Home Office's cover-up on immigration figures continues

4.00.00pm UTC (GMT +0000) Tue 13th Nov 2007

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, is appearing before MPs this afternoon, over claims she tried to conceal the fact that 5,000 illegal immigrants wrongly cleared to work in security posts. Leaked emails showed that Ms Smith was told about the latest immigration fiasco as long ago as July. Instead of informing MPs or the public about the potential security risk caused by her department, she chose to keep the situation quiet, apparently planning to admit the embarrassing events only after an internal inquiry.

Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesperson 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. Perhaps if the Home Office was more worried about getting things right and less worried about spinning, these mistakes would not happen at all."