§ Lord Aveburyasked Her Majesty's Government:
What plans they have for linking the collection of data read from machine readable passports at ports of entry to the United Kingdom to other Government owned computer records, and what equipment was referred to by the Secretary of State for Home Affairs when he said that computer equipment at Heathrow would be entirely self-contained and would not be connected to any other system.
§ Lord EltonThe present experiment at Heathrow is intended to test the feasibility in an operational environment of reading machine readable passports and checking names against a computerised warning list. The equipment consists of a micro-computer linked to a terminal. Both the terminal and microcomputer are situated in the Arrivals Building at Terminal 3, Heathrow. The micro-computer is a General Robotics LS1 11/23 marketed by Wilkes Computing Limited of Bristol. The terminal has been supplied by ICL Limited and includes an OCR reader, a keyboard and a visual display unit.
Plans for the operational use of such equipment will depend on the outcome of the experiment and also on the extent and timing of any widespread introduction of machine readable passports. In the longer-term future it may be feasible and economic to obtain the basic information now held on the Immigration and Nationality Department (IND) computer regarding the landing and embarkation of persons subject to immigration control directly from the machine readable passport instead of from written landing and embarkation cards as at present: but this would need considerable further study.
619WAThere are no plans to link the equipment with any other computer system outside IND.