Fingerprinting illegal immigrants takes too long, says minister Theresa May, the Home Secretary, has meanwhile been accused of a cover-up after ordering the censorship of key passages from the document. Potentially damaging information about staff shortages at British border checkpoints at Calais were cut out, while other redacted sections included details of a new surge in the number of illegal immigrants managing to evade British border checks and travel all the way to St Pancras in London. Chris Bryant, the shadow immigration minister, said the "cover-up and the failure at our borders provide yet more dents in this Government's much-tarnished credibility." But Mr Harper argued that Mrs May used her power to redact reports in the name of national security sparingly. He said: "I think if you look at the history of the reports that the chief inspector's produced it would be fair to say that a number of them have previously been very critical, for example, of the UK Border Agency - in some cases very critical. In those cases the Home Secretary has not used her powers to redact any of those reports. She uses those powers in cases where there are pieces of operational information which she judges disclosing would be not helpful for national security and she uses those powers sparingly but she uses them when they are necessary. Mr Vine's findings are particularly uncomfortable for the Home Secretary because she was responsible for setting up the Border Force in spring last year, splitting it from the UK Border Agency.