Government criticised over Eurostar queues

A Labour peer has criticised the government over queues for immigration at London's St Pancras Eurostar terminal.

During the daily question session with government ministers on 23 April 2012, Lord Berkeley called for passport checks to be carried out on board trains between Brussels and London, after they have called at the French city of Lille.

Peers were debating the so-called "Lille loophole" whereby passengers are able potentially to avoid passport checks and illegally enter the UK.

Passengers can travel between Brussels and Lille without showing a passport as both Belgium and France are members of the Schengen area, where there are no border checks, and then stay on the train to London avoiding further checks.

Home Office Minister Lord Henley outlined measures designed to close the loophole.

For "casual travellers", Eurostar had restricted sales of Brussels to Lille tickets to three trains per day, the minister said.

"Only these services are subject to routine immigration checks at St Pancras and we seek to keep delays to a minimum," he added.

Lord Berkeley argued that, as a result of these measures, passengers entering the UK from "anywhere except for Paris" have to queue.

He said that he had personally seen families returning from Disneyland Paris "having to queue for an hour, and it's pretty hard on them".

Lord Henley said that it was "unnecessarily expensive" to check tickets on trains and that in the case of the majority of trains that do not allow people to buy "casual tickets" to Lille, checks were performed in Brussels.

Liberal Democrat Lord Tyler asked what would be done once trains from Germany "which stop at several places before they go into the tunnel" start running to London.

Lord Henley said that services may start "from late 2015, so we have some time" and that "different options will have to be looked at".

This prompted Labour spokesman Lord Davies of Oldham to say that he was "a little disturbed by the complacency of the minister".

Other questions were on UK equity markets and long-term decision making, social tourism policies and marking Workers' Memorial Day.

The session opened with the announcement to peers of the recent deaths of Labour peers Lord Brett and Lord Ashley of Stoke.