Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment he has made of the effect of changes in Border Force officers numbers on their effectiveness since 2012.

The Home Office has always been clear that Border Force has the resources it needs to secure the border. Border Force’s core resource is not an indicator of our officers’ ability to keep our borders secure.

Border Force has a strategic workforce planning process enabling effective identification of resourcing needs, capability requirements and the diversity ambitions. The ever-changing and complex challenges Border Force faces means its workforce is becoming increasingly multi-skilled, dynamic and flexible. Our deployment model allows staff to be deployed to areas of greatest need at short notice, with expertise in modern slavery and trafficking, detection of prohibited goods, deep rummage of commercial vessels and forgery detection.

The effectiveness of the border should be considered as part of an end to end process starting upstream and continuing in country with a variety of capabilities and intervention points before, at and after the physical border working with a number of other law enforcement agencies, international partners and industry.