Govt accused of immigrant security staff 'cover-up'
Monday, 12 November 2007 12:00 AM
The Conservative immigration minister has accused the government of trying to cover-up their failure to check the immigration status of thousands of potential security guards.
It was revealed yesterday the Security Industry Authority (SIA), which issues clearance for those working in the security industry, only verified applicants had no criminal records and not their immigration status, which is the responsibility of the employer.
As many as 5,000 illegal immigrants may have been cleared to work as security guards at airports and the Metropolitan Police and Whitehall.
The Home Office knew of the oversight in July, but it has only now become public - as the SIA tried to check previous applicants' statuses without raising alarm.
Shadow immigration minister Damian Green described the giving of licences to illegal immigrants as a "fiasco".
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "It's another new week, another new Home Office immigration fiasco.
"What is particularly extraordinary about this one is that the Home Office should have had advanced warning, because over a year ago they discovered that the immigration department itself was using illegal immigrants as cleaners."
Mr Green added: "It is clear that the government was hoping that they would get away with this without being found out.
"Of course, as ever, the cover-up is worse than the original mistake, and if they had just come clean in May or June or whenever they knew about it then it would probably have been less of a scandal than it is now."
He went on to say the legislation establishing the SIA was "pretty defective" and the government "clearly left this loophole in it".
Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg said public confidence in the government's handling of immigration would take "yet another hammering with this revelation".
He went on: "It is impossible to promote the merits of a fair and effective immigration system as long as the government mixes headline-grabbing populism with serial administrative incompetence."
SIA deputy chief executive Andy Drane told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"The employer is responsible for ensuring that anyone it employs has the legal right to work in the UK.
"Our procedures do include overseas criminal records checks for people that have been overseas in the past five years, so in that sense we have been carrying out those checks."
He added: "I do not think there will be very many working in sensitive sites... they could be door supervisors at nightclubs, they could be in shopping centres, they could be in factory estates and so on."
Mr Drane concluded: "It is a very diverse industry so I think it is important to say that airport security is separately regulated through the Department for Transport and not my organisation."
In October, the government was forced to admit it had issued inaccurate immigration figures into the public sphere.
Work and pensions secretary Peter Hain announced there are 300,000 additional immigrants working in the UK than it was previously believed, resulting in an embarrassing political backlash.
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