More than 9,000 illegal immigrants could have been cleared to work in the private security industry, some of them guarding sensitive Whitehall locations and some even under Metropolitan Police contracts, it emerged last night.

The full scale of the potential risk from the failure of security firms to carry out proper checks on their employees surfaced as Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, fought off claims that she had engaged in a “cover-up” of the problem when the information became known to her in July.

In a combative Commons performance she said that she made no apology for being the sort of minister whose first reaction was not what she should say about an issue but what she should do about it. Her priority had been to establish the full scale of the problem and to take robust action. She had not told the Prime Minister at the time because there had been no blunder, no system failure in the Home Office, and she had embarked on action to strengthen procedures.

At the same time, however, it emerged that the Border and Immigration Agency is expected to begin a wave of prosecutions against employers who hired illegal workers in breach of their legal obligations. They could face fines of up to £5,000 for every illegal worker. One illegal immigrant worked for the London police guarding a garage where the Prime Minister’s official car is taken for repairs.

Expert View

Jacqui Smith is learning that difficulties buried in the basement of the Home Office have the toxicity to damage and even destroy political careers

Richard Ford, Home Correspondent

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Whitehall documents confirming that Ms Smith had been briefed on the scale of the problem were leaked yesterday by the Tories, prompting accusations that she had put “spin” before public safety and had been guilty of “blunder, panic and cover-up”.

She told MPs that she had not been ready to go public on the problem because the analysis of the issue was not complete. Her priority had been to establish the full nature of the problem “rather than immediately to put incomplete and potentially misleading information into the public domain”.

Figures given by the Home Secretary to the Commons suggested, however, that the numbers of illegal workers licensed to work in security could be much higher than the 5,000 that has been cited so far.

Checks have started on the 40,000 workers from outside the EU who have been granted permission to work. Of the 6,000 checked so far by the BIA, 77 per cent have been shown to have the right to work, leaving as many as 23 per cent who may not have had the right to work. If that rate applied across the 40,000 there would be 9,200 illegal workers.

Ms Smith failed to answer questions about how many of the illegal workers had been found, how many had been deported and whether any employer hiring them had been prosecuted. She also failed to reply to a question on how many had been found guarding government buildings or other parts of the critical national infrastructure.

Immigration sources said that no order had been issued urging them to try to find illegal workers and that if any such order were issued, it would not receive the highest priority as the workers did not have criminal convictions.

The splitting of the department into a Home Office focused on counterter-rorism and a separate Ministry of Justice was seen by senior officials as an opportunity to rid it of its reputation for poor management and crisis.

The department remains sensitive about the issue of foreign nationals, immigration and illegal working. Only a few weeks ago it deliberately made no announcement that the package of support for foreign national prisoners wishing to return home had been almost doubled to £1,500. The information was leaked to The Times and the Home Office explanation for not formally announcing the new figure was that it was simply a time-limited enhancement of an existing scheme.

Ms Smith disclosed that concerns were first raised in April by the BIA, after it found 44 illegals working for a security company, including 12 who were guarding locations for the Metropolitan Police. The leaked e-mails make clear that the Home Office was anxious to avoid further damaging publicity. An August 9 e-mail from a private secretary, Mark Williams, said that she agreed that the issue was “not ready for public announcement” as she did not think the available information was “good enough for press office or ministers to use to explain the situation”.

Eleven days later, a report to Ms Smith from the Home Office’s Policing Policy and Operations Directorate said: “Press Office continues to recommend strongly that no public announcement is made . . . Any announcement about illegal migrant workers and SIA licences would not be presented by the media as a positive story.”

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