Boris Johnson was today urged to end the ‘moral outrage’ of long queues at Heathrow after a passenger collapsed while waiting seven hours in passport control where it is taking approaching an hour for each person with incomplete forms to be processed, MailOnline can reveal today.
The Home Office has insisted that it has the ‘right level’ of staff despite complaints and chaotic scenes yesterday when the unnamed woman appeared unconscious on the floor of UK arrivals.
The shocking incident and the dangerously long queues has led to experts saying airlines and holiday companies have ‘lost confidence’ that the Government won’t bungle its plan to open up foreign travel from May 17 when the new traffic light system is implemented.
Travel consultant Paul Charles, CEO of the PC Agency, said after the woman collapsed last night: ‘Talking to senior leaders of the travel sector, it’s clear ministers are fast losing the confidence of the sector. The mood has shifted significantly’.
MailOnline understands that only a maximum of 20 of the 40 passport control desks at Heathrow Terminal 2 can be manned because of social distancing, causing huge queues, made worse because e-gates cannot be used because the Government is yet to fully digitise the ‘passenger locator forms’ which travellers must fill in before heading to the UK.
Border Force officials who are sat checking passports are being forced to work in ‘social bubbles’ of four spread out across the enormous complex to reduce the risk of spreading different strains of coronavirus. They cannot be moved from their tasks to alleviate pressure at passport control if they are not already working in the arrivals hall that day.
Senior Tory MP Steve Baker told MailOnline the queues at Heathrow are a ‘moral outrage’. ‘This is a classic example of the state having a too-narrow focus on one aspect of wellbeing. The sheer inhumanity of pushing a person to collapse in a queue after seven hours fills me with horror.
‘Whatever the government does it must do something to end this misery. It cannot possible be right to have human beings standing in queue for seven hours. This is verging deep into dystopian territory now.
Unions claim Heathrow could use all 40 desks if they had installed screens surrounding each booth, rather than the front-facing ones they chose. But they also blame passengers for failing to fill in the right forms, claiming that they are seeing large numbers of people presenting fake covid test certificates.
Lucy Moreton, of the Immigration Services Union, told MailOnline that in pre-covid times the average time a passenger spent at a passport control desk was around two minutes. This is four minutes now if a passenger’s documents are all in order, but ‘at least’ 40 if there is an issue, she said.
She said: ‘The delays are not caused by a lack of staff. If you look at it, we can now only man every other desk for covid reasons. If your bubble is assigned to admin tasks for the day, ordinarily we would hoik them out, but we can’t do that. It makes it look like we are understaffed, when in fact we have the maximum number of people working we can’.
Footage posted online on Monday afternoon shows a woman lying on the floor of Heathrow Airport being tended to by staff – as many more passengers wait to be cleared through the border
Passengers have expressed their anger over the long delays in the arrivals hall of Heathrow. Some passengers have had to wait for up to six hours to clear the border due to a shortage of Border Force staff
Passengers approaching the UK border at Heathrow Airport are facing waits of up to six hours for Border Force officials to check their documentation about their Covid-19 status
She said that Heathrow Terminal has 40 passport control desks, but because they only have front screens, the number of desks is halved, creating delays, being added to because officers have to check 100 per cent of forms – passports, passenger locator forms and negative Covid test results – on all arrivals, and many are not complying.
Those who attempt to evade quarantine or testing by providing false information face a fine of up to £10,000, and up to 10 years in prison, while those who do not book a hotel place before arriving in England face a £4,000 fine.
Ms Moreton said: The cause of the delays is because people are not complying. We are seeing a lot of people saying was “nobody told them” or “it doesn’t apply to me”.
‘The Government should put more pressure on airlines to make sure that all the documents are there and correct before people fly. Why are these people boarding without the carrier making sure they have the documentation they need? It would not solve it, but it would make the queues shorter’.
She added: ‘If you arrived in pre-covid times it would be two minutes at the desk usually, and is four minutes now if the documents are correct. But if they don’t have everything then you’re in trouble. Just to book the passenger covid tests, that drives it to 40 minutes at least, if not much longer. You would have queues, but you’d have them much shorter.
‘It is not caused by a lack of staff. If you look at it, we only man every other desk for covid reasons. If your bubble is assigned to admin, ordinarily we would hoik them out, but we can’t do that to keep thinks covid safe.
‘Heathrow chose to not to put wraparound screens – that means you could man every desk. The front ones are not really as effective, passengers end up leaning around it.
‘If they haven’t booked their home tests, you have to get off the desk, go into the back office and book them. They’re all there and doing something, but because they have to walk away it looks like they’re not all manned’.
She added: ‘The Government can choose two routes. Either remove the requirement for 100 per cent checks, with all the attendant risk to national Covid security. Or compel carriers to ensure that no one arrives in the UK without having complied with the relevant requirements.’
A passenger collapsed at Heathrow Airport following a ‘seven-hour wait’ as travellers are forced to queue up due to coronavirus checks at the border, it has been claimed.
Around 800 border staff are working at Heathrow and that all are currently in work subject to the normal reasons for absence, according to the Immigration Services Union (ISU).
Footage posted online on Monday afternoon shows a woman lying on the floor of Heathrow Airport being tended to by staff – as many more passengers wait to be cleared through the border.
The video’s uploader claims the woman had collapsed following a seven-hour wait for entry clearance.
Travellers often arrived at the airport without the right documentation and that pre-pandemic a non-contentious entry for someone with the right of residence would have been two minutes if they did not use the eGates.
Post-pandemic with the right paperwork, that transaction time is five minutes, the ISU representative alleged – and that without the right paperwork that time shoots up to at least 30 minutes.
Chris Garton, the chief solutions officer for the London airport, has told MPs ‘the situation is becoming untenable’, with wait times in recent days being ‘well in excess of two hours and up to six hours’.
Giving evidence to the Commons Transport Select Committee, he warned: ‘We’re starting to see disruption in some of the arriving passengers. If you’re made to queue for two or three hours, it’s not something you want to do, and we’re even having to involve the police service to help us.’
Mr Garton went on: ‘What’s happened is a whole host of new checks – 100 per cent checking of everybody – has been introduced, and that obviously has put a tremendous burden on the officers who work at the border. The Home Office has not provided them with additional officers.’
When asked to respond to the ISU’s claims, a Home Office spokesperson told MailOnline: ‘We are in a global health pandemic – people should not be travelling unless absolutely necessary.
‘Border Force has ensured it has the right level of resources to check that passengers are compliant with our border health measures.
‘Queues and wait times will currently be longer, as it is vital that we undertake thorough checks at the border and due to the fact that some passengers have not completed the necessary requirements to enter the UK, such as purchasing covid testing packages or booking their hotel quarantine in advance.’
He told the committee the amount of resources for processing passengers at the border ‘always was a problem’, but the coronavirus pandemic ‘has just made that so much worse than it was before’.
He continued: ‘We want to see that bottleneck removed as quickly as possible. It’s a problem today, it will become a much bigger problem after May 17 (when foreign leisure travel from England could resume).’
Mr Garton said the ‘solution’ is to enable passengers to ensure their entry to the UK is ‘assured’ before they begin their journey. Errors on passenger locator forms should be spotted and corrected in advance, and eGates should be able to check the documents automatically, he told MPs.
This would allow arriving travellers to ‘flow as you would normally through the eGates rather than having to line up and present your paperwork to a rather overstretched border official’, Mr Garton added.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman defended the queues, saying Border Force is ‘completing thorough checks of every arriving passenger’ which is ‘the approach the public would expect’.
He added that the Government will ensure there are ‘sufficient measures there and resources available’ when international leisure travel resumes.
Downing Street insisted that resources would be put in place to ensure airports can cope with increased passenger numbers when international travel resumes.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: ‘Whatever measures we set out from May 17 at the earliest, we’ll ensure that there are sufficient measures there and resources available.’
According to Heathrow Airport, many of the delays relate to the inspection of Passenger Locator Forms which are necessary for all travellers arriving in the UK
Heathrow chief solutions officer Chris Garton said the situation was ‘untenable’
Meanwhile, Edinburgh Airport has called on the Scottish government for support claiming that passengers would be forced to fly in and out of England if nothing is done to help the airline industry
Meanwhile, in Scotland, Edinburgh Airport bosses warned of a reduction in the number of direct flights to Scotland without a covid recovery plan – leaving people reliant on airports in England.
Gordon Dewar, chief executive at Edinburgh Airport, called for immediate action from the Scottish Government to engage with airports and airlines for a recovery plan.
Mr Dewar said uncertainty around Scottish airports could lead to a reduction in the number of direct flights and leave people reliant on airports in other parts of the UK.
He highlighted the industry supports thousands of jobs and generates billions of pounds for the Scottish economy every year. In 2019, Edinburgh Airport generated £1.4billion Gross Value Added and 28,000 jobs in the Scottish economy.
In February Heathrow experienced huge delays at the border caused by ‘rigid and inflexible’ social bubbles created to apparently prevent the spread of new variants.
MailOnline revealed that Emma Moore, the chief operating officer of Border Force, had been responsible for organising the workforce into 12-person bubbles. She was subsequently appointed to the role of Trace Divisional Director with NHS Test and Trace, the Government’s virus tracker.
The bubble policy first came into force on December 31 and was blamed for the mayhem seen at the border as thousands of passengers tried to clear passport checks ahead of the quarantine hotel system.
The ISU accused Ms Moore of ignoring their concerns that the scheme was ‘arbitrary’ and would overwhelm Border Force officials doing customs checks. An ISU spokeswoman also called the bubbles ‘needless’, because Heathrow had already received its three-star Covid-secure certification.
The Department of Health said: ‘Emma Moore has been appointed to the role of Trace Divisional Director. She joins us from her current role as Chief Operating Officer of Border Force, following a competitive hiring process. Emma has a wealth of experience across the public and private sectors to bring to this role.’