Airport Security

I fully agree that costs should be transparent, and we should know whether we are in the group that is paying and not getting the service or the group that is paying and getting priority service. People would find that information very interesting. I should say, however, that the drive for ever cheaper flights to boost numbers and fill planes is somewhat countered by the need to ensure that adequate money is spent on security. Nor is turning to the taxpayer to ensure that we continue to boost ticket sales the right strategy, although that works rather well with broader environmental goals. The burden of providing security should fall on the airport authority and the airlines, not the taxpayer. In the past couple of days, various events have caused us all to tremble slightly. No innocent individual was killed or seriously injured at Glasgow, and thank goodness for that. However, we have heard—perhaps the Minister can comment on this—that there was not a single armed policeman at the airport. That suggests that the security culture has broken down somewhere or that it has been focused only on Heathrow. If so, other airports and their vulnerabilities, which the hon. Member for Middlesbrough, South and East Cleveland (Dr. Kumar) discussed, will then become the obvious point of weakness for attack. Our approach therefore surely needs to be comprehensive. We have heard the comments made by Mr. Ron Noble, the head of Interpol, who complained that the UK, among many other countries, does not take advantage of Interpol information when doing passport checks, and he asks that we participate in a watch list. There should be a real review of that issue. Sharing information obviously has consequences, and I would not want the Government wildly to share information with anyone who just happened to be signed up to Interpol, without being confident that there was genuine security. However, the issue must be reviewed, and it would make sense to deal with it with a greater urgency and to give it greater priority to ensure that we take full advantage of the passport checking facilities offered by Interpol, particularly where missing and stolen passports are concerned. Last week, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg), who speaks on home affairs for my party, raised some issues with the Home Secretary. The Minister will be aware that vehicle access barriers have been under review, and there have been some pilot schemes at Victoria and Waterloo. Given the vulnerability of airports, I wonder why the scheme has not been rolled out. A report on how the technology was to be rolled out was due in April, but I have not heard any of the results. Any information that the Minister had in that regard would be important, particularly in the current circumstances. I join the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr. Donohoe) in saying that it is worth looking at the comments of the US Air Line Pilots Association. As he said, it has criticised the UK for focusing on objects—sometimes these objects are rather weird, and the approach is not consistent across Europe—rather than on behavioural patterns and profiling to identify threats. I recognise that there are real risks with the proposed approach, which must be undertaken with an awareness of the fact that any kind of profiling can create real problems. Indeed, I would prefer something that looked at behavioural patterns, rather than just at some crude form of profiling. I say that in a very personal sense, because, as the Minister may know, my husband was an American, and he travelled frequently between the two continents over the 35 years that we were together. My daughter’s partner is a black American, and I have seen vividly how the way in which he is treated at Heathrow differs from the way in which my husband, who was also an American, was treated—the word ““appalling”” is probably not an understatement. That brings to me to my next issue. If security is to be sustainable, and if people are to be willing to go through intrusive checks that make their journey more difficult and require increased planning, there must be a level of care and customer service that makes the process acceptable and shows genuine respect. That includes treating those coming through immigration, or other travelling passengers, well—treating them thoughtfully and with politeness and real concern. Several people have talked about the genuine inconsistencies that frustrate everybody. People cannot take their lighters through check-in, but they can buy them at the far end—excuse me, but that is starting to get silly. British Airways has said again today that it is trying to link up 20,000 lost bags with their owners, but people do not have endless patience. Obviously, T5 will bring some benefits in terms of dealing with that set of issues, but it will not be a complete solution. I travelled as a non-American in the US for many years—obviously, I was married to an American—and I was always treated with the greatest rudeness by every immigration officer I talked to. However, that has changed dramatically, as many more people have been caught up in the process.