Immigration Minister quits

Beverley Hughes resigned today after a memo showed she misled the public over the immigration fraud scandal.

The Immigration Minister was trapped by official papers which revealed she was warned a year ago about bogus visa claims.

She quit at 8.15 during an emotional meeting with Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street.

Ms Hughes's downfall began on Monday evening when the story first broke that diplomats in Romania and Bulgaria were worried about organised criminals running visa rackets. In a BBC Newsnight interview a few hours later Ms Hughes, 54, flatly denied knowing anything about their worries.

She dismissed the idea, saying: "This is the first time anybody except David Davis (the shadow home secretary) has heard about these allegations." Soon afterwards, she was contacted by Labour's deputy chief whip Bob

Ainsworth - a former Home Office minister - who reminded her he sent her a two-page memo on 4 March last year detailing some of the same concerns and urging action.

He sent it after paying an official visit to the embassies in Bucharest and Sofia in February where he heard first hand their worries about bogus applications being rubber-stamped by immigration officials in Britain.

Mr Ainsworth, whose job is to keep order among MPs, unwittingly became a giantkiller as the implications of his alert sank in. Ms Hughes asked her officials to search for the

paperwork and they uncovered both Mr Ainsworth's memo and - damningly - two separate memos from Ms Hughes replying to him.

In a personal statement to MPs this afternoon Ms Hughes said she never intended to mislead. She said she quit because ministers were under a "special obligation" to be accurate in their statements.

The crisis was threatening to escalate dramatically this afternoon. No 10 refused to say when Home Secretary David Blunkett was told about the Ainsworth intervention or even which day Mr Ainsworth made his phone call - leaving open the question of whether Mr Blunkett knew about it before he defended Ms Hughes on Tuesday.

Tories were scouring his speeches The cold silence from Downing Street on the question was interpreted as fear that one of the Prime Minister's most senior Cabinet allies could become vulnerable.

The "smoking gun" for Mr Blunkett could be a comment he shouted out during exchanges in the Commons yesterday. He yelled "we didn't know" while Mr Blair was being attacked by Michael Howard.

The belief among MPs was that he should have known by then that Ms Hughes had, indeed, known all about it.

Mr Blunkett, who championed her career, said the resignation left him "deeply saddened." Ms Hughes will be replaced by Des Browne, a minister in Work and Pensions.

Steve Moxon, the Home Office whistleblower at the Sheffield visa office whose allegations triggered the row, said today: "I feel vindicated." He added: "I can't understand why she went to all the trouble of defending herself only to resign."

The exchange of memos between Ms Hughes and Mr Ainsworth left her position untenable. Former union shop steward Mr Ainsworth wrote: "During my visit to Romania and Bulgaria, both posts raised with me claims of abuse of immigration arrangements."

He said that applicants were submitting identical visa applications, written by UKbased solicitors - one of the key allegations made this week by the British Consul in Bucharest James Cameron.

Mr Ainsworth added that diplomats were dismayed when they highlighted apparently bogus applications, only to see them approved by the Home Office.

He wrote: "Posts are understandably demoralised by having their recommendations routinely overturned which they see as a weakening of the immigration control in cases which do not need to be conceded."

Mr Ainsworth also warned that "a number of Bulgarian criminals" had slipped into the UK and were living here despite appeals from the authorities not to give them visas.

Ms Hughes wrote back to him on 17 March confirming she would raise the "important issues" with the Immigration and Nationality Department (IND). Then on 10 April she wrote to him again saying she had held discussions on the issue with officials and was "aware of concerns... about possible abuse of the ECAA ( European Community Association Agreements) arrangements". She appeared to think no immediate action was necessary and pointed out that applications could not be turned down without evidence.

She concluded: "Thank you once again for bringing these issues to my attention."

Mr Ainsworth, whose job as deputy chief whip is to keep order among MPs, unwittingly became a giantkiller as the implications of his alert to Ms Hughes sank in.

Downing Street would not say when Ms Hughes told Mr Blunkett or Mr Blair about the damning letters.

The three met yesterday afternoon after Prime Minister's Questions for a pre-arranged meeting on immigration and asylum issues at which she admitted her position was untenable and offered to resign.

Mr Blair told her they should reflect overnight. There appears to have been little attempt to talk her out of going.

The Prime Minister's spokesman said: "The minister has reflected on this correspondence and what she said earlier in the week and believes that the honourable thing to do is to resign and the Prime Minister has accepted that."

Mr Blair said this afternoon that Ms Hughes had acted " with integrity" in offering her resignation.

Keith Best, chief executive of the independent Immigration Advisory Service, said: "I'm sorry for the minister but I think it was inevitable because ministers have lost control of the Immigration and Nationality Department."