“Passport to Madness”, screams Saturday’s Daily Mail, revealing that it has exposed “shocking” security breaches at Britain’s airports. The newspaper’s reporters claim to have gone through customs at UK airports some 10 times – using passports that were not theirs.
On every occasion, the newspaper claims, the reporters had used friends’ and partners’ passports – so there little chance of the document’s photo resembling the traveller – but as the Mail states: “Men were waved through with women’s passports, and women carrying men’s.”
The newspaper goes on to quote a spokesman for the Home Office, who reportedly told the newspaper: “The service has to tread a fine line between maintaining an effective immigration control and ensuring that bona fide travellers suffer minimum inconvenience.
“Accordingly, people who hold British passports and who are therefore not subjected to immigration controls go through more expedited checks than the holders of non-EU passports. However, we would be concerned that our passport procedures are being abused.”
