It has recently come to light that over the summer the UK Border Agency (UKBA) relaxed its passport checks for those entering the country. Theresa May has told the Commons that she had agreed to a pilot scheme that allowed border agents to let certain people in with reduced checks, but wasn't aware that it had been rolled out across the country.

The furore over how this was allowed to happen has thrown up some interesting claims. The Deputy Secretary General of the Immigration Service Union Lucy Moreton, told the Today programme that "it is about staff shortages", a point contested by Mrs May, who told MPs when answering questions in response to her statement on the matter this week that "this was not an issue about staffing levels."

The Public and Commercial Services Union has claimed that the UKBA had lost 10 per cent of its workforce over the past year.

Meanwhile Immigration Minister Damian Green told the Commons on Monday that the Govenment "expect to have reduced by about 5,200 posts from the start of the review period to around 18,000 by March 2015."

While these statements are by no means mutually exclusive, it does beg the question as to how many of the staff cuts at the UK Border Agency have already been made, and how many posts are still for the chop.

The latest UK Border Agency Annual Reports and Accounts 2010-11, for the year ending March 31 2011, states that in the last year has seen the loss of 1,200 jobs. Of these, 700 were the result of the cuts announced in the 2010 Spending Review.

The report notes that: " the average number of full-time equivalent (FTE) active staff we paid for either directly or indirectly during 2010-11 was 23,426 (compared with 24,474 in 2009-10) The size of the agency’s workforce reduced by around 1,900 (8 per cent) during 2010-11."

While this is slightly below the 10 per cent quoted by the PCS union, it is worth noting that these figures were measured March-March, rather than since last October. Given the larger staff reductions announced in the 2010 Spending Review, it would not be a surprise if the level of job cuts had risen since March.

The UKBA annual report also makes clear that job reductions had begun before last year, with 2,500 posts cut during the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review period.

This makes clear that the 2010 reductions are much sharper than those announced in 2007, adding further weight to the 10 per cent figure.