Yvette Cooper MP, shadow Home Secretary, responding to news that border control staff are being pulled off the frontline to help with the passport backlog, said:
“This Home Secretary is lurching from one crisis to another.
“Theresa May’s desperate decision to move staff off border security to the Passport Office for six weeks raises serious questions.
"What implications will this have for security and queues at our borders, especially after the bordersgate fiasco a few years ago? We already know that borders staff were complaining about shifts not being filled at Heathrow before these further reductions.
"Does the Home secretary anticipate it taking 6 weeks for the backlog at the Passport Office to be sorted?
"How many more people will have to cancel holidays, miss weddings and sit out of business meetings in this time?
"The Home secretary must today guarantee that removing staff from the Border Agency does not leave our borders unprotected, that unfilled shifts will be filled and that Ministers will act on warnings from officials.
“Does the Home Secretary have any kind of grip of what is going on at all?”
ENDS
Editor’s Notes