Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to (a) reduce the average time taken to process passenger arrivals at Heathrow Airport, (b) tackle shortages of Border Force staff and (c) tackle broken e-gates at UK airports.

Throughout the pandemic we have been clear queue times may be longer as we ensure all passengers are compliant with the health measures put in place to keep the UK public safe.

We have endeavoured to improve waiting times this week, for example by flexibly deploying staff across Heathrow Airport and continue to work closely with all airports and airlines to make sure passengers can have a safe and hassle-free journey.

Border Force regularly reviews staffing requirements to ensure resources are deployed flexibly when required to carry out the vital function of border security.

In recent weeks there have been a series of short interruptions of service for the Border Crossing system and eGates. We have taken actions to review and address the cause of these issues and have increased monitoring to identify system pressures early to avoid interruptions to service.

Border Force work closely with technology partners to minimise the impact of service interruptions and have a series of operational mitigations to manage the impact on passenger flows and ensure border security has been maintained at all times.