Ex-UKBA head Brodie Clark accuses May of ‘destroying’ his reputation

The former head of the UK Border Agency (UKBA) said he was “shattered” after his 40 years of service was “destroyed in two days”, largely due to the actions of the Home Secretary, the Home Affairs Select Committee (HASC) has heard.

Giving evidence to the HASC this week, Brodie Clark, who was suspended from his position as head of the UK Border Agency (UKBA) following accusations from the Home Secretary saying he relaxed border checks without ministerial approval, said he never relaxed any security measures. He contradicted what Theresa May told Parliament last week, adding that he is “no rogue officer” and “nothing could be further from the truth”.

Mr Clark said: “I introduced no additions to the Home Secretary’s trial, neither did I extend it or alter it in any way whatsoever. I was meticulous in ensuring that my top operational team and my senior port managers had complete clarity on the Home Secretary’s requirements.”

He added that over the first month of the trial, he reported weekly to the Home Secretary, as she required, and with each briefing offered a follow up meeting. He said there were no problems apart from “teething issues” and the pilot scheme delivered into the border business exactly as the Government had wished.

Last week, Mrs May told the HASC that Mr Clark would have to take responsibility for his “unauthorised actions” in relaxing border checks which had allowed an unknown number of people, who could pose a risk to the public, into the country.

Mr Clark was suspended from his position by Rob Whiteman, chief executive of the UKBA, but he told MPs that Mr Clark had been offered a retirement package with a “good reference”, which he accepted. However, the offer of retirement was subsequently withdrawn after the “seriousness” of the allegations came to light, according to Mr Whiteman. This was despite the claim that Mr Whiteman had encouraged Mr Clark to take up the offer in the first place.

Giving evidence to the same inquiry, Mr Whiteman contradicted the evidence Mr Clark had given just moments earlier, saying the former head of the UKBA told him that checks had been relaxed without ministerial approval.

“The role of a senior official is to advise ministers and implement their direction. It was absolutely clear to me that ministers wanted checks to be carried out and it was clear this did not happen and I think it was right for me to suspend Mr Clark under these circumstances.

“I’m clear in my mind that ministers were not aware that secure ID would not be checked, they were asked whether it should be checked and they said it should be and they were given instruction to that effect, but it wasn’t done,” said Mr Whiteman.

Although Mr Clark said he did not relax any security checks under the pilot scheme launched by the Home Office earlier this year, he did admit that there was certain guidance in place and “long-standing contingency arrangements” since 2007 which allowed staff at ports to relax certain checks at particularly busy times for safety reasons.

Mr Clark said: “The discussion has been confused by a conflation of two things – firstly, our long-standing Home Office policy on dealing with critical health and safety issues at ports, and secondly, the Home Secretary’s recently-introduced pilot on risk based activity to improve performance.

“They are quite simply, separate – one a pre-existing policy for the management of high risk safety issues, the other, a more improved approach to deploying staff skills to the highest risk activities. Eight million occasions of checking children against a security watch list produced only one spurious ‘hit’ – I would rather our staff were doing more productive work.”

However, Mr Whiteman said ministers were not aware of the previous guidance that allowed for some checks to be relaxed and said the former UKBA head had acted ingenuously and did not give ministers the full picture. Mr Clark though said he would be “surprised” if ministers did not know