CHECKPOINT: Heavy-handed Prestwick police demanded an MP hand over his passport

Travellers are set to be routinely stopped by police and asked to show a passport or other form of identification just to cross the Border at domestic airports. Opposition MPs last night branded the procedure – which is already being frequently used in Scotland under the Terrorism Act 2000 – as “utterly and completely unacceptable”. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling, who was asked to show his passport on arrival at Prestwick Airport last week, has now vowed to lobby for a change in existing legislation at Westminster. He said: “I think we must be very careful here indeed. It can’t become the norm that you must take your passport with you when you travel to Scotland for the day. “Where do you draw the line? Will you introduce police checks at Glasgow Central next? Do we want to end up with border checkpoints at Gretna Green? Where do you fi nish with all this?

“Why aviation rather than train or car or whatever? There’s a real danger here.” On Wednesday, Mr Grayling was among five Conservative MPs asked for ID at Prestwick, Ayrshire, after arriving on a Ryanair flight from London Stansted. Domestic passengers are usually checked for photographic ID before boarding their plane, but the Shadow Home Secretary said he was also asked to produce his passport at a police checkpoint upon arrival. The Terrorism Act 2000 gives police forces the power to stop anyone for identification checks, which can include showing a passport.

Mr Grayling now fears the procedure could become more widespread and be used for regular identity checks on British citizens. He said: “It was like when you normally get off the plane and go through passport control except that there was a police officer sitting at the desk. “The officer said he wanted to see my passport, which I happened to have with me, and I asked what it was all about, you know, to have to go through a passport control in Scotland and he just kind of grunted at me. “It wasn’t a spontaneous check. It was quite clear it was not just some one-off check to clear a particular security problem.”

He said: “I don’t believe for a second the Terrorism Act 2000 was intended to be used for routine checks on passengers arriving by internal fl ights within the UK. “My own view is that if police forces are doing this as a matter of routine we need to change our whole guidance on it or change the law itself. “What we can’t do is discredit counter terror laws by allowing them [police forces] to misinterpret it and that is what is happening here.” Mr Grayling plans to write to the Chief Constable of Strathclyde Police, the force covering Prestwick and Glasgow Airports, to demand an explanation and is considering forcing through a change in the Terrorism Act.

However, terrorism expert David Capitanchick, from Robert Gordon University, in Aberdeen, said he had no objection to any form of increased security at airports. He said: “I think there’s quite a lot of counter-terrorism activity going on at the moment among police and security services in Scotland because there has been particular concern that there hasn’t been much attention paid in Scotland to possibilities of terrorism and that’s the reason for it. “Because there was never an IRA attack in Scotland or anything like that the general feeling is that people are not particularly concerned and they should be.”