Jacqui Smith comes clean: Up to 11,000 illegal immigrants working in security jobs

More than 11,000 illegal immigrants were wrongly given jobs in the security industry - double the number first claimed by the Government, it emerged.

Despite the huge number of cases uncovered since Ministers learned of the scandal in April, there have been only 15 arrests.

The Home Office refused to say how many of this tiny number had been deported, indicating it could be a handful or even fewer.

The department originally indicated that 5,000 illegal immigrants had been cleared to work as security guards and door staff by the Security Industry Authority.

But, in an update to MPs yesterday, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said the true total would be far higher.

She said 6,653 illegal immigrants with no right to work have been positively identified. A further 4,447 cases have been unearthed where immigration officials strongly suspect the person has no right to work in Britain.

That makes a total of 11,100 who should not have be given SIA licences. They represent one in every four non-EU citizens cleared to work in the UK.

The scandal stems from an enforcement operation in April this year which discovered 44 staff working at a security company who did not have the right to work in the UK.

Of these, 12 had been subcontracted to a company that provided staff to guard locations under Metropolitan Police contracts. Others were employed at ports and airports.

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Ministers then ordered a trawl of all people from outside the EU who were granted licences in the wake of the revelations, but the result was only made public last month.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis gave Miss Smith - already under pressure because of the police funding row - a mauling when she updated MPs yesterday.

She was battered with a list of questions - many of which she ducked, including the number of illegal immigrant guards to have actually been deported. She said only that 409 licences had been revoked and more than 10,000 letters "instituting revocation" had been sent.

Miss Smith also declined to say if any of her staff had informed Downing Street about the fiasco, saying only that she had not personally told Gordon Brown.

Mr Davis taunted the Home Secretary: "Does she accept that this was a massive policy failure by her department? Does she accept that the SIA led the industry to believe that it checked immigration status?

"The SIA held these documents for up to three months. In some cases, they were presumably forgeries. How was the Security Industry Authority able to miss up to 11,000 forgeries?

"Who is responsible for this failure? And will there now be prosecutions in every case of providing forged documents?"

He added: "The application form provides for the applicant to give a National Insurance number. In how many cases was an illegal immigrant given a National Insurance Number?"

A Home Office spokesman said: "Already the Border and Immigration Agency has carried out 328 intelligence-led investigations and as a result carried out 101 enforcement operations.

"The Agency plans to carry out another 400 enforcement operations by the end of January."

The Home Secretary promised in future to insist the SIA ask job applicants to declare on the form they are here legally - a question not currently asked.