Isle of Man Home Affairs and Justice Minister Jane Poole-Wilson MHK announces measures to secure the island’s borders from criminal exploitation and abuses of the immigration system
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00:00I'm at the Government Conference with Home Affairs and Justice Minister Jane Paul-Wilson.
00:05There's been some quite big announcements this morning in regard to the need to tighten
00:12border security and immigration policies.
00:14It's an area that will be of great concern to a lot of people here.
00:18Yeah, and we did the Council Ministers Roadshows earlier this year and certainly it was one
00:24of the themes that came out of that.
00:26But actually we know from the operations that the Law Enforcement Agencies on the island
00:31have conducted, the changing nature of the threat is such that instead of operating in
00:37terms of surge operations, we want to move to a more comprehensive and sustainable approach
00:42to that.
00:43And a lot of the changes that I've been talking about in terms of technology, operational
00:47changes, legislation, that's all about moving our response to a more comprehensive and sustainable
00:54basis.
00:55How recent has this been?
00:58Was the Immigration Service completely overwhelmed by the scale of the challenge facing it in
01:02recent years?
01:03Yeah, I think as you've heard this morning from Sandy, there has been a combination of
01:08factors.
01:09I think Brexit is part of that because of the volume now of more people who would need
01:14to make visa applications.
01:17I think also passport applications rocketed after Covid and so on.
01:23So I think there have been a number of factors that have contributed to overall volume if
01:27you like.
01:28And then within the resourcing of being able to deal with that, it has definitely been
01:32a problem.
01:33But action taken to address that, but also to bring immigration officers together with
01:39customs to help on the enforcement side of the immigration work is a significant change
01:45that I think is starting to make a difference and will make a difference.
01:49You've heard that there are no records kept of people arriving here and people leaving
01:53here.
01:54Yes.
01:55That's got to change, hasn't it?
01:56I think, again, we have been used to, haven't we, as an island, relative freedom within
02:01the common travel area and although we know the visas that are issued from an immigration
02:07perspective, actually knowing whether people do arrive here is an important part of understanding
02:12who is travelling to the island.
02:13And we also heard, we don't know the extent of the abuses, but you must have some idea
02:17whether it's tens or hundreds or tens of hundreds.
02:20What are we talking about?
02:22I think from an immigration perspective that work is certainly underway in terms of understanding
02:28the scope of abuses, but also critically preventing any future abuses.
02:32OK.
02:33Now let's talk about facial recognition.
02:35Just tell me how that would operate and also how would you mitigate concerns over human
02:39rights, I guess?
02:40Yes.
02:41And when I was talking earlier on about the principles underpinning all of our approach,
02:45absolutely respect for human rights and proportionate processes matter.
02:50So in terms of facial recognition, what that does is it's basically automated because it
02:56can quickly identify people against a known watch list of criminals.
03:02So it's not capturing and holding people's data, it is an automated process whereby we
03:07have rapid opportunity to quickly identify known criminals who may be travelling.
03:11So your face will be captured on camera at the ports?
03:15In a moment, but an automated process that can wash very quickly against known criminals.
03:21That's how it would work.
03:22But critically, it would have to be underpinned by our own robust legislative process, which
03:27is what we would put in place before we deployed it.
03:30It's also recognising that we do not have the human resources to monitor every single person
03:35arriving on and off and to track, so that automation of it makes a big difference.
03:40And I think critically, the other point that I think I hope will give people reassurances
03:44is that we have then due oversight about the use of this type of technology in practice,
03:48so that there is reassurance that this is being used for the sole purpose we want to,
03:54which is to detect and disrupt and capture criminals.