Every person who leaves or enters Britain will be electronically screened under new measures designed to expose terrorists hiding among the travelling public, Gordon Brown announced yesterday.

Profiles detailing passengers’ criminal records, employment histories and even spending patterns – derived from credit cards used to buy airline tickets – will be available to security agencies.

The enhanced entry and exit checks will apply equally to British citizens and foreign travellers.

Physical embarkation checks, abolished in the mid1990s, will be reintroduced on some priority routes and could exacerbate the security delays at airports.

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A new, uniformed border force will monitor people arriving in Britain and the information on those leaving the country will be shared with foreign security services.

The Prime Minister said: “The way forward is electronic screening of all passengers as they check in and out of our country at ports and airports, so that terrorist suspects can be identified and stopped before they board planes, trains and boats.”

The “e-borders” initiative is already being piloted on a number of routes, capturing information on 22 million passengers and leading to more than 12,000 security alerts and 1,000 arrests. It follows a series of cases where known terrorist suspects have trained overseas then returned to carry out attacks in Britain.

The Prime Minister also announced a consulation on extending police powers to detain terror suspects from 28 to 56 days before they have to be charged or released. The complexity of antiterrorist investigations meant that it could be necessary for police to seek extra interview time in a few cases, he said.

Mr Brown’s statement and counsultation documents contained a wide range of counter-terrorism proposals including:

–– A review by Lord West of Spit-head, the Home Office minister, of the way that shopping centres and sports venues are protected;
–– Ring-fenced funding for armed police guarding gas supply sites;
–– The linking of the UK watchlist of suspects to Interpol’s database of lost and stolen documents at a cost of £5 million;
–– £70 million to help local councils and community groups to resist violent extremism;
–– Police powers to confiscate passports of people suspected of going abroad for terror training (Muktar Said Ibrahim, the ringleader of the 21/7 plot, was allowed to fly from Britain to Pakistan despite police suspicions about his intentions).
–– A further review of the use of telephone intercept evidence in the British courts;
–– A requirement for terrorists to register with police after their release from prison, a separate counter-terrorist DNA database and longer sentences for suspected terrorists convicted of other offences.

The Government also floated the radical idea of a European-style system of investigating judges. Such a move would have dramatic implications for traditional methods of police investigation and on the way that cases are prosecuted in British courts.

A document setting out four options on precharge detention proposed handing control of investigations to a cadre of judges who would “reflect the rights of the suspect as well as the needs of the investigation”.

The measure is not, however, the Government’s preferred option. Nor is the idea put forward by Liberty, the human rights group, and the Conservatives to use the Civil Contingencies Act to extend detention periods.

The Government’s favoured option is for any extension beyond 28 days to be approved by the Director of Public Prosecutions and notified to parliament, which could debate it.

The proposal for a border force was shamelessly adopted from the Conservatives, however. Mr Brown said that officers from the immigration service, Revenue and Customs and UKVisas would be brought together, creating a single checkpoint for travellers. The border patrol would not be a police force but would have powers to arrest individuals and to seize documents and other materials.

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said that the Government’s proposal did not go far enough. “We welcome the Government finally adopting our policy of having a unified border force, but it has got to be delivered properly. “Our concern is that their proposal is the same old ineffective porous border control, albeit in a different uniform, instead of a new specialised unified police force equipped with the powers to do the job.”

Mr Brown’s proposals for a border force and extended detention periods were strongly supported by Ken Jones, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers.

“The proposals, many of which Acpo have previously called for, will do much to bolster our ability to confront the threat,” he said. “They seek to balance the liberty of suspects with the need for security and recognise that there may be rare occasions when 28 days will not be sufficient.”

But Nicola Duckworth, of Amnesty International, said the “proposal to lock people up for 56 days without charge or trial amounts to internment and is an assault on human rights and freedoms.”

A committee of MPs also gave warning that airline passengers could become terrorist targets because of new security measures. It said lengthy queues at check-in and departure halls were vulnerable to a bomb attack.

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