IT has been hard to think of a worse case than the murder of Pc Sharon Beshenivsky by a gang containing two foreign criminals who had not been deported for their crimes.
Appallingly, we now know it was even worse than that. One of the two allegedly escaped justice by walking through Heathrow Airport using his sister's passport and wearing a niqab: the veil that covers everything but the eyes.
What this tells us is that despite all the tough talk from John Reid, and all the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bills passed by the Government, our border controls are effectively non-existent at key times. The most depressing aspect of the debate on this latest scandal is the attempt to pass the buck on to the airlines, or BAA which runs Heathrow. The job of catching criminals belongs to the security authorities. In this case, there was a warning out that a dangerous criminal might be trying to escape the country, so the fact that it was not routine to ask to see behind the veil for a passenger on a flight to Somalia is barely believable.
Under the 1971 Immigration Act, the authorities are allowed to look at the face of a departing passenger, but are not required to do so. Why were immigration officers not routinely checking in the circumstances not just of the Beshenivsky murder but also the London tube bombings? The answer lies in the political targets they were set by Ministers. Officers were concentrating on tracking failed asylum seekers, in line with Tony Blair's personal pledge to send more of them back. As a result, efforts to track criminals were less important.
Another significant political mistake was Labour's decision to abolish embarkation controls for countries outside the EU in 1998. Without this decision, there would have been proper checks on everyone flying to Somalia. This case shows yet again that if we are to control our borders we need to know who is leaving as well as who is coming in.
The Government says that all these difficulties will be solved by the use of identity cards, which will carry biometric information such as fingerprints. This is plainly nonsense. What was needed in this case was the proper use of existing powers. The technological problems of introducing a full biometric system mean it cannot be fully introduced until 2014 at the earliest. Are we supposed to wait for another eight years before our borders are secure? In any case, the Identity Cards Bill allows foreign travellers to come to this country for three months
without needing to produce any biometric information which would prove their identity, so the hardened criminal or terrorist would not be caught. This is yet another example of tough talk
not being matched by effective action.
What we need is a proper border police force, with the specialist skills to concentrate on the various criminal activities that affect our borders; not just individual illegal immigration but the criminal gangs who traffic people and the businesses who employ workers here illegally so that they can exploit them. This force needs to combine the different powers of the police, customs and immigration officers to be fully effective. The Government is promising increased powers for immigration officers in the next Immigration Bill, but this will not be enough.
It is important that the debate about security at our airports and ports does not become confused with the different debate about the wearing of the veil. It is legitimate to ask someone to remove the veil when the question of their identity is important, as it was in this case. This is not the same as telling people what they can wear in their everyday lives.
It is a fundamental British value that we can be different without being separate. It is also a fundamental British value that we should be safe to go about our daily business, and to achieve that the security forces need to be effective.
What we have seen is not just a failure to preserve security, but a systemic failure in the asylumsystem.
It was apparently too dangerous to deport this man to Somalia, so the British people had to endure his criminality. Striking a balance between an individual's right not to be sent back into danger and the rights of the rest of the British people to live in safety is not easy, but it is clear that we do not have the right balance at present. That is why Conservatives have argued for a new British Bill of Rights to redress this.
Even before we have this Bill, we need much more effective use of the security services. If they need to look at people's faces to check who they are (as they already do with everyone who arrives at UK airports) they should not be cowed from doing so. As has been proved so tragically, lives are at stake.