Border Agency's middle managers take revenge over passport checks
Border officials refuse to cover for checks during public sector pension strike, wrecking government's contingency plan
An internal UK Border Agency revolt combined with an 11th-hour breakdown in contingency plans lie behind the government's desperate appeal for Whitehall volunteers to staff Britain's borders during next week's strike, the Guardian has learned.
A significant proportion of the 800 UKBA staff, many middle managers who have been trained to take over border checks during Wednesday's public sector pension strike, are believed to have decided to walk out instead.
Whitehall sources say they feel let down by the Home Office's treatment of three senior UKBA managers, including Brodie Clark, the former head of the UK Border Force, over the passport checks row.
The breakdown in the Home Office's contingency arrangements has been compounded by a last-minute decision by the home secretary, Theresa May, in the immediate aftermath of the border checks row, to cancel plans to suspend some passport checks on Wednesday and insist that all passengers are fully checked.
Former Border Agency staff are being offered up to 450 to work a single shift if they are willing to walk across picket lines and check passengers' passports more than four times the daily rate earned by most passport officials.
Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS public services union, said: "It's a disgrace that they're trying to bribe people who, only very recently, they were saying they no longer need."
The UKBA said: "The security of the UK border remains our top priority and it is absolutely right we explore all options to ensure we minimise any disruption caused by planned union action."
It has advised airlines that it expects "significant disruption" at Britain's airports and ports, with staffing levels at Heathrow's passport control 50% below normal.
Queues will be "significantly longer" at Heathrow, queues will "remain under significant pressure throughout! the day ", and "there is a strong likelihood that arrivals halls will reach capacity and stay like that throughout the day", the agency has told airline executives.
Immigration halls will be full from 7am and might exceed capacity under fire regulations. Airlines and airports believe that will have a domino effect and passengers will need to be kept on aircraft, along with mass flight cancellations.
The borders escaped serious disruption during the public sector strike last June when the home secretary signed off a plan under which 350 other UKBA staff, including its management board, ran a limited package of passport checks.
They were allowed to suspend biometric checks for the day on the passports of European passengers and fingerprint checks on non-European passengers with biometric visas. This was the issue at the heart of the border checks row in which UKBA senior managers were accused of going beyond ministerial authority.
But on Wednesday members of the 4,500-strong Immigration Service Union, who staff the border desks, and senior civil servants in the FDA union, walk out for the first time.
Eight hundred out of 1,000 staff drawn from across the Home Office had been through a two-day passport checks training session when the Brodie Clark affair broke three weeks ago.
The contingency plan for the strike which was being discussed by May and the UKBA chief executive, Rob Whiteman, included proposals to suspend some checks on both EU and non-European passengers. About 200 of the 800 staff expected to run the passport desks on Wednesday have been trained specifically to carry out "secure ID" checks, those involving biometric visas, on passengers from outside Europe. The remainder have been trained in "low level" checks on EU passengers mainly just scanning them into the system against the watchlists.
Whitehall sources say that in the wake of the Clark affair, May has now ordered that no checks can be suspended next week. But the crisis deepened as it became clear tha! t UKBA w as not going to have the people to carry out such an instruction next week.
The appeal to the whole civil service to provide volunteers to staff the border has followed an internal revolt among the 800 staff who were due to step into the breach.
A significant proportion were middle managers who had worked directly for the three suspended directors including Graham Kyle, who was in charge of UKBA's Heathrow operations, and Carole Upshall, the director of Border Force South, based at Dover.
"There is a clear majority in some parts of UKBA that thinks this was bad behaviour and who will now go on strike. They feel let down," said a Whitehall source.
UKBA's warning to airline executives that there will be "significant disruption" is an admission that its operations are on the verge of collapse. The agency is understood to have reiterated that full security checks are a "top priority", but with fewer staff at immigration posts it will cause chaos in airport terminals, with Heathrow bearing the brunt of the ensuing delays and cancellations. It has raised fears that aircraft will not be able to unload passengers. It is understood that staffing levels at Heathrow, Britain's largest airport, will be half the normal.
There are concerns that immigration halls at Heathrow will be full from 7am and might exceed their capacity limits under fire regulations. Under that scenario BAA, Heathrow's owner, will have to order that passengers are kept on aircraft, which will lead to the cancellation of departures because the aircraft will not be able to take passengers for the return journey. There are also concerns that with aircraft stranded at their stands, new arrivals will have to be diverted to other airports.
Asked what it will be like at ports and airports, Lucy Moreton, deputy general secretary of the Immigration Service Union, said: "In a word: chaos. They are trying to train clerical staff and administrative officers to work at the border. The contingency planning is two da! ys which does not equate to the 12 weeks it takes to train an immigration officer." She said there would be little, if any, searching for drugs, firearms, explosives or cigarettes.
Serco staff who are being hired to oversee detectors of dirty bombs at British ports during the strike will train for just two days. Staff at one port said that they had been given eight days of training under usual procedures. Around 40 privately employed engineers are to receive the training before taking up posts at four major points of entry.
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