Embassy staff furious at Home Office over scale of East European visa scandal

NINE of out ten immigrants from Eastern Europe should never have been given visas to enter Britain and seek work, a damning report has found. An investigation by a government watchdog found that British embassy officials in Romania and Bulgaria were appalled by a Home Office decision to admit thousands of immigrants, many of whom could not speak English and had no work skills. They told a team from the National Audit Office (NAO) that, if their tough standards for approving visas had been used, "they would have issued visas to less than 10 per cent of the applicants that did actually receive them". Despite the findings, the government insisted last night that the flood of Eastern Europeans into Britain which had been predicted in the run-up to European Union enlargement has not materialised. Des Browne, the immigration minister, in his first official comment on the issue since eight former Communist states joined the EU, said: "Early indications are that there has not been a ‘flood’ of new entrants and the majority of those who have registered were already in the UK before 1 May." However, the NAO’s findings will come as a blow to the Home Office, which is still trying to recover from the row over its slack immigration policy for Eastern European applicants that cost Beverley Hughes her job. The former immigration minister was forced to resign after a civil service whistle blower revealed how Romanian applicants, including a one-legged roof tiler, had been granted work visas by the Home Office. The controversy deepened last night after the NAO confirmed it had been urged by Home Office officials to delay the timing of its report from yesterday until today, to coincide with the Home Office’s internal investigation.