Brexit: Police preparing for disruption at every port and airport as no-deal looms

Police are preparing for the consequences of potential disruption at every air and sea port in the UK when the Brexit transition period ends, senior officers have revealed.

The head of counter-terror policing, Neil Basu, also warned of intelligence gaps when Britain is cut out of key EU databases and law enforcement mechanisms.

On Monday, the security minister told MPs that negotiations were in a “very difficult place” and that the government was preparing for a no-deal Brexit as “the most likely outcome”.

James Brokenshire insisted the UK will remain “a global leader on national security”, but Mr Basu told The Independent none of the replacements for lost European tools “are as good as the security protocols we currently have”.

Police are bracing for:

• Potential protests and disorder

• The loss of information on European criminals in the UK

• “Gaps in intelligence” on terrorists and serious criminals

• Delays in obtaining information needed for investigations

• A significant impact on “day-to-day” policing

• Using “cumbersome, less efficient and less effective” systems after losing access to EU tools and databases

Extra officers will be deployed to Kent after the local chief constable requested assistance, amid fears of huge lorry queues and delays to passenger traffic from 1 January.

Disruption arrived earlier than expected over the weekend, after news of a rapidly spreading new strain of coronavirus caused France to close its border.

The president of the Police Superintendents’ Association told The Independent that while Brexit preparations had focused on Kent, there were also specific concerns over Welsh ports that link to Ireland, and other locations.

“It’s every port and access point from Europe,” said Chief Superintendent Paul Griffiths. “Kent are used to lorry stacking but this could be on a different scale to what we’ve experienced in the past.”

Operation Yellowhammer, the British government’s planning document for the “reasonable worst-case scenario” in the event of a no-deal Brexit, said traffic jams from Dover could cause fuel shortages across the country.

It added: “Protests and counter-protests will take place across the UK and may absorb significant amounts of police resource. There may also be a rise in public disorder and community tensions.”

Ch Supt Griffiths said that contingency plans for potential protests and civil unrest had been drawn up, but there was “no indication or intelligence” that they would be needed.

“The throughput of traffic and trade is the key concern at the moment,” he added.

Continued restrictions on gatherings imposed under coronavirus laws are expected to make large-scale demonstrations less likely, but the pandemic has also left police officers increasingly stretched.

Ch Supt Griffiths said his greatest concern was the changes to information exchange, as the UK will lose access to the Schengen Information System II (SIS II) database.

It contains 4.6 million UK alerts relating to people and objects and is currently searched automatically alongside the Police National Computer (PNC).

Steve Rodhouse, the National Crime Agency’s (NCA) director of operations, told MPs 185,000 alerts from EU countries must be deleted from UK systems, and that officers were trying to save the data by encouraging other nations to upload them to Interpol.

He warned that the system will only be “as good as the data put into it” last week, telling the Home Affairs Committee: “I cannot be sure of the extent to which every member state will make use of the Interpol route.

“There will be some states in some circumstances who don’t use Interpol alerts and that provides a gap for us.”

Officials have been working to upload Interpol notices to the PNC and a warnings index used by Border Force to assess people entering the country.

The UK will also be cut out of the European Arrest Warrant, which allows the immediate arrest of wanted EU criminals in Britain and vice-versa, and has not yet negotiated replacement extradition agreements. Germany, Austria and Slovenia have already said they will not extradite their own nationals to the UK.

Britain also faces losing access to the Prüm database for DNA, fingerprints and vehicle registration data, the European Criminal Records Information System (Ecris), Passenger Name Records (PNR) database and Europol policing coordination body.

Mr Rodhouse said that without the tools, investigations involving international crime networks will take longer, adding: “That can mean that serious criminals are not held to account as quickly.“

The International Crime Coordination Centre was set up to prepare contingencies, but Ch Supt Griffiths said the public “shouldn’t be under any illusion around the fact that they will be more cumbersome, less efficient and less effective”.

“It will affect day-to-day policing across the entire landscape,” he added. “Every day, all over the country, officers are stopping vehicles and people and using databases we share with our European partners.”

Government ministers have repeatedly insisted the UK will “remain one of the safest places in the world”, and was falling back on “tried and tested mechanisms”.

But the head of UK counter-terror police, Mr Basu, said: “The mitigations will be in place by 31 December but they won’t be as effective as what we’ve got now.

“We have other channels for intelligence sharing but I am concerned about losing some of the routine law enforcement tools, which would be problematic for my wider policing and the NCA.”

Mr Basu said the new systems will be “clunky”, forcing police to do manual checks to establish whether a suspect has a foreign criminal record.

“We can still do those checks, we can still get that information but it won’t be instantaneous and that creates a gap,” he warned.

“Some of the people we suspect [to be terrorists] have criminal records and if we haven’t got that information then we don’t have a starting point. I’m aligned with my policing colleagues that this is a serious issue for us.”

Giving evidence to the Home Affairs Committee on Monday, Mr Brokenshire said a security agreement with the EU was tied to the outcome of overall negotiations, which have been deadlocked on trade issues.

“Negotiations are continuing but the most likely outcome based on where we sit at the moment is no further agreement, and we are being prepared on that basis,” he added.

The security minister repeatedly evaded MPs’ questions on whether he agreed with assessments by the police and NCA that alternatives to EU tools were slower and less effective.

Mr Brokenshire acknowledged that there would be a “mutual loss of capability” for law enforcement.

Repeatedly asked by committee chair Yvette Cooper whether the UK will be less safe from 1 January, the minister said: “I believe that we will remain as safe because of the incredible work of our policing, and indeed the different steps that we have put in place.”

Ms Cooper said the statement was “remarkable”, adding: “There is a very different tone in your response to this than all the senior police officers who have given evidence to us, who are clearly considerably more alarmed about the loss of capability they are about to face.”