London, 18 February 1971
You wrote to me again on 4th February about the division between United Kingdom passport holders and other passengers at some of our ports and airports. 1
There are in the main two reasons why other countries do not find segregation necessary. The first is that some do not apply the kind of immigration control at the periphery that we exercise in the United Kingdom. Most European countries for example have only minimal control at the port of entry—and rely mainly on supervision and control after entry. The examination at the ports is therefore normally limited to checking that the passenger is in possession of a current passport and is not on a Stop List, and it can be quickly carried out.
The second is that some other countries rely much more heavily than we do on visa requirements. In the USA, for example, the immigration authorities do without segregation, despite control at the periphery, because everyone (except Canadians and some from other parts of America) has to have a visa before arriving in the United States. Since those subject to control have to get clearance in advance, their examination can be extremely brief, although not usually (so personal experience would suggest) quite as brief as the examination of the holder of a United Kingdom passport here.
With us the position is very different. We do not have a close police control after entry and we do not have a universal requirement for visas—and I do not think that anyone seriously suggests that we should impose either of these requirements. The holders of United Kingdom passports exempt from control can be passed through on an average of about three seconds, whereas those subject to control have to undergo an examination which averages about 60 seconds and may take longer. Experiments have shown that the effect of dealing with everyone in a single queue is unnecessarily to delay the great mass of travellers who are United Kingdom passport holders exempt from control. There are about nine million such travellers a year, and delays are bound to give rise to criticism.
At the ports, the division into the streams, subject to the physical circumstances at the particular port in question, takes place at the latest possible moment. There is no question, at London Airport for example, of there being long separate queues slowly moving forward. There is a single line of passengers until the point is reached at which United Kingdom passport holders are siphoned off and pass quickly through their exit point. Those subject to control continue and divide almost at once between foreign nationals and Commonwealth citizens (but both are examined by the same line of Immigration officers). We ourselves, after a lot of experimentation, have been unable to think of any way of altering the arrangements in a way which would not mean keeping a lot of people waiting who now go through quickly.
1 Document 327.
[UKNA: PREM 15/442]