John Redwood

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Border Controls

Last week in the House of Commons, The Rt Hon John Redwood MP sought reassurance from the Minister that proper border controls are now in place and from his own front bench that ID cards would, not assist in monitoring immigration

Excerpts from Hansard:

To Mr Byrne

Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): How many seaports and airports currently have seven-day-a-week, 24-hour cover—surveillance and personnel in attendance—and how many will need that cover to get control of our borders?

Mr. Byrne: I recently provided a parliamentary answer on that matter, and I will happily dig out the Hansard reference for the right hon. Gentleman. As he knows, in an island nation, there will always be ports that do not warrant 24-hour, seven-day-a-week cover

To Damian Green:

Mr. Redwood: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is making a characteristically powerful case. Does he agree that it is a red herring to say that we need new types of ID documents in the years ahead to sort the problem out? If we have proper surveillance and control at all our ports of entry, people are meant to bring with them legal passports and our officials should be able to tell which is a legal passport and a legal application and which is not. It is the failure to administer the system, not the underlying documentation,that is the problem.

Damian Green: My right hon. Friend is right. I shall shortly come to our recommendations for making our borders secure. I can see the Chairman of the Select Committee itching to intervene, so I give way to him.