UK border officials and representatives of the Immigration Services Union have argued that Brexit changed the information available to officers checking people with criminal histories elsewhere in Europe.
Before Brexit, UK authorities had access to EU systems including the Schengen Information System. The post-Brexit arrangements are different, and union representatives have said that some real-time alerts and biometric information are harder to access than before.
Why the data gap matters
The issue became more visible after reporting identified convicted people smugglers from EU countries living in Britain. Lucy Moreton of the Immigration Services Union argued that current checks can miss people whose biometric or criminal records are held outside UK systems.
This does not mean the UK has no security cooperation with European partners. Britain continues to use international policing channels and bilateral or negotiated arrangements. The problem is more specific: leaving certain EU databases changed the speed and completeness with which some information can be checked.
A narrower claim is more accurate
The earlier version of this article implied that post-Brexit enforcement had broadly fallen back to manual verification and mixed the subject with unrelated business and public-service issues. That overstated the evidence. The important question is which databases are available, what information they contain and how quickly officers can obtain equivalent data through other channels.
Border security debates are politically charged, so claims about the effect of Brexit should be tied to specific systems and documented cases rather than broad conclusions about immigration as a whole.
