Airline passengers will have no right to refuse to go through a full-body search scanner when they are introduced at Heathrow airport next week, ministers have confirmed.
The option of having a full-body pat-down search instead, which is offered to passengers at US airports, will not be available despite warnings from the government’s equality and human rights commission that the scanners, which reveal naked bodies, breach privacy rules under the Human Rights Act.
Transport Minister, Paul Clark, told MPs there would be a random selection of passengers to go through the new scanners at UK airports and their introduction would be followed later this year by extra “trace” scanners which can detect liquid explosives. A draft code of practice covering privacy and health issues is being discussed in Whitehall.
He dealt with concerns raised by the Commons home affairs select committee about the ability of airports abroad to upgrade their security to similar levels by indicating that extra support and help was under discussion.
Lord West, the counter-terrorism minister, also told the MPs that the government had firmly ruled out the introduction of “religious or ethnic profiling” into transport security.
Instead, he said that airport security staff were being trained in “behavioral profiling” which meant spotting passengers who had only paid cash, were traveling with only a book for luggage on a long-haul flight or were behaving erratically at the airport.
He said the decision to raise the terror threat level to “severe” – meaning an attack was highly likely but not imminent – had been taken by security service officials on the joint terrorism analysis center last Friday.
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