I know that I’m not the first to point out
that the kerfuffle
involving a backbench MP at the Tory conference could have been completely
avoided if the security check had been carried out five miles away from the
conference venue, or even at his house before he left, and he had been given a
clever electronic device to track his movements all the way to the venue and
into the room in question. Under such a
system (perhaps we could call it ‘alternative arrangements’) there would have
been no need for a security check at the entrance to the room because the check
would already have been done elsewhere, and the electronics would tell the security
team exactly where he was at any given time.
And with no need for a security presence on the door, there could have
been no confrontation and no fuss.
Unfortunately, it also neatly parallels
some of the real problems for his proposal in relation to the EU-UK border on
the island of Ireland. Whilst the MP would
have been checked and verified, what if his wife had simply gone directly to
the room in question? With no security clearance,
she would have no clever device to monitor her, and with no security on the
door, no infrastructure to detect her presence and no clever device, she would
cross the boundary into the room ‘invisibly’ as far as the security team were
concerned. Without a physical control to
ensure that only people who’d gone through the ‘clearance centre’ could reach the
entrance to the room, the entrance would, effectively, be unsecured. Now, one might ask, ‘does it matter if one
stray extra individual gains access to the room?’ Maybe not – but if it doesn’t then the
security check was irrelevant and unnecessary in the first place. The point is that the security presence on
the door wasn’t there to admire the documents held by the authorised and put a
tick in a box somewhere; it was there to prevent access by the unauthorised.
A system which depends on goods and
associated documents being presented at a clearance centre (or being checked at
the factory) before proceeding but with no means of ensuring that everyone does
so is a system which controls the movements only of the honest. For the dishonest, it’s an open door. And here’s the thing – the point of checking
customs documentation and goods at the border isn’t to admire the beauty of
correct documentation, it is to identify, deter and prevent the movement of
goods which don’t have the correct documentation or on which the correct duties
haven’t been paid. If the PM had
insisted his own party followed the ‘plans’ which he is putting forward, he
might begin to understand why they’re not a viable approach for any territory
which wants to control what does or does not enter its markets.
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