Canberra, 11 April 1963
I promised to let you have such information as we have available here, about arrangements for Commonwealth passengers to pass through Immigration controls at London and other ports of entry into the United Kingdom, including Dover, which you particularly mentioned.
2. The general principle is that arriving passengers are segregated into different queues only when it has been found by experience that passengers are dealt with more quickly if asked to go to different control points. At many points there is no segregation at all and United Kingdom, other Commonwealth, and foreign passengers are dealt with as they come. This applies to all ports where liner passengers are being interviewed, to the car ferry at Dover and to most of the airports.
3. Where segregation arrangements have been made in the past—that is, where alien and British passengers were dealt with separately before the controls under the Commonwealth Immigrants’ Act came into force—non-UK Commonwealth passengers still join the same queue as UK passengers. This is the practice for example at Harwich and where a Commonwealth passenger subject to control reaches the head of the British queue he is then diverted to an Immigration Officer at an adjacent desk.
4. There are departures from the practice as described above only at two ports of entry, namely London Airport and Dover. At Dover, at the Western docks, those passengers not examined during the crossing are divided into three separate queues, for UK passport holders, other Commonwealth citizens and aliens. At the eastern docks catering for car traffic, all passengers are dealt with on the passage over and there is no segregation: Passengers arriving in the train ferry are directed to three different parts of the ship and are examined on board after arrival.
5. At London Airport however, it has been necessary for Commonwealth passengers to queue with aliens, and this has naturally given rise to criticism. The reason for this has been that because of the very heavy passenger traffic at London Airport a combination of United Kingdom citizens in one queue with other Commonwealth passengers would have led to long delays for the United Kingdom citizens for whom the controls involved merely a quick passport check.
6. The principle has, however, been fully accepted that Commonwealth passengers ought not to have to queue with aliens and structural alterations are being carried out at the passenger terminals to make it possible for incoming Commonwealth non-UK passengers to be dealt with separately from foreigners. It is hoped that these will be completed by the end of this month.
7. There will be no segregation at all of out-going passengers during the less busy periods. During busy periods out–going Commonwealth non-UK passengers will be dealt with separately from foreigners once the structural alterations to the terminals have been carried out.
8. The position should therefore soon be cleared up at London airport. According to our information, arrangements at Dover should already be satisfactory and I am puzzled that your Minister should have received a complaint about them.1 But if you could let me have details of any cases we should be very glad to ask London to look into them.
1 See footnote to Document 310.
[NAA: A446, 1970/95740]