Home Secretary Theresa May, it seems, can’t get passport forgers
and suspected terrorists out of the country, nor can she bring business
tourists in without them queuing for hours at our main air terminals.
May
has been forced to agree to an urgent meeting with UK airlines
following fears that the country’s airports will reach gridlock this
summer because of staff shortages.
Former head of the Border
Control agency Brodie Clark even took to the pages of The Times
newspaper this week to sound the alarm at the victory of ‘box ticking’
over common sense.
The most recent case is of passengers forced
to queue at passport control for more than two hours at Terminal 5, home
to British Airways, although waits of over an hour are becoming
commonplace for anyone involved with the international meetings
industry.
The tabloid press was also full of Easter holiday horror stories from Gatwick, involving ‘Third World’ style queuing.
Willie
Walsh, Chief Executive of BA parent IAG joined the attack on Government
policy, claiming that long queues at Heathrow passport control was
putting off business from locating and investing in the UK.
In
his speech to mark the opening of a new business school at Kingston
University, Walsh said recently: “I had dinner recently with a
businessman who controls a US$70bn investment fund and he stood for more
than two hours in a queue to get into Heathrow, and told me: ‘I am not
investing in this country if that’s what I am going to face every time I
come here’.”
Depleted Border Force staffing levels seem to be a
recipe for chaos at airports during peak travel times such as the
Olympic Games, when 500,000 passengers are due to fly to arrive in the
UK.
Britain will be on show to the rest of the world this summer
during the Olympic Games, yet the Home Office is axing 1,500 jobs Border
Force jobs the equivalent to 18 per cent of the workforce, by 2015.
Any comments? Email pcolston@mashmedia.net
