Thousands of foreign criminals 'at large in Britain' as inquiry exposes failures in police and customs checks

Poor border controls and inadequate police checks are making Britain vulnerable to foreign criminals, according to an official report.

Customs officials and police are investigating the backgrounds of only small numbers of arrivals and suspects, the study found.

Just 27 a day are checked to see if they have a criminal past.

And the identities of only 600 travellers a year are checked against an Interpol database of stolen passports.

French officials make 7.4million such checks, while those in Switzerland carry out 3.6million.

Illegally entering or overstaying a visa is also rarely recorded on the Police National Computer.

The report into the national and international use of criminal records was drawn up by former Whitehall mandarin Sir Ian Magee.

He said: 'Front line staff involved in public protection often lack awareness and understanding about international exchange of criminality information. Many police officers simply do not know what is available.'

The report found that the arrival of 2.5million foreigners a month 'was not always accompanied by a flow of information about criminal activities in different countries'. 

It said: 'Information needs to be shared between countries. However, the number of combined requests to Interpol and the UK Central Authority for the Exchange of Criminal Records is very low.'

The report said the UK Border Agency does not yet have an automatic link to Interpol's lost and stolen documents database.

Officials are also unable to access alerts on data from across the EU for wanted and missing persons, stolen and missing property or arrest warrants.

'From the perspective of public protection, this is unsatisfactory,' Sir Ian said. continues here 

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