Nick Clegg has offered little support to Theresa May as the embattled home secretary prepares make a statement to parliament over border controls amid accusations by whistle blowers that relaxation of passport checks were sanctioned by ministers.
The deputy prime minister said on Monday lunchtime he had "lots of questions", adding "this is something that is of great concern."
The furore over the checks has led to the head of the UK border force, Brodie Clark's suspension, and an inquiry. May said during home office questions on Monday Clark had “authorised the wider relaxation of border controls without ministerial sanction".
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper demanded to know if the public had been put at risk.
"What the Home Office has also said is that those for non-EU arrivals were not authorised by ministers, but to be honest, we haven't heard from the Home Secretary or the Immigration Minister on this for four days, so we don't actually know what's really been going on, and what the risk to security, the risk to immigration checks actually is as a result of this", she told the BBC on Monday morning.
And the Immigration Services Union's Lucy Moreton said staff believed relaxed checks had been ordered by the Home Office.
“We were not aware that the minister didn’t know. As far as we were aware, as far as staff were aware, this had been ministerially sanctioned because it’s a requirement. We’re not allowed to make that decision ourselves to relax those controls - it is for the discretion of the minister only", she told the BBC.
Moreton alleged passport checks were relaxed over the summer for "at least half of each shift".