Theresa May’s long-promised system of “100% exit checks” at Britain’s borders is so unreliable that it contains no departure records for more than 600,000 people who should have left the country in the past two years, a watchdog has revealed.



A report by David Bolt, the chief inspector of borders and immigration, said that the system also contains a growing “unmatched pot” of more than 201,000 records of departures of people for whom there is no Home Office record that they ever entered the country.



Bolt quoted Home Office staff complaining that they had been “mis-sold the programme”, that it was “rushed” and “flawed” and that inside the department there had been no comprehension of the vast and complicated nature of the data and the patterns it showed.

“Because it was not possible to to be certain about a person’s movements they could not rely on it as evidence of immigration (non) compliance,” the chief inspector said.

Industry representatives quoted by Bolt were far more scathing, describing the introduction of the exit check programme as “shambolic” with persistent issues about data quality, gaps and threats of sanctions against airlines that didn’t comply. One check-in agent who contacted the Home Office to ask what to do about a passenger trying to leave the UK on an expired passport was told: “Its up to you.”

May, during her time as home secretary, had repeatedly promised to introduce a full exit check programme through the e-borders system by the 2015 general election on the pledge of keeping track of everybody coming in and going out of Britain.

The chief inspector said that by June 2017, despite the promise of 100% coverage, gaps still remained in collecting data on those arriving by sea, ferries, for rail journeys in and out of Britain and travel to and from Ireland within the common travel area.

Between April 2015 and March 2017 the Home Office collected on its database more than 607m records of departures from Britain as a result of the exit check programme. The vast majority were for British or European nationals.

However, Bolt’s investigation has established that as of March 2017 there were 88,134 visa nationals – from outside Europe – whose visas had expired within the previous two years but there was no record of departure. “At the same time, there was no record of departure for 513,000 identified non-visa nationals,” he added.

A Home Office special investigation was launched last year when it was identified that 8,474 out of 52,238 Chinese visa holders who were required to leave Britain between April 2015 and March 2016 had not been recorded as having left the country.

Chinese visa holders are considered a low-risk group by the Home Office and the British embassy in Beijing contacted Chinese tour operators.

They secured evidence from each traveller that had gone back to China, including a scan of their re-entry stamp, and the investigation concluded that the vast majority had gone home but their departure had not been captured on the system. This was because they had left Britain by ferry or train or via the common travel area or on a flight where the data was incomplete.

The chief inspector noted that the system relies on airline records as passports are not swiped on departure from Britain.

“Overall, the sense was that the Home Office had over-promised when setting out its plans for exit checks, and then closed the exit check programme prematurely, declaring exit checks to be ‘business as usual’ when a significant amount of work remained to be done to get full value from them,” said Bolt.

He added: “This work needed better coordination within the Home Office, and externally with carriers, with other potential contributors to and users of the data, and with common travel area partners. In the meantime, the Home Office needed to be more careful about presenting exit checks as the answer to managing the illegal migrant population, which for now remained wishful thinking.”

The Home Office said it had rejected Bolt’s key recommendation to re-establish the exit check programme, which oversaw its introduction to drive the needed improvements.

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It agreed that some of the underlying issues with the processing of data from exit checks were “inhibiting full realisation of all potential operational benefits at this point in time” but said the Home Office could secure improvements without reintroducing the special programme.

Yvette Cooper, the chair of the Commons home affairs committee, said the exit check programme should be re-opened.

“Our report on immigration has recommended that the Home Office revisit exit checks to ensure all entries and exits from the UK, including non-visa nationals, can be recorded,” she said.

“The home secretary should now accept the recommendation from the chief inspector, reopen the exit checks programme, and be far more honest about what the programme is delivering and will deliver in the future.”