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Border security software used to identify potential terrorists entering the UK crashes an average of twice a week, the National Audit Office (NAO) has revealed.

Despite spending £830 million on the e-borders system and its successors since 2003, the NAO said the technology remained inefficient and not fit for purpose.


The electronic checks, used at all entry points into the UK, are meant to improve the security information available to border staff. But the NAO report heavily criticised the Home Office, for leaving holes in crucial infrastructure designed to prevent terrorists from entering by rail, air or sea.

The e-borders project, first proposed by Tony Blair in 2003, has cost more than than £830m to date, a figure that will rise by £275m before completion in 2019. Beset by delays and technical issues the Home Office was forced to cancel the existing e-borders contract in July 2010, but has yet to deliver a comprehensive plan for replacing it, according to the NAO's report.

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Auditors found the warnings index, a key but creaking component of the UK's border security system, regularly suffered "high-priority incidents", forcing security staff to rely on incomplete information. The system, developed in 1995, had been earmarked for retirement more than 12 years ago but will now not be removed until March 2018.

The real concern is the warnings index, which with two priority incidents a week is still clearly unfit for purpose Keith Vaz, Chair, home affairs select committee


Failure to replace legacy systems with the e-borders programme as planned has meant the Home Office spent £89m million between April 2011 and March 2015 to keep them running. Delays in the e-borders project have forced staff to rely on incomplete and unreliable information, the NAO report revealed.

Keith Vaz, chair of the home affairs select committee, said the e-borders system had been a "£1 billion waste of money". "The real concern is the warnings index, which with two priority incidents a week is still clearly unfit for purpose," a statement from Vaz read. "With the terrorism threat level currently at severe, a failure to properly cover millions of people entering the country without having passenger information in advance gives a green light to people who wish to come to the UK for illegal or dangerous activity."

In its report the NAO noted that staff currently relied on "multiple databases across three disparate computer systems". Staff were also unable to copy and paste text between applications, with some details having to be checked manually away from the border crossing point.

Relevant systems at the targeting centre are not linked, resulting in multiple databases across three separate computer systems National Audit Office

The NAO said that reliance on ageing technology meant the Home Office was not able to "fully exploit" the data it was receiving, with staff forced to rely on "extensive manual effort" to process people travelling to the UK. The introduction of an truly integrated system would save around £12m a year, according to the Home Office.


The unreliable warning index is supposed to operate alongside Semaphore, a system that collects travel information before a passenger begins a journey to the UK. The NAO report said that a failure to integrate the two systems had created "border operations that are highly manual and inefficient.

Despite huge expenditure and lengthy delays the e-borders programme is still falling short of targets. The Home Office estimates that advance passenger data was collected for 86 percent of people entering the UK in September 2015. Targets set when the e-border system was first introduced called for 100 percent of that data to be collected by March 2014.

The NAO criticised the Home Office for failing to deliver a "consistent strategy or realistic plan" for delivering new, fit-for-purpose technology at the UK's borders. Original plans for the now defunct e-borders system were "too ambitious to be achievable", it added.