A single agency and a multi-billion-pound passenger-screening system will strengthen the UK's entry points, according to the Home Office.
The Home Office has announced that a new UK Border Agency will unite immigration, customs and visa checks, backed by a £1.2bn passenger-screening programme.
The screening-system programme includes a £650m contract, signed on Wednesday, with consortia Trusted Borders for a passenger-screening IT system, which will work alongside the rollout of fingerprint visas.
Raytheon Systems, the prime contractor for Trusted Borders, will work with Accenture, Detica, Serco, QinetiQ, Steria, Capgemini, and Daon.
The electronic security system will screen all passengers before they travel to the UK against immigration, customs and police watch lists. International air, rail and sea ports will be covered, with all high-risk routes into the UK covered by mid-2009.
According to the Home Office, trials of the new system led to more than 1,000 criminals being caught and more than 15,000 "people of concern" being checked out by immigration, customs or the police.
The changes have been welcomed by John Donlon, the Association of Chief Police Officers' lead on ports policing, and assistant chief constable of Thames Valley Police.
"The [e-Borders] contract award follows a highly successful trial, code-named 'Operation Semaphore', which saw police forces across the UK make 1,300 arrests," Donlon said.
"The high number of arrests linked to Semaphore alerts demonstrates a visible measure of success. In addition, significant contributions have been made in support of investigations and the protection of the vulnerable," said Donlon.
Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, described the changes as the most sweeping to UK border security for decades. "All travellers to Britain will be screened against no-fly lists and intercept target lists and, together with biometric visas, this will help keep trouble away from our shores."
"As well as the tougher double check at the border, ID cards for foreign nationals will soon give us a triple check in-country. Together this adds up to some of the most advanced security anywhere on the globe," said Smith.
The civil service Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) expressed serious concerns about the announcement, however. It warned that the transfer of staff from Revenue & Customs, UKvisas and the Border and Immigration Agency into the new agency was flawed and based on a poor and rushed evaluation of the pilot schemes.
Read this
Feature: Ten tips for securing borderless networks
With companies facing increasing deperimeterisation in today's world of online collaboration and remote working, protecting corporate networks can be a challenge...
Staff with less than three hours of training are being asked to perform key roles, such as passenger profiling, the union said. At Purfleet in the Thames Gateway, customs staff who have been ordered to carry out vehicle searches, previously conducted by immigration officers, have reported checks are down by 50 percent because of insufficient training.
Mark Serwotka, the PCS's general secretary, said: "We are yet to be convinced that these proposals, based on flawed pilot schemes, will achieve the government's aims of strengthening the UK's borders."
