§ Lord Marlesfordasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether those applying for new or renewed passports now have such passports sent to them by registered mail. [HL2425]
127WA
§ The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Scotland of Asthal)The UK Passport Service has awarded a contract to a private courier firm, Special Mail Services Limited (SMS), to send valid UK passports to customers by secure delivery. Rollout of this new service started on 9 February 2004 and was completed by 12 March 2004. Valid UK passports are now delivered using this new service.
§ Lord Marlesfordasked Her Majesty's Government:
Which are ports of entry (by air, sea and rail) into the United Kingdom, indicating in respect of each whether or not the passports of those arriving may be read or recorded electronically; and when such reading or recording started. [HL2424]
§ Baroness Scotland of AsthalElectronic facilities to check arriving passengers against the United Kingdom immigration service warning index (a database of names, lost stolen documents and organisations) at 34 ports are detailed below. It should be noted that checks at any of the smaller ports can be carried out manually as appropriate by the use of portable equipment.
Electronic Reading of Passports
The facility to swipe read machine-readable passports was introduced into the following major air and sea ports during 1995 via bespoke keyboards with integrated passport readers.
- Heathrow Airport
- Gatwick Airport
- Dover Ferryport
- Stansted Airport
- Manchester Airport
- Birmingham Airport
- Luton Airport
- Waterloo International
- Harwich Ferryport
- Glasgow Airport
- Leeds/Bradford Airport
- Newcastle Airport
- Cardiff Airport
- Belfast International Airport
- Portsmouth Ferryport
- Cheriton/Coquelles
- Bristol Airport
- East Midlands Airport
- London City Airport
Smaller ports of entry with low volume traffic and without permanent equipment in place were originally served by portables without the capacity to swipe. However, as with non-machine readable passports, checks were still conducted by manually entering passport details.
128WAWithin the past 12 months the following ports have been upgraded either with the bespoke keyboard or with swipe readers that can be attached to the portable equipment thereby gaining an electronic swipe read facility.
- Aberdeen Airport
- Edinburgh Airport
- Southampton Airport
- Southend Airport
- Plymouth Ferryport
- Hull Ferryport
- Newhaven Ferryport
- Prestwick Airport
- Norwich Airport
- North Shields Ferryport
With the introduction of juxtaposed controls portable equipment with swipe reader attachments are also located at Paris Gard du Nord and Calais and will shortly be in place in Dunkirk, Lille and Brussels.