A picture of breezing through arrivals at an airport and only just missing customs is outdated. It doesn’t suit our current picture of international travel or even immigration arrivals.
The fact is the UK suffers with a lack of joined-up thinking in our current approach to dealing with basic state matters that further novel innovations are pipe dreams waiting to burst and leak all over the place.
If it’s taken into account in the long view we see there’s a problem.
The fact of illegal immigration at scale makes it clear already a job isn’t a job in hand. It’s a discussion, or a disagreement, or a debate for a later date.
The truth that people want it to work anyway is not included in this reality.
The ‘anyway’ sort of people shouldn’t have to make up an argument as to why. They’ve voted for it before or said it before in so many words. It’s just part of the deal that illegal means illegal for a reason.
In 2005 Michael Howard MP made an assertion the UK lacks a single figure responsible for control at the heart of our borders. These aren’t regional borders but maritime borders on our coastlines.
He said;
“We will have one face at the border. One police force. With one chief constable. With just one job: securing Britain’s borders.”
In other words he promised what we needed but allegedly didn’t have.
The trouble is you’d think we’d have it already.
Yvette Cooper (the new Home Secretary under Sir Keir Starmer) has announced a new ‘Border Security Command’ with a single figurehead called a ‘Border Security Commander’ to report back to her in future.
It isn’t as much an innovation as mentioned before as a delayed response.
We’ve had successive leaders – and Prime Minister’s – try to rejig a system that should’ve had these roles already. The trouble is we’ve put up with a lot of them and with few measurable results.