The Home Secretary has admitted that the government may never know how many illegal immigrants entered the country during lax passport checks at UK borders. Theresa May told the Commons that senior officials at the UK Border Agency (UKBA) had taken risks with Britain's security and that the failures would be investigated fully.
In a rowdy session in the Commons Theresa May told MPs that a senior UKBA official, Brodie Clark, had relaxed the border checks without checking with the government first, although at the time the system of checking passports was undergoing a trial which meant that only certain flights and types of passengers were being subject to the fullest of checks.
The home secretary confirmed that Clark remained suspended, and revealed that two other officials within UKBA were also off work pending investigations. She said a number of investigations would now take place "because of the seriousness of these allegations."
She assured MPs that "in usual circumstances all checks would be carried out on all passengers, nobody would be waved through." But she insisted that the pilot scheme operating over the summer was designed to look at whether a more intelligence-led approach to passport checks would be more efficient.
Theresa May was flanked by David Cameron as she made her urgent statement to the Commons, while being barracked by Labour MPs. Responding for Labour, Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said she had been given reports that "the shredders are on, and there is a ban on internal emails" at UKBA.
Cooper lambasted the Home Secretary for cutting 6,500 staff at UKBA, including 1500 from the front-line. She demanded to know urgently how many convicted criminals had entered Britain because of the lapses.
"The truth is the home secretary does not know," Cooper told MPs. "She seems to be doing nothing to find out what the security risk might be. Instead of strengthening the checks year on year as all previous ministers did, the home secretary watered them down."
Theresa May came back by accusing Yvette Cooper of playing party politics. Amid noisy exchanges the home secretary claimed that the last government was planning to cut the UKBA's budget anyway.
Earlier Nick Clegg 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 at 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 Clarke 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".