Jacqui Smith calm under pressure

Last Modified: 13 Nov 2007
By: Gary Gibbon

The Home Secretary told the prime minister the full details of a mounting embarrassment she'd been sitting on since taking office in July.

Thousands of non-Europeans working in the security industry, it's now known, are illegal immigrants.

Blunder, panic and cover-up' taunted the Conservatives as the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith defended her decision not to publicise the employment of thousands of illegal immigrants in the security industry.

Ms Smith told MPs ministers had taken 'robust action', but she'd wanted to find out the full scale of the problem before putting out any information.

However, to jeers from the opposition benches, she confirmed that she'd been told about the problem in July, months before any details became public.

'My approach was that the responsible thing to do was to establish the full nature and scale of the problem and take appropriate action to deal with it.'
Jacqui Smith

She told the Commons that she and her department had done nothing wrong.

The Home Secretary told the Commons it was the security industry not the government that was by law required to check whether immigrants applying for jobs were here legally.

Prosecutions were expected for security firms who'd been caught employing illegal immigrants. All this she said was a sign that she was on top of the job.

The Conservatives said she was only telling the Commons anything because of a leaked e-mail and had been caught trying to cover-up bad news.

The Home Secretary said she was waiting before telling MPs and the public about the illegal immigration problem in the security industry until the scale of the problem had been properly measured.

Officials said the home office didn't want to repeat the painful experiences of the past when it had announced bad news only to find later that the figures were worse than it had thought.

First estimates by the government's security industry authority suggested only 1 per cent of non-European immigrants working the security industry were doing so illegally.

The latest estimate by another arm of government, the border and immigration agency, suggests the figure could actually be one in four non-Europeans working in the security industry are illegal immigrants. The govt says prosecutions for the companies responsible will follow, but meanwhile its the government itself that will be taking the flack for an illegal working phenomenon that has taken off under their noses.