I welcome the remarks of the Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee. He raised three questions, which I shall endeavour to answer. The first was about resources, and given that the checks were not being conducted as they should have been in all cases, it would be fair to say that in responding to the chief inspector’s report and implementing the operating mandate, it was clearly necessary to increase the resources going into the Department. As to whether we have the balance right, it is obviously something that we keep under review, and it is a challenge for all operational managers.
I refer back to the National Audit Office’s last report, not the one published today, that looked into our detection and seizure of serious goods—class A drugs, firearms and so forth—that people were attempting to get through the border. The report said that in all those cases we were meeting and exceeding our seizure and detection targets. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and I think that we are succeeding.
I do not have time to go in detail into the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the legal loophole, but I can say that we are making considerable progress and that his general point about the importance of partnership working is absolutely true. I recall a visit last autumn when I met the new French Interior Minister, and I visited Calais and Coquelles this summer in order to see for myself the co-operative work going on between the French port authorities and our Border Force officers. Such co-operation is excellent and we need to keep it in that good shape as we go forward.