By Danny Shaw Home affairs correspondent, BBC News A report has found failings in the government's £500m "e-borders" scheme to gather information on passenger movements in and out of the UK.
The independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, John Vine, found that fewer than two-thirds of passenger movements were covered.
And almost 650,000 records relating to smuggling had been deleted, he found.
The Home Office said UK border technology was the most advanced in Europe but agreed there was more to do.
The aim of the e-borders programme, devised by the Home Office in 2003, was to improve immigration controls by collecting advanced passenger information (API) on every scheduled inbound and outbound journey to and from the UK.
That would enable staff to "export the border" - preventing passengers from travelling where this was considered a threat to the UK.
A target was set to collect data on at least 95% of passenger movements by December 2010 but, at the time of the inspection last year, only 65% were being recorded.
The report, parts of which are deleted from the public version, said: "We found that the e-borders programme had failed to deliver the planned increases in API and this had a detrimental impact on the delivery of all anticipated benefits."
It blamed legal difficulties surrounding the collection of API on European flights and a failure to test the e-borders concept on train and sea routes.
What are e-borders?
- Tony Blair launched the £1.2bn e-borders programme in 2003
- It was originally meant to collect details from passenger lists of all people entering and leaving the UK
- All flights from outside the EU are now part of e-borders
- Ports and railway stations are due to follow by 2014
- EU flights are meant to be covered by 2015
- But that will depend on reaching voluntary agreements with other nations - and solving commercial problems
- The US firm handed a £750m contract by Labour to deliver e-borders, Raytheon, was fired by the coalition in 2010 for "extremely disappointing" performance
- The company is seeking £500m in damages from the government
- The e-borders contract was split in two with IBM and Serco given the job of getting a system in place at nine airports before the Olympics
- The contract for the post-Olympics element of the programme - the biggest part of it - has yet to be awarded
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Vine said people with an alert against their name for "terrorist sympathy or activity" should be met at airport arrivals gates by border staff, but that was only being done at Heathrow among Britain's airports.
He also said the e-Borders system was supposed to stop people flying to the UK if they had previously been excluded or deported from the country, but "not one person" had been stopped under that system.
This method of stopping people flying when they tried to check in at foreign airports was supposed to be a "key benefit" of e-Borders, Mr Vine added.
The Home Office said it now carried out advance checks on 78% of those flying to Britain and required API from everyone coming from outside the EU.
Immigration Minister Mark Harper said: "We have the best coverage of any country in Europe but we are working to improve our coverage further.
"We will take the findings of the independent inspector into account as we continue to develop our API policies and coverage."
Inspectors found that the data set was not extensive enough for the e-borders programme to meet another objective - to "count in and out" all foreign national passengers - and that this wouldn't be possible until 2018 at the earliest.
The report, which contains 14 recommendations, also criticised the "poor quality" of data on watch lists used by the e-borders system to alert border staff of criminals, terrorists and other suspects.
It said this created inefficiencies and a greater volume of work which officials were unable to manage.
"This, coupled with a policy of prioritising immigration work over customs work, resulted in the deletion... of over 649,000 records concerning potential drug and tobacco smuggling, over a 10-month period," the report said.
It said the deletions had a "significant impact on the ability of staff at the border to seize prohibited and restricted goods and deal with those responsible."
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End Quote Chief inspector of borders and immigration John VineThe Home Office should now define clearly what the aims of the e-borders programme are ahead of the new procurement exercise, and be transparent about what e-borders will deliver and by when"
However, the Home Office played down the importance of the information that had been deleted, saying that anyone who had committed a serious offence would already be on a separate "warnings index" and intercepted on arrival.
Officials said the details that had been removed were potential matches between two databases, less than 1% of which would have prompted an alert.
Among a series of positive findings, inspectors said information gathered as a result of the e-borders scheme had resulted in the arrest of thousands of people for offences including murder and rape.
Immigration caseworkers were able to conduct travel history searches using the data and identify people who had left the UK after being ordered to do so.
Mr Vine said he was pleased that the e-borders "high-profile alerts" system was being used to intercept high-risk individuals at the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport - but pointed out that this was not happening at any other port or airport.
He suggested that a fundamental re-think was needed for the programme, which, it is estimated, will cost £536m by 2015.
Mr Vine said: "The Home Office should now define clearly what the aims of the e-borders programme are ahead of the new procurement exercise, and be transparent about what e-borders will deliver and by when."
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