Suddenly over the past few weeks inbound immigration queues (The UK unusually in the world has no outbound imigration checks) at London's Heathrow, and Terminal 5 in particular, have gone from generally reasonable for the volumes of traffic into a country with immigration problems, to unacceptable. Queues once well contained within the large hall now run to and even beyond its extremeties. This is hardly the welcome people, including its own nationals, should expect in a country so high in the world's economies.
What's gone wrong and what's really going on?
Consider this scenario. The root causes are very simple.
The major factor is an inevitable and utterly predicatable pincer movement between the UK Borders Agency cutting back on staff as part of the UK's overall austerity measures on the one hand and the stiffening of pasport checks on the other. Throw in unspoken hostility to the spending cuts by both management and unions, each for its own reasons and and there's more of the picture. add to that almost contempt for a the way Brodie Clark, the former head of the UK Border Agency was forced out of office when relaxations of checks last year were discovered to have let a few undesirables in and there is a toxic politician-led mix.
Taking the Mr Clark's departure first, there were obvious risks in allowing staff to relax checks for most passengers so that the inbound flow worked well and staff had more time to use their well hned skill and intuition in identifying and weeding out those the UK did not welcome. The upside though was an increased rejection rate and staff feeling empowered to get on with the job and use their experience positively.It was too good to last though.
Inevitably the baying media will from time to time discover that a few who should have been kept out slipped through. That will happen with any system. 100% success and border integrity will never happen in a democratic non police state and politicians just have to stand firm and say so and make no apologies.
That unfortunately is not how politicians work almost anywhere in the world.
Faced with hysteria in the press, instead of correctly telling them their fortune and supporting both the policy and the Border Agency management and staff who have the near impossible daily task of minimising mishaps, Theresa May at a flick of a switch went into auto-politician mode, ducked the flak, and left the unfortunate Mr Brodie to take it. As result he is now spending more time with his family.
Next came the kneejerk stiffening of entry requirements. Nobody was to be cheerily waved through. Everyone from small children to returning supervised school parties and war veterans back from trips to Normandy had to be checked against the list of terrorists and other undesirables. Even with all the staff goodwill in the world that would have meant more staff or much slower throughput rates. The former was unacceptable under the sledgehammer type approach that every department must take its share of the pain equally and that there can be no distinction between the good, the bad and the ugly spenders. The UK, like any country, needs to welcome 99% of its visitors and returning nationals. With a small minority of exceptions they contribute to the economy and are good for everyone.
In this sad saga ,the management and staff goodwill factor was already absent when further manpower reductions took place through the winter. There was a feeling that before long the chickens would come to roost without any need to talk about active industrial action. All people had to do was to stand with arms folded and wait. The " We told you so " day would surely come. And so it has. The continued exits of often long serving skilled staff with good noses for who's who and who's up to what amongst the lines before their desks have now converged with the seasonal increases in passenger numbers and the inevitable has happened and will continue happening until the crescendo of horror stories from the waiting queues and their unacceptability as the Royal Jubilee and the Olympics become terminal for the Home Secretry or even her superiors. Followers of UK politics will know that the Government needs something to be going right just now and this certainly isn't.
Minster Theresa May is therefore reaping the results of her own lack of courage last autumn, a lesson politicians everywhere need to learn although few actualy do. She has played into the hands of the unions (the last thing she or the Government would ever have wanted) and got herself into a hole from which only two things,- and maybe both,-can extract her. She can either bring back selective checking ideally based on random but unpredictable staff intuition . Alternatively she can quickly ramp up staff numbers again while trying to avoid a return to old inefficient inefficient working practics. The likelihood is that, faced with Olympic Rage, she will have to do both and then have to go back to start sorting it all out again from a worse position than the one she started with as she has lost the confidence of all the people who could be helping her get it right.
The industry meanwhile is saying just one thing: "Do something". Politicians often find that difficult. Most aren't used to jobs involving hands-on "Doing something" and accepting real accountability for it.
