Henry Smith, whose constituency includes Gatwick, and former Brexit minister Steve Baker both took swipes at the agency after it emerged holidays face being scuppered.
Half-term holidaymakers have been warned of heaving UK immigration queues at UK ports and airports, with the Border Force Union warning passengers to expect wait times of up to six hours. Queues during the next school half-terms are expected to hit levels not seen since summer 2020.
Meanwhile, Border Force officers are also expecting a surge in the number of travellers mixing from ‘red’, ‘amber’ and ‘green-list’ countries, sparking fears of a fresh COVID-19 wave.
The Immigration Services Union (ISU), which represents Border Force staff expects traveller numbers to start rising from Monday, 24 May as half-terms begin this week and the following week.
Staff should be deployed to ensure passengers have filled in their locator forms correctly union boss claims
Immigration Services Union s Lucy Moreton said checks at end of line are being carried out by border workers
Their training could be used to check documents at the front to speed up the long queues, she added
She warned that the current waits will only get worse from next week when holidaying Britons return home
Delays were yesterday blamed on not enough Border Force staff present to carry out the locator form checks
May 19th 2021, 8:17
Border Force officials have called on airlines and airports to deploy staff as coronavirus queue marshals to help reduce delays at passport control.
Lucy Moreton, professional officer at the Immigration Services Union which represents border staff, told The Times that airlines could help by deploying staff to help to check whether passengers in the queue had completed their locator forms correctly and booked the required coronavirus tests before they reached the front desks.
The newspaper said passengers faced queues of up to three hours after the ban on international travel was lifted on Monday – although there were also reports of arrivals passing through the airport quickly.
Portugal, the only major holiday zone on the list, will be the main focus for Brits, with Ryanair and EasyJet Plc alone adding more than 300,000 seats there since the U.K.âs May 7 announcement.
More than 15 U.K. airports including Manchester, where Scullion has booked are braced for a rush of passengers to hubs in Lisbon, Porto and Faro in the southern Algarve region, as well as the sub-tropical Portuguese island of Madeira.
âWeâve been desperate to get away,â said Luke Saunders, who along with four friends is flying EasyJet to Albufeira on the Algarveâs Atlantic coast on June 5. âWe waited for the green list to make the decision.â