Yesterday it was disclosed that James Dawute, 53, the chief immigration officer who allegedly offered to speed up a Zimbabwean teenager’s asylum claim in return for sexual favours, was given British citizenship despite being an illegal overstayer.

Mr Dawute, who has been suspended from his job at Lunar House, in Croydon, arrived legally in the 1980s as a visitor but overstayed the terms of his entry into the country. He was later given British citizenship.

Mr Dawute joined the Immigration Service in 2002. In 2004 new rules were introduced stipulating that a detailed appraisal of an applicant’s immigration history be undertaken before people were given jobs in the immigration and nationality directorate.

The revelation came only hours after Mr Reid had had to issue a humiliating apology yesterday after figures that he gave to MPs on the Home Office foreign prisoners’ fiasco proved to be wrong. Just over 24 hours after he told MPs that no figure he had been given since becoming Home Secretary had survived without revision, Mr Reid had to admit that the numbers he had given them were wrong.

The Home Secretary had told MPs on the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee that four murderers and twenty-three other serious offenders released without being considered for deportation were in jail. Shortly after disclosing the information, Mr Reid was informed by officials that one of the murderers, a rapist and a child sex offender had been released on bail by the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal. Eight other offenders had been bailed, including four in the more serious category.

Mr Reid was said to be furious at the latest failings by the Immigration and Nationality Directorate. One senior civil servant in the directorate has been sent home and will not be back at work until a full inquiry has been carried out.

Plans to “change significantly” the duties of another senior official in the directorate had been “advanced”, Mr Reid said in letters of apology to John Denham, chairman of the select committee, and the Speaker of the House of Commons.

It is understood that officials had the information days ago, but it was not given to Mr Reid despite a series of meetings at which the Home Secretary sought to get the correct facts on the foreign national prisoner scandal. The letters said that bail hearings had taken place over the past ten days — meaning that they happened since the scandal emerged and even after Mr Reid’s predecessor, Charles Clarke, was dismissed.

More bail hearings are due in the coming days, he added.

“You will recall that I said . . . that caution should be attached to all of the information which I had been given to provide to the committee,” he wrote to Mr Denham.

“As if to confirm that statement, I am afraid that I have to write to you to correct information that I was supplied with in respect of the number of offenders currently detained.

“To be put in a position where information was wrongly given to your committee — in spite of the caveats that I put around that information — is not acceptable and I apologise to you and your committee.”

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