Britain to get 3,000-strong border force to fight terrorism and illegal immigration

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By Richard Edwards and Christopher Hope
Last Updated: 6:40PM BST 23/06/2008

A new 3,000-strong police force dedicated to securing the UK's borders has been unveiled in policing plans announced by the Home Secretary.

Jacqui Smith said that senior officers had proposed a single force, run by its own chief constable, which will include uniformed officers on patrol and Special Branch to fight terrorism.

It signals a harder approach to illegal immigration, which has surged in the past decade and has stretched police forces tacking gun crime, drug and people trafficking across Britain.

The force will protect Britain's 71 international and major regional airports, 10,500 miles of coastline and 27 major sea ports.

Miss Smith, responding to a report from the independent reviewer of UK terrorism legislation, also revealed that a new police fortress will be created in London for holding terror suspects.

The purpose built set of cells and custody suites will be established in the next three years and comes after a report from Lord Carlile criticised Paddington Green, Britain's highest security police station, as being "unfit for the purpose".

Police considered adapting a prison, where suspects could be held and questioned for 28 days before being charged or released, but the plans were overruled amid fears that it would be seen as a Guantanamo Bay-style jail. The Metropolitan Police have yet to finalise a location, but are looking at industrial estates on the outskirts of London.

The Tories criticised the Government for "dithering" over the proposals to create a border force, which they said had copied their own proposals of three years ago - previously been attacked by ministers.

Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, said: "This would be welcome but very overdue. For two years we have been calling for a dedicated Border Police Force – something ministers have consistently rubbished.

"Having dithered, the Government have now realised their error and are trying to play catch up."

The creation of a new force is also an admission that a unified "border agency", announced last July by Gordon Brown, was a failure.

The centrepiece of the Prime Minister's counter-terrorism strategy was denounced as ''toothless'' because it did not include the police.

The agency provides a ''uniformed and visible'' presence for people arriving in Britain. It will comprise officers from the Border and Immigration Agency, Revenue and Customs and UKVisas creating a "single primary checkpoint" for travellers.

But agency officers are not able to arrest people caught in possession of drugs or a gun and also do not work on weekends.

Ministers will float the proposals within weeks in a new police reform Green Paper.

The plans for a border force are being drawn up by the Association of Chief Police Officers, the body of police chiefs that oversees policy,

Ken Jones, president of Acpo, said: "Our work with government and partners at the border over the past year has persuaded ACPO to adjust its position on the question of our once-preferred single agency approach. We now see the risks and complexities of such an approach to be of such magnitude that we are looking at the viability of two complementary agencies at the border; concerned with control and security respectively.

"Clearly there would be a degree of overlap but the core missions of each agency are distinct. "Security and other linked policing issues, in this context, would require a degree of independent direction more akin to that of a UK police force, governed and accountable to a service authority.

"Any newly created single national police force should be equipped to deal with all aspects of protective security and law enforcement at its widest sense at the border and ports, encompassing all issues with the potential to cause harm to the UK."

Telegraph