The Home Office has started working on a project to support its planned introduction of electronic tracking systems at UK borders.

The eBorders programme is a long-term initiative to help combat crime, terrorism and illegal immigration by recording details of every arrival and departure.

The project is in its very early stages but the Home Office is holding informal discussions with suppliers about its 'Semaphore' scoping project.

'Semaphore will help inform the design of eBorders but at the present time no final decisions have been made about any aspect of it,' said a Home Office spokesman.

eBorders is being led by the Home Office but will include input from the Foreign Office's iVisa scheme, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, HM Customs & Excise, the Passport Service and the Home Office's own biometric identity card scheme.

'This is a cross-agency programme supported throughout the government and aimed at modernising and integrating the management of passenger information, including biometrics and IT, to expedite the movement of passengers while helping to safeguard the UK against serious and organised crime, terrorism and illegal immigration,' said the Home Office spokesman.

So far, dialogue with potential suppliers has focused on how to co-ordinate the multiple agencies involved, and how to link all the country's airports, seaports and Eurostar terminals with a real-time passenger checking system.

Potential costing and timescales for the main programme are not likely to be available until after Semaphore has filled in some of the blanks.

Plans already underway to include biometric information in passports and visas will feed into the eBorders scheme.

The Foreign Office's iVisa project aims to join up worldwide visa operations with UK immigration systems and includes the introduction of biometric visas.

The Passport Service is currently running an enrolment trial as a pre-cursor to the introduction of biometric passports.

And machine-readable biometric passports will be a crucial element of the eBorders scheme as information automatically recorded will allow law enforcers to be sure when a given individual arrived in or left the UK.