France and the UK have agreed to increase staffing at border controls in response to warnings of travel chaos caused by new fingerprinting and facial recognition checks. Disruption at Channel crossings is expected to rise sharply next weekend at the start of the summer holiday season, with MPs saying there would be “utter chaos and miles of tailbacks” unless the EU’s entry-exit system (EES) is fixed or checks are suspended. The EU has rejected calls to suspend the system, but French officials have reportedly assured the UK transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, that more staff will be deployed to ease queues. On Sunday, Alexander announced £20m of UK government funding to help reduce delays. The Department for Transport said the money would increase capacity for processing vehicles, reduce wait times and ease congestion. Alexander said her French counterpart, Philippe Tabarot, had agreed that high levels of resourcing at border points were essential to enable smoother journeys for passengers over the summer period. French border police have offered to put more of its officers on UK soil to ensure passport booths are better staffed at Dover, Folkestone and London St Pancras station, from where the Eurostar departs, according to the Sunday Times. The exact level of any staffing commitment from France is unclear. A spokesperson for the DfT said: “Heidi Alexander and her French counterpart agreed that high levels of resourcing at border points are essential to enable smoother journeys for passengers over the summer period.” Alexander told Tabarot that biometric kiosks used to take fingerprints and facial scans were not working. The DfT pointed out that checks could be carried out on coach passengers and lorries, by French border police on UK soil. But instead they are having to manually register car passengers without biometrics while the French authorities wait for