Labour call in border controls row

Home Secretary Theresa May has faced Labour demands to disclose whether any terror suspects are believed to have entered the country when border controls were secretly relaxed this summer.

Hundreds of thousands of people are thought to have entered Britain without being checked against the Home Office warnings index of suspected terrorists and illegal immigrants.

The head of the UK border force, Brodie Clark, has been suspended and an inquiry has been set up under John Vine, chief inspector of the UK Border Agency.

But shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper insisted today that urgent steps were needed to establish whether the public was at risk. In a letter to Mrs May, she said: "The first, and crucial, step must be to ascertain the implications of the lapses in security and passport checks.

"In particular we need to know whether anyone posing a threat to Britain's national security was allowed to enter the UK during the period where the decision of ministers to relax passport checks was taken further than the Home Office has said was ordered."

Ms Cooper said the public were "understandably appalled and shocked" at the reported failings at the UK Border Agency and urged that Mr Vine's inquiry be "all-encompassing", covering the Home Office, ministerial decision-making and cuts to staff numbers.

The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) has claimed that border controls were relaxed to keep queues down despite cuts to personnel. It also said the decision was authorised by ministers.

Mrs May is due to make a statement to the Commons on Monday. According to reports, border guards were told this summer not to bother checking biometric chips on the passports of citizens from outside the European Union to ensure they are not fraudsters.

The guards were also instructed not to bother checking fingerprints and other personal details against a Home Office database of terror suspects and illegal immigrants, it was claimed.

Sue Smith, of the PCS, blamed what she claimed had been a 10% reduction in border force staff. "The travelling public understandably want to have a fast and efficient service, and yet we are also under a reduced workforce," she said. "So, I think senior managers have seen this as a way to provide the public with what they want."