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Immigration Controls: Airports

Question for Home Office

UIN 22520, tabled on 18 April 2024

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure that people with similar names to people on watchlists are not harassed during border checks at airports.

Answered on

23 April 2024

Our priority is to maintain a secure border. We will not compromise on this. Border Force performs checks on all passengers arriving at the UK border on scheduled services to identify individuals who pose, or are suspected to pose, a risk to the national interest.

Identities, and combinations of names and dates of birth, are not necessarily unique. Individuals who share names with persons of interest may experience closer examination than would otherwise be the case.

The Home Office is making significant investment to improve the underlying technical infrastructure which performs border checks to identify individuals more precisely. This will reduce the number of individuals incorrectly matched to persons of interest and enable Border Force to identify more quickly individuals who are not to be confused with persons of interest. We expect these improvements to start having effect over the summer.

Answered by

Home Office
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