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Security Industry Authority

I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of her statement. When the current Prime Minister became leader of the Labour party he heralded, in his words,"““a different type of politics—a more open and honest dialogue: frank about problems, candid about dilemmas, never losing touch with the concerns of people.””" Faced with one of her first tests, why was the Home Secretary not frank and candid about the 5,000 illegal workers licensed to work in sensitive security posts in this country? She has now admitted to the House that she was first told on 12 July, but she instructed officials that the matter was—I quote from her e-mails—"““not ready for public announcement””." There are two key issues. Has the Home Secretary dealt effectively with the original crisis and has she been open and honest with the public? The response of the Home Office so far has been blunder, panic and cover-up: blunder when it set up the Security Industry Authority and did not ask it automatically to check when granting security licences to potentially illegal workers; panic when it was first told about that in April; and cover-up when it decided not to tell the public because, according to one of the Home Secretary's leaked e-mails, she did not think"““the lines to take that we currently have are good enough for Press Office or Ministers””." She says that that was because the analysis of the issue was not complete. Let us be clear about this. The Government have known about the problem since April. She says that they had not completed the analysis by August. It is now November. The House has been sitting since early October. Is this really the first opportunity that she has had to tell the House about the issue? Is she telling the House that it had nothing to do with the advice that she was given that if the media became aware of the issue, they would be likely to focus on the various ““negative stories”” associated with SIA licences? I have a number of specific questions for the Home Secretary; I hope that she will answer each of them. Can she confirm that 11 illegal workers were guarding Metropolitan police buildings? In the case to which she referred of the illegal worker guarding the site where the Prime Minister's car was parked, how can she, or indeed the Met, be sure that there was no actual or potential security threat? How many more illegal workers were guarding Government buildings or other critical national infrastructure? Can she guarantee that no illegal worker is still guarding any Government, police or military building, or any other part of our critical national infrastructure today? Of the 5,000 illegal workers identified, how many have been caught? How many have been removed from the country? Given the Home Secretary's stance on employers, how many employers have been prosecuted because of these discoveries? Does the Border and Immigration Agency now notify the SIA immediately when an SIA licence holder's work permit expires? If not, why not? And why has the Home Secretary not made proposals to place a statutory duty on the SIA to check immigration status before awarding a licence, given the Home Office position that"““an SIA licence is seen as a demonstration that the holder is a fit and proper person to work in a position of trust within the security industry””?" The Home Secretary no doubt regrets not making this statement some time ago. The Prime Minister spoke of frank and candid government yet, in one of her first actions as Home Secretary, the right hon. Lady put avoiding political embarrassment ahead of solving the problem and informing the public. That is neither frank nor candid.