E-border system to spot terrorists and dangerous criminals failed to check 80 per cent of passengers, NAO report finds

A new e-border system to catch suspected terrorists and dangerous criminals was so ineffective it failed to check 80 per cent of passengers, a national audit office (NAO) report has revealed.

The system was also only able to work for half of the time that it was deployed at pilot ports and airports before the Home Office was forced to suspend its operation and return to relying on a 26-year-old system holding the watchlists of “individuals of interest.”

The full rollout of e-border services has now been delayed until March 2022 - three years later than originally planned - at an extra cost to the taxpayer of £173 million, according to the NAO report on “digital services at the border.”

The NAO said “technical issues” limited the availability of the new “border crossing” computer system, a supposedly more advanced watchlist of suspected criminals and terrorists against which to check passengers.

It said this meant there were “increasing amounts of downtime” when it went live from September 2019, forcing staff to resort to using the old system that dated from the 1990s.

“In December 2019, six out of the seven pilot ports were using it to check less than 20 per cent of passengers,” said the NAO. 

“In March 2020, the programme board suspended Border Crossing to improve system stability and support. In total it had been available for 54 per cent (84) of the days it was in live operation.”

The NAO said trials of the system also found it took, on average, 60 per cent longer for each search than the technology it was supposed to be replacing.

The report also revealed that on December 31 the Home Office plans to delete up to 40,000 alerts on wanted criminals from a database it shares with the EU. It will instead be replaced by slower alerts through Interpol.

Yvette Cooper, chair of the home affairs committee, warned it would have “serious implications” for border checks.

The Home Office launched its digital e-border programme in 2014 to replace an ageing system that was considered “increasingly expensive, difficult to maintain and unfit for the future needs of Government.”

The target date was March 2019 but the project “lacked clear objectives, a timetable for delivery and a budget,” said the NAO.

“The Home Office also underestimated the technology requirements and the capability it needed to deliver them.”

As a result, it missed its target, meaning it would add £191 million to the cost of delivering the new systems and a further £145 million to keep the old systems running. The net extra cost was £173 million on top of the original estimate of £311 million.

It also delayed until March 2022 the Home Office’s “objective of giving UK Border Force officers better information with which to make decisions about people crossing the border,” said the NAO.

The NAO said the Home Office had responded with better management and scrutiny of the project but still faced “significant risks in delivering and integrating its new systems against a challenging timetable.”

It aims to complete the national roll-out of Border Crossing watchlist checking system by mid-June 2021 to all 56 ports covered by the programme.

Gareth Davies, the head of the NAO, said: "The Digital Services at the Border programme did not achieve value for money by March 2019, failing to deliver what it intended and leaving Border Force staff to rely on outdated legacy systems.

"Since resetting the programme, there have been improvements and the Home Office has a better understanding of the significant risks and challenges ahead. It now needs to build on this work to ensure that it can deliver the programme at the pace and scale it requires."