Channel Tunnel: Carriers' Liability (Hansard, 1 April 1993)

Earl Ferrers
My Lords, people who travel from Calais through the tunnel by shuttle train will have their passports checked on French soil before boarding by United Kingdom immigration officers. On through trains, passports will be checked on board. In neither case is it realistic to apply carriers' liability.

Lord Campbell of Croy
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his reply. Was not the Channel Tunnel project undertaken on the admirable principle of open competition with other transport systems? If passenger trains are exempted, will it not create a huge gap in our immigration controls which unscrupulous people will surely exploit?

Earl Ferrers
My Lords, I see my noble friend's anxiety, but different circumstances and different operating procedures apply to the Channel Tunnel. There will be British immigration officers on French soil to check the passports. With ferries and airlines, passports are not checked until the passenger enters the United Kingdom. Under the Channel Tunnel treaty, the protocol and the concession agreement, specific and particular arrangements are made for immigration control which do not apply to airports.

§ Lord Mackie of Benshie
My Lords, is not the Immigration (Carriers' Liability) Act grossly unfair to the airlines? Is it not also grossly inefficient in that it enables the cunning and those who pay money to the rogues who supply passports to enter the country, whereas the genuine refugee is often unable to do so?

Earl Ferrers
My Lords, I do not believe that this is a question of refugees but of whether people come into the country with improper documents. Under the Channel Tunnel system, as I said, there will be immigration officers on French soil. Therefore, anyone who does not have the appropriate documents can be prevented from boarding the train. That does not apply on ferries or in airports and a person cannot be checked until that person has entered the country. The requirement is, therefore, that those who operate ferries and airlines should ensure that the people whom they carry have the proper documents.

§ Lord Clinton-Davis
My Lords, will the noble Earl agree that the estimates which have been made by the operators of the Channel Tunnel are that the system will carry something like half the traffic between this country and the mainland of Europe? Consequently, 1006 if that is right, half of something like 5 million passengers a year in each direction will effectively be altogether exempt from the checks, while the other 5 million carried by airlines and ferries would be subject to the checks under the Immigration (Carriers' Liability) Act. Is there not a serious anomaly in the situation which needs to be put right?

Earl Ferrers
My Lords, I am afraid that the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, has got it wrong. The people who come via the Channel Tunnel will be subjected to checks, but those checks will be in France. Those who come by airlines or ferries will not be subjected to immigration checks until they enter the country.

§ Lord Clinton-Davis
My Lords, we are referring to the Immigration (Carriers' Liability) Act here, not to checks. That Act will not apply to people who are carried through the Tunnel. It will apply, as the Minister said, to airlines and ferry operators. If there are 5 million people being carried by the latter and 5 million via the tunnel, is it not anomalous that one group should be subject to the carriers' liability Act and the other should not?

Earl Ferrers
My Lords, I quite see the difficulty. However, in the case of the Channel Tunnel where one's passport can be checked in France by a British immigration officer, there is no carriers' liability to operate because the immigration officer has checked the passport. In the case of ferries and airlines, that is not possible until people arrive in this country and therefore one cannot send them back, short of putting them on another aeroplane. The requirement is that airlines and ferry operators should ensure that they have the right documents.

§ Lord Boyd-Carpenter
My Lords, does not that argument depend on the doctrine of the infallibility of immigration officers? If the Channel Tunnel operators carry someone illicitly, ought they not to have the same financial liability as the airlines?

Earl Ferrers
My Lords, I do not think that the provisions rely upon the infallibility of the immigration officers, who, after all, are only human. However, the provisions mean that they are the people responsible. All that one has to do when being checked by the immigration officer is to show that one has a European Community passport.

§ Lord McIntosh of Haringey
My Lords, I am pleased to see the conversion of the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, who have both been arguing long and hard during the passage of the Asylum Bill that immigration officers are infallible.

Earl Ferrers
My Lords, I thought that the one person who had been arguing hard and fast all through the Asylum Bill was the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey—without any success.

§ Lord Brabazon of Tara
My Lords, if, as my noble friend said, the through trains will have immigration officers on board and they will not be liable under the 1007 carriers' liability Act, how is it that the ferry companies—some of which also carry immigration officers on board—are liable?

Earl Ferrers
My Lords, if under the carriers' liability Act the operators of the through trains were to be liable, it would not be possible to operate the checks until the train had left its last station on the Continent. In other words, there would be no opportunity for the rail company to discharge any passenger who should not enter the country. That is why on through trains there will be on-board checks after the train has left its last destination in France and before it arrives in the United Kingdom. The on-board checks will be carried out by immigration officers.

Lord Campbell of Croy
My Lords, in view of my noble friend's replies, will British immigration officers at the French end of the tunnel be certain to check documents and remove intending illegal immigrants before they enter the tunnel? If, nonetheless, an immigrant arrives in London without any of the documents, will the immigration service then be liable to pay the fine?

Earl Ferrers
My Lords, I think that the short answer to that is that the Secretary of State does not fine himself. Of course, it is the duty of immigration officers to check that those who come to this country have the proper documents. That is what they spend their whole time doing.

§ Lord Greenway
My Lords, will the noble Earl tell us who will pay for the juxtaposed immigration officials? Can he also confirm that the necessary moneys will not come from the large pool of fines already levied on the airlines and ferry companies, as that would indeed be grossly unfair?

Earl Ferrers
My Lords, the employment of immigration officers at Coquelles comes under the same terms as the employment of immigration officers anywhere else. The fines that airlines or ferry companies have paid are fines and have nothing to do with immigration control.

§ Lord Tordoff
My Lords, does the noble Earl agree that his answers today confirm what was said during the passage of the asylum Bill; namely, that the airlines and sea carriers are forced to act as immigration officers on an unpaid basis, whereas in the Channel Tunnel immigration officers are employed on a paid basis by the Government?

Earl Ferrers
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, has (not for the first time) got it wrong. Airline operators are not paid as immigration officers. All they are asked to do is to ensure that those whom they carry have reasonable documents. The operational system with the Channel Tunnel is totally different. It is different because there was a special Channel Tunnel treaty which put those new arrangements into operation.

§ Lord Tordoff
My Lords, nevertheless, is it not the case that the immigration controls on the boats and airlines are monitored by the owners of those boats 1008 and airlines, who have to pay for that privilege, whereas the privilege of people coming through the tunnel is paid for by the Government?

Earl Ferrers
My Lords, it is not a question of paying for a privilege; it is a question of seeing that immigration controls operate in Coquelles in just the same way as they do in Dover or anywhere else.

Noble Lords
Next Question!