UK Borders Bill
4:30 pm
Richard Thomas: My experience comes from the context of the prosecution of immigration offences. My understanding is that the extended number of offences has taken up a huge amount of police time, because there are not enough arrest-trained immigration officers. They have been given more and more powers, which is creating an additional strain on the police services at ports. The police there are not able to concentrate on what they perhaps really want to concentrate on, which is catching the traffickers or the professional criminals involved in border crime. A lot of time is taken up doing things relating to newly introduced immigration offences. So, the problem arising from my answer to the last question is that there are not enough trained officers to do the new jobs. They are being given more and more powers, which they are not in a position to do, and it is placing a strain on the police and taking away from what I imagine the public would really want to see policed.