Border Force chief sees end to passport desks and airport queues

Phil Douglas, Border Force director general, said new technology meant the way passport control operated was about to change with the advent of Electronic Travel Authorisation (Eta).

“Etas are very important; I really envisage in the next two to three years passport desks falling away,” he said, adding Border Force was “looking to procure” new-generation e-gates.

Currently, the UK lags behind some nations in adopting biometric technology, with Dubai airport already allowing facial recognition for 50 nationalities.

Speaking at the Airlines 2023 conference, Douglas explained: “Etas will enable us to make decisions about admission much earlier. You can see the days of the passport and visa falling away as new ways of fixing ID come in. We are already talking to partners about how that might happen.”

He admitted there was a “political symbolism” to border points, passports and visas but said new technology meant “we will be getting a lot more information”.

“If someone has a criminal history, they might not get an Eta. Of course, there are always going to be people that we are interested in talking to, but we will be able to identify and target them more accurately because we will have more information about them upfront.

“Then there will be others with a good history that queue up for the passport stamp. Probably in future they will use e-gates.” He added: “E-gates are better at spotting imposters.”

The conference also heard from Martin Rolfe, chief executive of National Air Traffic Service (Nats). Rolfe apologised for the August bank holiday chaos when the system collapsed. “The problem we saw on the 28th is fixed for good and won’t happen again,” he said, adding the timing was very unfortunate.

“It took six hours to fix an impact of three hours, and seven days to work its way through. Had it happened in November it would not have had the same impact.”

However, he commented: “The public expect us to be perfect as an industry, which is really curious; I don’t think they expect the railways to be perfect, I don’t think they expect the roads to be perfect.”