Isle Of Wight MP Andrew Turner has been trying to get to the bottom of the proposed government plans to monitor bookings between the mainland and the UK’s Islands.
Back in March VentnorBlog was the first of the local media to report concerns that travel on the Isle of Wight ferries might require carrying a passport. This was was sourced from the Home Office’s Counter-Terrorism strategy ‘CONTEST’, which outlined plans to collect passengers’ personal data, including name; date of birth; home address and travel plans, to be passed to the police whenever a ticket booking was made, providing the authorities with the ability to track the movements of thousands of the daily travellers between the Island and the mainland.
We followed this up with a ‘clarification’ from the Home Office that they had “no plans to extend the new powers to other domestic routes,” beyond the Great Britain to/from Northern Ireland route.
Talks with authorities on Jersey, the Isle of Man and Guernsey have already taken place, but none with the Isle of Wight as yet.
Questions in the House
Quite rightly, Andrew Turner has been pursuing exactly what this means via Written Answers with the Minister of State for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing, Vernon Coaker MP.
Asking how many investigations there had been into terrorist-related and organised crime travel on the Island, he found the Minister dodged the question, stating that plans to use new information-gathering powers were only planned for routes between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. He went on to say “There are no plans to introduce these powers on other domestic UK routes, such as crossings to the Isle of Wight”.
Not entirely convinced by the Minister’s responses on this subject, Andrew Turner stated “To the best of my knowledge, the Isle of Wight has never been a hotbed of terrorism or organised crime. This was a silly idea – but you never know when silly ideas are going to turn into government policy, so I will be keeping an eye on this.”
Image: hjl
