Passport queues: Minister for Immigration writes to Committee

• Letter from Damian Green to Keith Vaz regarding follow-up evidence on passport queues, 6 June 2012
• Inquiry: The work of the UK Border Agency
• Home Affairs Committee

The letter includes a correction to the evidence the Minister gave to the Committee, when he claimed that queues had been caused by a larger-than-predicted number of arrivals. In fact, the number of arrivals on the occasion in question had been smaller than the predicted number.

Chair's comments

Committee Chair Rt Hon Keith Vaz MP said:

"The Committee has been very concerned about the number of passengers who have faced three hour queues in our immigration halls over the past few months.

In his evidence to the Committee the Immigration Minister was adamant that the queues he witnessed at Heathrow airport were down to a lack of timely passenger information from airlines, not a lack of resources. It now appears that his analysis was based on wrong figures provided by an official. If we are to tackle this issue and prevent further embarrassment we must always have accurate figures from Ministers and officials."

Further information

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