asked Her Majesty's Government:

What steps they are taking to monitor queues at passport control at United Kingdom airports; and whether they will publish the most recent information. [HL202]

We recognise that we have a responsibility to process genuine passengers without delay but the safety and security of the public is our priority.

Border Control is currently monitoring queues at the Immigration Control at 10 airports across the UK (Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Stansted, Luton, Bristol, Cardiff and Newcastle) to benchmark performance. The ports in question are using a 45 minutes (non-EEA) and 25 minutes (EEA) queuing time as such a benchmark. This in turn informs staff deployment as well as informing considerations on further investment. We are clear that the averages are well within these benchmarks but will continue to reduce the number of occasions that exceed those figures.

Border Control currently undertakes manual measurement of the queues at UK airports. However, these figures are currently unavailable due to data quality and collection issues.