Home Affairs Committee say eBorders is illegal in the EU

[peterb]

The only relevance to EBorders and yachtsmen is that so far there is no evidence that yachts are used by illegal immigrants to enter the UK.

There's a little piece tending to back that up in the Feb edition of YM. Apparently Mr Brodie Clark, 'strategic director for border control', told YM that out of 1900 vessels checked by e-borders teams, nearly 100 were yachts. He illustrated the need by saying that one production 55 footer had a false bulkhead hiding a quarter of a ton of cocaine, a father/son team were smuggling cannabis, paedophile videos and sawn-off shotguns, and a large ketch was smuggling cocaine hidden in four dories on deck.

Now I would have thought that with a scheme like e-borders, intended to keep out undesirables, he would have trumpeted the success in discovering all the would-be suicide bombers. But no, there was no such mention. Surprising, isn't it, how they prefer to keep such things quiet?

 

[Searush]

Peterb;
Thanks for the data, the first I have seen.

So, 100 yachts were stopped & 3 were dodgy. Now 3% seems a high figure - I mean on a given Bank Holiday it might suggest that of say 3,000 yachts in the Solent, 90 of them might be smuggling.

But hang on a mo, why were those particular 100 stopped? I would guess that they were "interesting" for some reason - perhaps a tip-off, or maybe they looked "the wrong sort of people to have a big yacht" (this was once told to a liveaboard forumite). So, they have only a 3% success rate when specifically targetting "apparently dodgy craft" - that's not such a high success rate after all is it?

The other issue was 1900 vessels stopped of which 100 were yachts. That's just over 5%. Now I wouldn't know the ratio of ships to yachts over a 12 month period (it's obviously different in summer to winter) but I would guess it might be higher in coastal waters & lower off soundings. So since UKBA operate mostly inshore (ie within territorial waters) They seem to be focussing on ships rather than yachts - unless they have intelligence to indicate a risk.

So, all in all, it looks to me like common sense may be prevailing despite the best efforts of the legislators.

 

[Wunja]

So, 100 yachts were stopped & 3 were dodgy. Now 3% seems a high figure - I mean on a given Bank Holiday it might suggest that of say 3,000 yachts in the Solent, 90 of them might be smuggling.

But if you take out the 'intelligence lead' stops and at least two of those have previously been reported as such, I suspect that the numbers would be 97 random stops and nil dodgy ones. This makes random stop and search completely pointless.

 

[Tranona]

There's a little piece tending to back that up in the Feb edition of YM. Apparently Mr Brodie Clark, 'strategic director for border control', told YM that out of 1900 vessels checked by e-borders teams, nearly 100 were yachts. He illustrated the need by saying that one production 55 footer had a false bulkhead hiding a quarter of a ton of cocaine, a father/son team were smuggling cannabis, paedophile videos and sawn-off shotguns, and a large ketch was smuggling cocaine hidden in four dories on deck.

Now I would have thought that with a scheme like e-borders, intended to keep out undesirables, he would have trumpeted the success in discovering all the would-be suicide bombers. But no, there was no such mention. Surprising, isn't it, how they prefer to keep such things quiet?

Yes, highly selective "statistics". Firstly I don't believe the figure of 100 - you could probably get that number from people who have posted on here (see Guapa's poll).

Secondly he does not say whether the two "successes" were as a result of random stops or the more usual "intelligence".

Thirdly, without knowing all the details it is impossible to say if these criminals would either have been deterred or caught if E Borders was in place.

Lastly, when this 1900 searches figure was first announced (a 4 fold I think increase in 10 years - inevitable I guess if you have just spent millions on new boats) I looked on the UKBA website where they announce all their "successes" in catching people. Of the well over one hundred cases listed since February 2009, not one involved a leisure craft.