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Passengers: Personal Records

Volume 472: debated on Wednesday 27 February 2008

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what role she expects passenger name record data to play within the Government’s e-Borders programme. (188652)

Passenger name record data are included within the Other Passenger Information (OPI) which will be electronically collected from carriers for a sub-set of passenger journeys. The data will be used by the Agencies (e-Borders is a joint project, led by the Border and Immigration Agency in partnership with HM Revenue and Customs, UKvisas and the police service, working with the security and intelligence agencies) to perform risk assessments of the passengers prior to their entry to the UK.

This analysis will, in the first instance, use automated rules based systems. Where a potential match is identified trained officers will undertake a final assessment before issuing an alert to the relevant agency. It is expected that carriers will be required to provide these data initially 24-48 hours in advance of departure to facilitate advanced risk assessments to be made.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what information will be included within the category of other passenger information within the Government’s e-Borders programme. (188642)

e-Borders intends to capture reservations information that is available from travel industry booking systems. Details of the other passenger information to be collected are detailed in the Immigration and Police (Passenger and Service Information) Order 2008 which was laid before Parliament on 10 January 2008.

The duty to share this information (Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 (Duty to Share Information and Disclosure of Information for Security Purposes) Order 2008) was passed by the House of Commons on 19 February and will be debated in the other House on 25 February.