Home Office staff have given British passports to tens of thousands of illegal immigrants and foreign criminals - including at least one murderer, a damning report revealed yesterday.

Officials have failed to carry out even basic checks on more than 200,000 migrants applying for British citizenship every year, it said.

The shambles allowed criminals and others with ‘very poor immigration histories’ to obtain a passport – allowing them access to the jobs market, benefits and public services.

Inspectors unearthed one case in which staff accepted an application from an asylum-seeker – unaware that he had admitted a fatal stabbing in his homeland.

Chief border inspector John Vine discovered an asylum seeker who admitted to immigration officials that they had stabbed someone to death in their home country but was still allowed to become a British citizen

Of the 235,000 applications in 2013, the refusal rate was only 3 per cent – three times lower than in 2007.

And with two million passports handed out over the past decade, critics said the potential scale of the scandal is enormous – with up to 12,000 cases being wrongly approved every year.

Last night the Home Office was frantically working to withdraw the citizenship granted to the killer.

Mr Vine’s report – which was handed to Home Secretary Theresa May on September 1 but only released by the Home Office yesterday – found rules were routinely ignored. He said ‘no attempts’ were made to check an applicant’s criminal record. Bizarrely, if an applicant volunteered information about a conviction, it was ignored if the Home Office could not independently verify the information.

There were ‘virtually no other checks’ to establish the good character of applicants, the inspection found.

Rules state that those seeking citizenship must not breach British immigration laws at any time during the five years leading up to their application, unless there are exceptional circumstances.

Border inspectors discovered violent killers were among thousands of immigrants with ‘very poor’ records who have been granted British citizenship

DAMNING FINDINGS OF DAMNING BORDER REPORT IN FULL The report by chief inspector of borders John Vine found that: No checks were carried out on criminal records in applicants’ homelands;

Passports were given to those who entered Britain illegally, did not have permission to stay or absconded when under immigration controls;

There was a ‘blanket policy’ – not authorised by ministers – to disregard poor immigration histories;

Applicants were allowed to ‘self-declare’ if they were bankrupt or had engaged in dishonesty, tax avoidance or benefit fraud;

Migrants were not interviewed even when officials doubted their story;

No prosecutions were brought against cheats who tried to lie their way to a passport and citizenship was not revoked for those who gained it on the basis of forged documents;

The department responsible was even given a customer service award. Advertisement

But officials were routinely ignoring a poor history of evading controls – such as entering Britain illegally or working without permission – a ‘blanket policy’ that was applied without ministerial approval.

Officials also took a lax attitude to those caught cheating the rules or who were bankrupt.

In one case, officials made the ‘very poor decision’ not to revoke the citizenship of someone who used forged documents.

There were also ‘significant delays’ in dealing with allegations concerning deception.

The report heaps huge new pressure on Theresa May after a string of scandals involving foreign criminals and border failures. Mr Vine claims a string of damning reports have been suppressed and is standing down at the end of the year, apparently in protest. Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper accused Mrs May of ‘sitting on the report for months’ and called on her to reveal exact numbers of those awarded citizenship without proper checks.

She added: ‘When Home Office failures allow murderers to get British citizenship the Home Secretary should take action and not seek to manage the bad news.’

Campaign group MigrationWatch called the situation a ‘shambles’. Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons home affairs committee, called the ‘shocking’ report the ‘most damming I have seen emanate from the chief inspector’s office’.

Immigration and security minister James Brokenshire said the Government was still clearing up the ‘mess’ it inherited – including Labour’s decision in 2007 to grant large numbers the right to remain in Britain indefinitely even if they did not meet the rules.

Migrants who have flouted immigration laws will now be banned from becoming British citizens for at least ten years, he announced. A spokesman for Number Ten called the case of the foreign killer being granted citizenship ‘regrettable’.