Airport passengers 'able to walk out without any checks'

The threat to the security of the UK's border was serious enough for the Home Secretary to be told after it was discovered last year, but Manchester Airport staff still failed to ensure any contingency plans were in place, the UK Border Agency's (UKBA) independent chief inspector John Vine said.

The UK's border security may also have been compromised by unreliable technology at Manchester, the largest UK airport outside of London, he said.

"We observed that there were two areas in the airport where there was the potential for international passengers transferring between terminals to be able to walk out of the airport without passing through primary control points," he said.

"It was considered serious enough to have been discussed at the level of Home Secretary yet had been removed from the airport risk register, placed on a regional risk register and not dealt with."

Mr Vine went on: "A high level of security is paramount at any airport so I was concerned to find that the UK Border Agency had known about a potential risk to the border for some time.

"At the time of inspection, no contingency plans had been put in place to deal with this risk.

"I would urge that this be addressed as a matter of priority."

Mr Vine also called for the UKBA to evaluate the actual benefits of new technology such as facial recognition gates after inspectors found they were "not operational for a significant period of time".

In just one week, the gates in terminal one broke down five times, including one occasion which led to a passenger becoming trapped.

The inspection, which took place between May 5 and May 7, also raised concerns over the "antiquated and potentially insecure" ways in which information was passed in the airport between detection and immigration staff.

And there was an unacceptable "lack of rationale" for the reasons why detection staff stopped and searched certain passengers.

The report also found managers were unable to justify spending almost 1m on overtime in 2009/10, describing it simply as "an inherent way of running the airport".

"It was difficult to make a judgment on whether the overtime figure was justified or not due to the absence of management information available showing how staff are deployed," the inspectors said.

The report went on: "No member of staff at Manchester Airport could tell us the optimum staffing level."

It is understood the gap in security at Manchester's terminal three affected an average of five passengers per day until it was stopped earlier this year.

A spokesman for Manchester Airport said: "We are not aware of any international transfer passengers who did not board their connecting flight.