Killers should not be able to cross our border

The disclosure that the chief suspect in the case of the missing schoolgirl
Alice Gross is a convicted Latvian killer who should not have been in the
country once again exposes the flaws in our border controls. By staying out
of the Schengen Agreement, which removed frontiers throughout much of the
EU, the UK retained the ability to check the bona fides of people coming
here. Although there is free movement of people within Europe, we can bar
entry to criminals considered to be a danger. But the wherewithal to do so
is only as effective as the information available to border officials and
the ease with which it can be accessed.

The Home Office Warnings Index, which contains information shared by foreign
countries, including European Union states, on terrorists and criminals,
should flag up anyone on the list trying to enter the UK. But the National
Audit Office said in a recent report that the computer system was “at risk
of collapsing” and that it “contained a great deal of out-of-date
information”. Border officials are reliant upon the judicial authorities in
EU states providing the information needed to exclude criminals. In the case
of the man sought by police, he was convicted and jailed for murder in
Latvia in 1998; yet on his release he travelled to the UK to settle in west
London working as a builder. He was even arrested on suspicion of indecent
assault in 2009. Why did his background not come to light then? Did the
Latvian authorities share this information?

On top of these potential loopholes, the e-borders system, which is supposed
to stop a person getting on a plane abroad to come to the UK if they have
previously been deported or excluded from the country, has failed to
intercept a single individual despite a £500 million IT project. Moreover,
the EU has been described as a “significant barrier” to Britain’s ability to
exclude criminals because it breaches free movement rights and a conviction
is not of itself a barrier to entry.

These failings are so bad that police believe the number of foreign criminals
in Britain – many of them sex offenders – is far higher than previously
thought and none are subject to the reporting regimes that would apply to
people convicted in Britain. When the now-defunct UK Border Agency published
its five-year strategy in 2010 it was entitled “Protecting our border;
Protecting our public.” Neither of these ambitions appears to have been
fulfilled. The Border Force, which is part of the Home Office, needs to
ensure that both are achieved over the next five years. The consequences of
failure in this instance may yet prove to have been disastrous.