Around 95% of the UK’s international trade is handled by seaports, but ensuring those sites remain secure is becoming increasingly difficult
At 6.37 on the morning of 16 August, workers at Tilbury port in Essex rushed to prise open a shipping container.
To look at, there was nothing usual about the container. It had arrived in the port an hour and a half earlier along with 49 other containers on the P&O cargo ship Norstream, and would join many thousands exactly like it at the docks. Nor was there anything unusual about Norstream, which makes twice-daily trips to the port from Zeebrugge in Belgium.
No one had given the metal box a second glance. As a bonded, sealed container it was assumed to be perfectly secure and was not due to be inspected.
If the screams and banging from inside the container had not alerted workers, the box would not have been opened until it reached its destination in Ireland.
And if those workers at Tilbury had taken half an hour longer to wrench open the doors, all 35 of the people trapped inside, including 13 children, would have died from suffocation.
Thanks to the vigilance and quick action of Tilbury’s staff, only one man died – Meet Singh Kapoor, a 40-year-old fleeing persecution in Afghanistan.
His death has brought security at the UK’s ports into the spotlight.
Ensuring that ports are secure is no easy business. For a start, the UK has 120 commercial ports, not to mention the many other fishing ports, natural harbours or smugglers’ coves dotted along its 11,000-mile coastline.
And while the Royal Navy and the Coastguard nominally have a role to play in policing the shores, one is usually deployed far from home waters and the other is engaged in the business of saving lives. Instead, the sheriff of the shoreline is an agency of the Home Office, the UK Border Force.
But, despite a recent funding boost, the UKBF is overstretched (see below), meaning ports are having to take security into their own hands.
Modern ports are now covered by CCTV and patrolled by sniffer dogs. At many ports, huge x-ray scanners can peer inside sealed containers, while probes can test for everything from CO2 – to detect people breathing – to radiation.
“Security is a major part of our design thinking,” says Xavier Woodward, a spokesman for DP World’s new London Gateway port on the banks of the River Thames, near Thurrock.
“We are a brand-spanking new port, so we have the opportunity to design security features into everything that we are doing. We can’t talk specifics, but everything is as good as it can be.”
DP World has tried to get all the thinking in prior to building, he adds. “For example, we have different bays for inspecting different goods, which removes cross-contamination. It also means we do not have to hose them down each time, so we get more through. It means we are more efficient.”
Dennis Murphy is security manager for PD Ports, which operates Teesport, near Middlesbrough, as well as the Port of Hull container terminal, and logistics and warehousing at the UK’s largest and busiest port, Felixstowe in Suffolk. For him, the major security concern is not illegal migrants.
“We don’t get as many as we used to in the North or the East,” he says. In part that is because the main shipping routes are from Holland, not France. “Holland has far more robust security,” he says.
“We still get them on our ferries. But for a freight carrier it is an overnight sailing at best to get here, so they tend to go for a shorter crossing, like Dover.”
But the recent example of Tilbury shows that some traffickers are willing to go to almost any lengths. “The idea that there could be people, alive or dead, inside a container, like at Tilbury – that is frightening.”
But PD Ports does have other major security concerns, namely drug trafficking and terrorism.
“What happened after 9/11 was that people started thinking ‘if a plane could do that much damage, imagine what a containership could do’.”
In July 2004, as a response to the attacks on 11 September 2001, the International Maritime Organization introduced the International Ship and Port Facility Security Code as an amendment to the Safety of Life at Sea Convention. The 159 signatory states – representing 99% of the world’s merchant fleet and all its major ports – agreed to stringent, minimum security arrangements.
According to Murphy, this has made port security far more robust. Not only can you ensure the security of your own warehouses, but you can feel confident that the goods have come from a secure port of origin.
“Since then we have all had to have fences of certain height, and so on,” says Murphy. “Restricted areas are expanding. There are now very few general access areas. The trick with the design is to do that without bringing the port to a standstill.”
All ports must now have security plans and detection equipment. All ships arriving at port must have security officers and keep tabs on all comings and goings. And all ports must be designed with security as a paramount concern.
“What we are looking at now is crime prevention through design,” says Murphy. “We want that in every part of our facilities, so some of it can be done from scratch, while the rest must be retrofitted.”
For many of its port warehouses the solutions are remarkably mundane. “Very simple things, such as moving windows up higher, make a huge difference,” says Murphy. “And if there is no windowsill there is nowhere for someone to put a bomb, or climb up.”
Similarly with drainpipes: “If they are built into the wall there is nothing to climb. Architects are well ahead of this.”
Tied in with the ISPS Code is C-TPAT – the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism – a 2007 US initiative that dictates the minimum security requirements for those transporting goods to US ports. It includes requirements for container seals, container storage, security personnel, swift action against possible trespassers and “buildings that resist unlawful entry”.
“If you want to export to the US you have to take part in this process,” says Woodward. “If you do not meet standards then you cannot do business.”
For London Gateway’s head of port security, Colin Hitchcock, C-TPAT provides a good benchmark.
“It is best-practice and an industry standard,” says Woodward. “And that is the starting place for us.”
He adds that the port has also been built to pre-empt upcoming EU legislation which augments the ISPS Code. As part of that, London Gateway has some impressive kit. “We are not hiding the fact that there is a big x-ray machine here,” says Woodward. “We like people to see it. It is a deterrent.”
In many ways, the precautions against a possible terrorist threat are far more robust than those designed to stop people crossing the Channel without going through immigration.
“We don’t have much of a problem with people trying to get through,”says Woodward. “We are a deepsea port, so most of our ships are coming from far away; South Africa and the Philippines. And we only deal with sealed containers. So if you did decide to come in that way you would need breathing apparatus.”
Terrorism and non-human trafficking are far greater issues to ports, as is the threat of a cyber-attack.
Everything at London Gateway is controlled by computer, as one would expect of a modern port. But, unlike most other ports, those systems are then shut off from the rest of the world, rather like those of the Pentagon.
This is a sensible measure. Last year, cyber-attacks were made against ports in Belgium and the Netherlands. One attack on Antwerp’s system was an attempt by a drug-trafficking cartel to move millions of pounds worth of cocaine through the port.
And even the ever-vigilant US is not secure from cyber-attack. A report this summer by the Government Accountability Office said cyber-attacks were the industry’s “Achilles’ heel”,
and that the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002 did nothing to
oblige port operators to protect against them.
Because all this has been factored in from the beginning, it isn’t possible, Woodward says, to put a price tag on what the security element costs. But, by way of a yardstick, it is worth noting that the government estimates that simply upgrading security at Liverpool, Aberdeen and Teesport from ISPS to C-TPAT would cost £1.3m.
Murphy says that all precautions are taken to prevent security breaches. “Cameras, alarms, humidity alarms…Everything that can be done is done,” he says. “But the gangs arranging for these people to come here are criminals. And there is little you can do to stop determined criminals.”
Dover’s unwelcome popularity
Dover is a favoured entry point for criminals trafficking drugs and humans.
Between January and August, 203 people were arrested at the Kent port attempting to enter the UK illegally. Last year the figure was 148 and in 2012 it was 105.
In October, the Port of Dover was granted major new powers, allowing it, as a trust port, to enter joint ventures and borrow against its assets for the first time. This will allow Dover to go ahead with its £120m Western Docks Revival scheme and, vitally, major security improvements.
Even so, the port authority has said that it does not have the capability to cope with the problem of illegal immigrants. Instead, it says, they need to be “dealt with at source”.
The UK government is spending £12m on security in Calais, in addition to providing a new security fence at the French port. The fence is in fact the same one used to keep protesters out of the recent NATO conference in Wales.
My word is my bond
One safeguard that should prevent anything slipping into the country illegally is the international bonded system.
The bonded system has existed for centuries – anyone familiar with the urban landscape of Bristol will know the hulking brick edifices of the former bonded warehouses – and the principle has changed little since its inception.
Once a container is entered into the bonded system it is assumed to be sealed and to contain exactly what it says on the manifest. It can then be fast-tracked across the globe, from port to port, with little or no interference.
The problem is that this is a system based on trust. The container discovered at Tilbury in which 35 illegal migrants hid was part of the bonded system. Somewhere along the line,
that bond of trust was broken.
Because of the nature of the logistics business, the trust in the bonded system and Europe’s open borders, many of the lorries arriving at ports can travel from one end of the continent to the other without ever being checked.
Last month, two men were detained by police, suspected of having entered Britain illegally on a lorry. But they were not at a port, or even near one. They were discovered outside a warehouse at the Centrum 100 business park in Burton upon Trent – one of the UK towns furthest from the coast.
“This is a ridiculous system,” said Peter Roberts, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, in a recent BBC interview. “How do we know that a customs official has not been bought off? This system of trust, of bonds, of processes really requires re-examination.”
The sheriffs of the shoreline
After a period of staff cuts and chronic underfunding, the UK Border Force has recently received an investment boost from central government and now has around 7,600 frontline staff.
Hypothetically, if they were to each work a 12-hour shift each day, and search one container every 10 minutes, they would get through 500,000 containers each year.
Not bad going, but to put that in perspective, Tilbury alone handles 120,000 containers each year. Felixstowe, the UK’s biggest port, handles 3.7m each year. DP World’s London Gateway port already handles 1m containers each year, and it is not fully completed yet. Once it is, it could handle 3.5m. Next year an estimated 15m containers will arrive at the UK’s ports. The actual number of consignments examined by the UKBF is nearer to 100,000.
It is not as though the UKBF can simply concentrate its manpower on these logistical behemoths. Smaller ports are just as likely to be targeted by traffickers, if not more so. Last month, three Ukrainians were jailed for bringing migrants into the UK via Orford Quay, a tiny port near the Suffolk town of Aldeburgh.
As a result, any action by the UKBF has to be intelligence-based. However, in 2013 an inspection of UKBF freight operations found that the intelligence-gathering tool used was woefully inefficient and often ignored.
The report, by John Vine, the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, also looked into the efficiency of the UKBF itself, and discovered some serious causes for concern.
In his report, Vine said: “I found that the targeting processes used to identify smuggled goods in freight consignments were inefficient,” with a success rate of 1%. “Clearly this represents an inefficient use of resources.”
And there were further problems. “UKBF was not meeting all its requirements as set out in the various protocols and agreements it has with HMRC, most notably the mandatory physical examination of certain consignments.”
In 2012, more than 68% of consignments that fell under the mandate were not examined.
