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You are probably like me and are shocked by the latest revelations today in many newspapers, of the apparent cover up of the Border Agency to hide the number of people who were let in during the summer under a secret relaxation of immigration controls.

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper is quoted as saying that 'the shredders are on and there is a ban on internal emails,' as she urged Theresa May to investigate attempts to conceal the scale of the fiasco.

Her claims came as the Home Secretary admitted that we will never know how many terrorists and criminals entered Britain in the latest borders blunder.

Mrs May made this rather alarming admission yesterday, when she tried to justify the relaxation of the controls that were supposed to be in place. She had in fact put in place a 'pilot scheme' to water down passport checks in July for Britons and other EU nations, withholding the information from Parliament.

Last night a damaging leaked document also revealed that the rule change was brought in to cut queues at airports, not for security reasons. Home Office sources also admitted Mrs May was kept informed about the original scheme.

The scandal is hugely embarrassing for the Tories, who campaigned at the election on a platform of reducing immigration to 'tens of thousands' a year, after it soared to more than a quarter of a million under Labour.

UK Border Agency boss Brodie Clark was suspended on Thursday after Mrs May was told a separate round of additional checks on foreigners from outside the EU against a 'watch list' had also been suspended at Calais as well as some Heathrow fingerprint checks.

However, last night the Public and Commercial Services Union - which represents hundreds of Border Agency officials - claimed the fingerprint checks were actually scrapped months before the pilot scheme was introduced.

Mrs May's critics, however, have still to produce 'smoking gun' evidence that she knew of Mr Clark's decision to further water down the checks last summer.

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