Mary Dejevsky: I'm not alone in objecting to fast-tracking

Forgive me for feeling a bit miffed, but could it be time to patent ideas? Six years ago – yes, six – I contributed a polemic to the website openDemocracy.net, inveighing against the principle of fast-tracking passengers at airports and other border controls. It wasn't easy to persuade the editors to publish it; they weren't as convinced as I was that this iniquitous development was a matter of ethics and democracy, but eventually they agreed.

My argument was that controlling the borders is a central responsibility of the state, and that in a democracy everyone should be treated the same. I also objected that one (paying or privileged) person's fast-track was another (poorer, no less hard-pressed) person's longer wait. I felt that queue-jumping into your own or someone else's country should not be something that money can buy – and I still don't.

Now, the ethics guru, Harvard professor and 2009 BBC Reith lecturer Michael Sandel has highlighted the pros and (mostly) cons of fast-tracking at airport and border controls in his new book, What Money Can't Buy. And suddenly it's being treated as a serious issue – helped along, of course, by the recent complaints about three-hour queues at Heathrow. Arguably, the least objectionable form of fast-tracking is at Luton airport, where last summer a mere £5 allowed you to bypass a veritable flood of humanity. At Heathrow, as it emerged during the latest fracas, you can pay £1,800 for what amounts to a VIP concierge service (for six passengers), while similar privileges come with your ticket at many airports, if you are travelling business or first class. (I wrote my 2006 broadside after a rare business-class trip, that had sped me blissfully past queues.) My – critical – interest in fast-tracking prompted more thoughts about the recent protests. While disgruntled border staff, worried about job cuts and changing shift patterns, were clearly making a meal of passengers' discontent for their own purposes, might the increase in complaints also reflect the fact that businesses are making more employees, used to the high life, travel economy? And how many people were staffing fast-track, while everyone else was waiting? It's not hard to conclude that, if the rich or privileged can buy their way out of inconvenience, not only are high-profile complaints minimised, but conditions for the majority never improve. My bottom line is that it's fine for passengers to decide how much they are prepared to pay for their travel tickets and make their compromises accordingly. It's not fine for the airlines' class system to be replicated by the institutions of state. As I wrote in 2006: "Welcome to Britain, where it would appear, there are now two classes of citizens. Those who are fast-tracked and those who must wait." All those years on, nothing has changed. If anything, the two tiers are even further apart.