers, had to wait longer than
the 25-minute limit on five occasions. There were even 20 delays at the
fast-track ‘e-gates’.

The delays follow a disastrous claim by Downing Street earlier in the
day that problems last week were caused by ‘severe weather conditions’.

One senior aviation executive said:
‘We are heading into a summer of chaos hitting the Queen’s Diamond
Jubilee and the Olympics, as well as countless family holidays. Yet the
Government seems to be blaming everyone for the problem except their own
Home Office and Border Force.’

Airlines
continued to warn of the potential for gridlock in the coming months,
and unions said delays would be made worse by cuts to Border Force
staff, whose numbers are set to fall by around 1,500 – or one sixth of
the total – by 2015.

Mayor of London Boris Johnson

Prime Minister David Cameron

Problem: Boris Johnson, left, said queues at Heathrow gave a ‘terrible impression of the UK’ while a spokesman for David Cameron, right, provoked dismay by claiming disruption was partly down to the weather

Mark Serwotka, head of the Public and
Commercial Services union, said: ‘The Home Office needs to put an
immediate halt to these cuts and start providing proper resources at our
borders so passengers are dealt with efficiently, not just for the
Olympics but for the long term.’

Last
year ministers introduced a scheme allowing some passport checks to be
abandoned for low risk groups such as schoolchildren.

However,
a scandal erupted in November when it emerged then Border Force boss
Brodie Clark authorised a further downgrading of checks, in an effort to
cut queues, despite ministers explicitly rejecting this suggestion. As a
result full passport checks on all passengers were restored.

Mr
Clark, who was given a six-figure payoff, has since insisted that
so-called ‘risk-based’ checks will have to be reintroduced to ease
waiting times.

Yesterday
morning immigration officials in Manchester were flown to London to
bolster staffing at Heathrow.

Lucy Moreton, of the Immigration Service
Union, said: ‘A number of staff at Manchester turned up to work today
and were herded on to a plane and flown to Heathrow. They got four
hours’ work out of them.’

The chaos at Heathrow also prompted airlines to highlight similar peak-time border problems at other airports.

In
a further blow for ministers, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt was
photographed carrying documents which appeared to show he was ‘troubled’
by the readiness of Heathrow for the Olympic Games.

Simon
Buck, chief executive of the British Air Transport Association,
representing the UK’s 11 leading carriers including British Airways,
Virgin, bmi British Midland and easyJet, said the current situation was
‘untenable’.

A spokesman for
airport operator BAA, which runs Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted, said
the problem was deep-seated and that ministers must do more than
administer ‘sticking plaster’ solutions.

I’ve never seen it so bad… the crowd just started booing and shouting

Outrage: New Zealander Winnie Ng, 29, said: 'We had to wait two hours, which was appalling'

Outrage: New Zealander Winnie Ng, 29, said: ‘We had to wait two hours, which was appalling’

Frustrated passengers jeered immigration officials at Heathrow yesterday as they were forced to wait for more than two hours at passport control.

As a stream of flights touched down at lunchtime, those arriving at Terminal 5 were incensed to discover only one desk was manned for those holding international passports – then that official reportedly went on their lunch break.

One traveller was even taken aside by airport officials as he voiced his anger at the lack of border staff and the snaking queues.

Another passenger, agency worker
Winnie Ng, 29, who holds a New Zealand passport and had flown in from
Seattle, said: ‘It was ridiculous, I have never seen it so bad.

‘There was only one person dealing with those holding non-EU passports and the queue had overflowed into the back corridors.

‘Then
even that one person left to go on a lunch break and the line just
stopped. The crowd started shouting and booing, and one man was even
taken aside by airport staff for voicing his opinions a little too
loudly. But everyone cheered him on and walked up to shake his hand.

‘In
the end, people power seemed to work, and after about five minutes they
opened a few more desks to loud applause. All in all, we had to wait
around two hours, which is appalling considering this will be many
people’s first experience of Britain.’

Businessman
Mike Patterson, 42, and his wife Lori, also arrived on the 12pm Seattle
flight for a week-long holiday and vowed never to return to Britain
after waiting more than two hours at passport control.

‘When
we turned up there were five desks open for those without EU passports,
but they soon closed and there was only one official serving hundreds
of people. But then she even went for a break, so there was just nobody
and everything crawled to a halt,’ he said.

‘The
experience has far from welcoming and we are never coming back. Maybe
it’s all a ruse for the Olympics. At this rate, only British athletes
will win gold because no one else will be able to make it over.’

Strain: London's Heathrow Airport is facing intense scrutiny as concern grows at its capability to deal with the major influx of passengers over the summer

Strain: London’s Heathrow Airport is facing intense scrutiny as concern grows at its capability to deal with the major influx of passengers over the summer

American holidaymaker Dirk Dahms, an insurance executive who flew to London from Paris with his wife for a week-long break, said the airport’s customer service was ‘unacceptable’ and called for heads to roll.

‘We were waiting for two-and-a-half hours to get our passports checked. No one came to speak to us to explain the situation, we were just left standing around, which is unacceptable,’ he said. ‘Old people who wanted to use the bathroom were being forced to leave the queue and start again from the back.’

Linda Gomes, who arrived from San Francisco on her first ever foreign holiday, said she waited two hours. ‘This was my first international flight, and it has been a terrible experience,’ she said. ‘It was like going to the bank at lunchtime and seeing that all but one of the tellers are shut. We counted 27 desks, but only four were staffed.’

By early evening, the waiting time for international passport holders to pass through immigration control at Terminal 5 had fallen to one hour.

Pat Whiteley-Ross, 69, from San Diego, said almost half the immigration desks were closed despite more than 1,000 passengers waiting to have their passports checked.

She said: ‘We counted 23 desks for those holding international passports, but around ten were not manned. I would say there were at least 1,000 people in the queue, so it took a good hour to get past border control.

‘When I asked, one official told me the queues are like this almost every day. Lord help them when the Olympics start, because they clearly won’t be able to handle the numbers.’

Who’s to blame and why didn’t they see it coming?

The new head of the UK Border Force took to the television studios on Saturday to try to combat damaging headlines about chaos at Heathrow.

But what Brian Moore came out with was a statement of blithe indifference to the plight of passengers trapped for hours at the border.

Asked for his reaction to four-hour waits at Heathrow during the Olympics, he said that well, if it was necessary for security, then ‘so be it’.

Chaos: Fears are mounting millions of air passengers arriving for the Olympics and Diamond Jubilee celebrations will face misery as passport controls fail to cope under the huge influx

Were the interview to have been broadcast to passengers waiting inside the airport to get back into Britain, it would in all likelihood have prompted a riot.

Passengers will be similarly unimpressed by Downing Street, which yesterday tried to blame delays last month on the weather.

But is it really so difficult for officials to predict windy and rainy weather in April – of all months – and take appropriate steps?

The reality is that long delays at Heathrow and other airports do, as Boris Johnson said yesterday, give a ‘terrible impression of the UK’.

And this summer it will be the thousands of ordinary families taking their summer break who will suffer, not the thousands of Olympic bureaucrats whisked through their own private immigration fast lanes.

The roots of the problem are in the damaging scandal last year when border checks were downgraded without ministerial approval.

Brodie Clark, Mr Moore’s predecessor, was suspended after exceeding his authority to downgrade screening and allowing foreign nationals to avoid crucial anti-terror checks. He was later given a £250,000 payout.

Scandal: Former UK Border Force boss Brodie Clark authorised a further downgrading of checks, in an effort to cut queues, despite ministers explicitly rejecting this suggestion

But when the scandal erupted, a separate scheme which was approved by ministers was ditched. It allowed immigration officers to target passengers according to their likely risk levels.

Now, everyone must be scanned, meaning coachloads of British and European children in family groups travelling on holiday are checked against a watch list of terror suspects and criminals.

The problem can only be made worse by cuts to border force staff. And UK Border Agency bosses must also take the blame for spending millions on expensive border technology – such as iris scanners – that either don’t work or aren’t used.

Meanwhile, the row is manna from heaven for the unions, which gleefully point to the job losses to explain the appalling delays.

Mr Moore may be right about the importance of security, but nothing is gained by intense scrutiny of a family of five from Berkshire coming back from their holiday in Florida.

If the airlines are right, the problem is likely to get worse. A summer of chaos in Britain’s airports when the eyes of the world are on us would be harmful to the country.

But it would be even more deeply damaging to a Government already struggling in a severe crisis of competence.

Here’s what other readers have said. Why not add your thoughts,
or debate this issue live on our message boards.

The comments below have not been moderated.

Newest
Oldest
Best rated
Worst rated

Does anyone actually care about this. I don’t.

– Willie, Leeds, 01/5/2012 20:16

So after instigating a campaign of hatred against the public sector, fuelled really well by a trained media, they suddenly realise that if you scrap jobs then chaos ensues. Then they charge us all more to pay the private sector to make a mess of things and all in the guise of sorting out the economy!!! Typical of all Tory Governments, pay more for less so the few benefit at the expense of the many.

– The Man in the Street, England, 01/5/2012 20:16

You really do not want people to visit the UK do you. When I lived in Plymouth the joke was the Cornish wanted people to empty their wallets at the Tamar Bridge go home. Sounds pretty much like its spread across the country.
I was thinking of visiting my daughter later this year, now, I’ll leave it til next year fly into Amsterdam or Paris get the train in.
You as a nation have really become money grubbing whiners.

– Phil in Texas, Houston Texas, 01/5/2012 20:13

Passengers forced to wait up to two-and-a-half hours… and it could be as long as FOUR hours during the Olympics====I’ve just rumbled the governments plan, make sure all the opposing athletes get held up in passport control that way we’ll win all the medals and Cameron will be popular again.

– Cynical, Bridgwater, Somerset, 01/5/2012 20:08

Pay to have your passport checked on entry? . . . . why not, given that we pay for just about everything else in ‘rip-off Britain’.

– Pete, North Wales, 01/5/2012 20:08

Government in free fall thank god I never voted for this shower !

– Bob Valentine, Wrexham, 01/5/2012 20:01

Remember the debacle with a new passport system?,cost of millions had to be written off,government
answer…put passports up £10..again the consumer coughs up for incompetence.

– les, london, 01/5/2012 19:58

Privatisation strikes again, protect the profits of the privately owned airports and make the public pay? No thanks, its time these private companies paid for things they need themselves rather than expecting the tax payer or the hard pressed customer to buy it for them.

– Kent Michael Driver, Lancashire, 01/5/2012 19:58

Cause a shortage of a product/service then start charging to alleviate said shortage. Well, you can’t accuse this government of not having a business brain.

– Harridan, Hemlock-upon-lips, 01/5/2012 19:55

i landed in terminal 5 not so long ago and for the non-uk passports they had about 25desks with about 19 of them being staffed, whereas for UK passports they had a maximum of 7 desks with 3 staffed, so charging people/airlines more wont do anything but cost us more money, just send some more staff and use all of the available desks, why cant they understand this

– Henry, here, 01/5/2012 19:54

The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.