The Home Office still hasn’t cleared up its border issues

Remember Theresa May’s border skirmish against Brodie Clark back in November? This morning the Home Affairs Select Committee published their report into the whole affair. Ideally it would have cleared up some of the confusions over who was responsible for waiving various security checks at our borders last summer, and whether they were right to do so — but it doesn’t really manage it.

This is not really the fault of the committee: some of the crucial questions they put to the Home Office remain unanswered, and key documents have not been released to them. For example, Mr Clark claims he raised the issue of the ‘health and safety’ waivers in a presentation to the Border Agency strategy board in December 2010, but other senior officials claim he mentioned it only briefly in passing. This is vital in assessing whether he was a ‘rogue official’ or a scapegoat, and the Home Office could have cleared it up by simply releasing the relevant slide from the presentation, or the minutes — but they have declined to do so.