Border checks cut on people returning from green and amber list countries

Passengers returning to England from countries on the government’s “green” and “amber” travel lists may no longer face extensive checks on their Covid documentation, according to a trade union representing border staff.

Border Force agents at main airports and ports have received a new instruction not to conduct full checks on those passengers’ paperwork, the ISU said.

“It does appear that Border Force staff, at least at major locations, have been told not to check for Covid-secure documentation,” the union said.

Instead, the onus will be on airlines to check that passengers have completed the correct paperwork and tested negative for Covid-19 before they travel.

Labour criticised the move and said the government had displayed “staggering incompetence” at the border. Nick Thomas-Symonds, the shadow home secretary, told the BBC ministers “must urgently get a grip”. 

Layla Moran, a Liberal Democrat MP and chair of the All-Party Group on Coronavirus, said: “Scrapping Covid checks at our borders will make it far harder to detect and keep out variants from abroad. It seems the government is intent on repeating the mistakes that allowed the Delta variant to become dominant in the UK.”

Ministers were blamed for not screening passengers arriving into the UK at the start of the pandemic and have since adopted stringent restrictions to try to stop new cases and variants from entering the country.

But one airport executive, who was not aware of the apparent change to the border policy, said any loosening of checks would make sense as the onus is already on airlines to check each passenger’s documentation. Carriers face fines if they let a passenger travel without the correct paperwork.

Passengers returning from countries on the green and amber lists must take a Covid test prior to their return to the UK, book tests for their return to the UK, and fill out a passenger locator form with details of where they will stay for the first 10 days after their arrival. Non-vaccinated adults returning from somewhere on the amber list, which covers the vast majority of countries, must also self-isolate when they return.

Border Force officers had been manually checking each arriving passengers’ documents, leading to occasional long delays in airport immigration halls.

But officials are increasingly reliant on technology to police the border. Electronic passport gates have been updated in many airports to be able to scan passenger locator forms, so officers need intervene only if the gates flag a discrepancy.

The Guardian, which first reported the story, said the Border Force memo told officers they no longer needed to intervene when the electronic readings of the passenger locator forms flagged a problem. The ISU confirmed the contents of the memo.

“Ultimately this is a political decision. Certainly it will reduce queue times significantly,” the ISU said.

The Home Office has been contacted for comment.