THE home secretary, Jacqui Smith, has privately indicated that she fears for her political future, amid Tory claims that she is “out of her depth” and speculation among MPs that Gordon Brown may want to replace her.

People who work closely with Smith are now openly casting doubt on her track record and her chances of surviving an expected summer cabinet reshuffle.

Smith’s standing among her own supporters was undermined last week by the row over her expenses claims. By claiming that her main residence is a bedroom in a house she shares with her sister in London, she has managed to draw £116,000 to help cover the costs of her constituency home in the West Midlands.

However, it is Smith’s apparent failure to make an impact on the law and order agenda and allegations that she has backtracked on a flagship immigration policy that are making her increasingly vulnerable to personal attacks.

A senior Home Office insider who works with Smith said many officials had privately expressed more confidence in the abilities of Tony McNulty, her former deputy, and Vernon Coaker, the well-regarded a cornerstone of the government’s strategy to strengthen the UK’s borders against crime, illegal immigration and terrorism. However, it has been reduced to about a quarter of its original size as it goes through parliament.

Grayling said key policies to impose financial penalties on firms that employed illegal immigrants and tough controls on airlines that brought them in had been ditched. A plan to broaden the category of foreign criminals who could be deported had also been quietly dropped.

A close aide denied that Smith had expressed concerns about losing her cabinet job or that she was backtracking on key policies. “As far as she’s concerned, the prime minister decides her future, not whispers from the Tories. She’s pretty robust. Anything like this just makes her more determined to get on with her job.”

Grayling’s personal attack marks a significant development in Tory tactics. Both David Davis and Dominic Grieve, his predecessors as shadow home secretary, stopped short of openly criticising her character and political abilities.

Smith, the MP for Redditch, is especially vulnerable as a 3% swing could overturn her 2,716 majority, the narrowest of any Labour cabinet minister. police and security minister. “She’s not very good,” said the insider. “She doesn’t absorb briefs very well. She’s not regarded as a brilliant minister. Of course she’s very nice and she’s popular.

“The gossip is that, if there is a major reshuffle, then she might end up in the department of left-handed affairs. She’s a lightweight.”

Another senior official who reports to Smith said: “She has certainly been concerned about this. She picks up the same gossip as everyone else.”

This weekend the Tories openly accused Smith of lacking the political skills for the job. Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, said: “Jacqui Smith’s biggest problem is that there seems to be a general lack of confidence in her ability to do the job.

“She’s abandoning all of her flagship policies and seems to have little idea what to do about the mounting crime and law and order challenge we face. She looks like a home secretary who is completely out of her depth.”

Grayling’s office released a detailed analysis of the government’s immigration bill, which they said had been neutered for fear of causing political controversy.

The bill was trumpeted by Brown and Smith last year as of the CBI who was sent to the Lords by Brown on being made a minister in 2007.

Jones, who resigned after 16 months, will attack Labour for failing to find jobs for the newly unemployed in a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary. He said yesterday he was “frustrated and alarmed” by what he had discovered.

“We keep hearing about these initiatives coming out of the government but are they making any difference on the ground?” he said. “I can’t understand why this government, which is spending billions on the banks, doesn’t spend a bit of money keeping the skilled workforce in work.”

He criticised JobCentre Plus, which is supposed to give personalised help to the jobless, saying: “Frankly, it is not fit for purpose.” Frank Field, the former Labour welfare minister, yesterday urged ministers to close down part of the highly skilled migrants programme which allows 50,000 professionals from outside the European Union to take top jobs in the City. Up to 18,000 are allowed to look for work “on spec”.

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