BRITAIN:Britain's home secretary has defended her decision not to disclose that some 5,000 illegal immigrants were cleared to work in security jobs amid Conservative charges of "blunder, panic and cover-up" at the home office.
In a statement to MPs yesterday Jacqui Smith insisted her priority had been to establish the scale of the problem and ensure "robust action" was taken rather than to place "incomplete and potentially misleading information" in the public domain when told of the problem in July.
However, her Commons statement appeared to have been forced by the Daily Mail's disclosure of documents seeming to show she accepted official advice favouring a news blackout to avoid damaging headlines.
These included an e-mail from her private secretary recording: "she agrees . . . this is not ready for public announcement yet. She did not think the lines we have are good enough for press office or ministers to use to explain the situation."
This, and subsequent memos voicing concern "any announcement about illegal migrant workers and SIA (Security Industry Authority) licenses would not be presented by the media as a positive story", prompted Tory claims of a return to "spin" despite prime minister Gordon Brown's promise of "a different type of politics".
Shadow home secretary David Davis said Ms Smith had been "neither frank nor candid" in keeping with the style of government promised by Mr Brown. He accused her of putting "avoiding political embarrassment ahead of solving the problem and informing the public".
Press reports since the weekend have revealed that some of the illegal immigrants had been cleared to guard Metropolitan Police buildings, ports and airports, while one worker ended up guarding the site where Mr Brown's car was parked.
The SIA, which reports to the home office, has said it was not its role to check the immigration status of foreign workers seeking clearance. Ms Smith said it was the legal duty of all employers to ensure their employees were entitled to work in the UK.
Ms Smith also confirmed she had not advised the prime minister of the problem, insisting "there was no fiasco, there was no blunder", only "strengthened action" to improve the system.
Mr Brown's spokesman said he had spoken to Ms Smith yesterday, been satisfied with her explanation and that she retained his full confidence. However, Liberal Democrat leadership contender Nick Clegg said: "the new home secretary seems to have learnt nothing from the failures of her predecessors. When the home office makes a mistake like this it must come clean immediately, own up and start the process of sorting out the mess. It is completely unacceptable that their first instinct was to start a cover-up."
Conservative leader David Cameron said the leaked e-mails indicated no announcement was made in July "because this was going to look bad for the government". Even allowing for delay to establish the facts, Tories said Ms Smith should have been able to brief the Commons in October.