All this week, BBC TV News has been congratulating itself on exposing an illegal immigration ring bringing in Pakistani workers, supplying them with fake documents and putting them to work as cheaply-paid undocumented labour. Good investigative journalism, and the highlight was a secretly filmed interview with a gang member boasting of how it was no problem to get hold of any kind of high-quality fake ID, including passports and driving licenses; he even had a stash of them right there, and very convincing they looked too.
So, what did a government spokesman have to say when presented with this?
Border and Immigration Minister Liam Byrne said: “This is fresh evidence for why ID cards are needed so urgently and why it is so misguided to propose shutting our new system down.”
Um, so he didn’t actually watch the bit about how easy it was to get hold of fake ID….?