Senior officer: No-deal Brexit would harm UK security

LONDON

A no-deal Brexit would put the U.K.’s national security and safety at great risk, and no amount of planning or preparation could avert such a risk, a senior counter-terrorism official has said on Wednesday.

Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard, Neil Basu, said that if the U.K. were to leave the EU without a deal, vital information and tools used in the fight against crime and terrorism would be lost with no better alternatives to replace them.

"We can make them [the damaging effects] less, but they would be slower systems. Those systems and tools were developed in the EU for very good reason. They were very good. We had just signed up to biometric sharing” Basu said in an interview with the Guardian newspaper adding that "In a no deal we’d lose all that. We’d have to renegotiate it," said Basu.

"We have done a lot of contingency planning to put things in place. But there are some things you can’t put in place. So there is no contingency planning for not being given passenger name records," the counter-terror chief said.

According to Basu, the lack of individual name records, especially on those who are criminals and serious offenders, would create new risks for security officials as they would lack the tools to register and identify who would be entering the country. However, as an EU member state, that information is currently readily available to U.K. law enforcement.

"With my police leadership hat on there would still be deep concern. There would be some damage to our safety. I can’t put a scale on that," Basu added.

The assistant commissioner urged the government to negotiate an agreement that mirrors the current agreement we have as an EU member state so it would give British security agencies continued access to all the vital information the EU has shared with the U.K. over the past decades.

Under a no-deal Brexit, the U.K. would lose access to shared biometric sharing with the EU and other vital security cooperation matters. As such, the U.K. would have to rely on Interpol alerts and the 1957 European convention on extradition which would take years for suspect to be returned instead of the current six weeks under EU warrants.

On Tuesday, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster Michael Gove accused the EU of refusing to negotiate a new Brexit deal and forcing the U.K. to leave without a deal. Gove repeated prime minister Boris Johnson’s position that the only way a new deal could be negotiated was if Brussels re-opened Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement and removed the Irish backstop.

In the two weeks since Johnson was anointed prime minister, the prospect of a no-deal Brexit has markedly risen. Johnson said he preferred to leave the EU with an agreement but that a new withdrawal deal must not include the Irish backstop, and that the U.K. would leave the EU on Oct. 31 with or without an agreement.

The EU has repeatedly stated that the withdrawal agreement signed by Johnson’s predecessor would not be re-opened for negotiation and that the Irish backstop was an insurance policy that Brussels could not get rid off. Johnson has said that a no-deal Brexit would be the fault of the EU.

The U.K. is scheduled to leave the EU on Oct. 31.