Angry airport chiefs blame civil servants working from home for the half-term travel chaos

ANGRY airport chiefs have blamed civil servants working from home for the half-term travel chaos.

They claim it was caused by security vetting delays — and accused ministers of snubbing efforts to speed things up.

Industry insiders want the rules tweaked to allow new recruits to be checked through tax records to shorten the lengthy process.

But they fear the idea was rejected because barely a third of HMRC staff are at their Whitehall desks - a claim which the department has branded "misleading and false".

Last night, a senior MP accused the Government of being “missing in action” as thousands of holidaymakers faced cancellations and delays.

Ministers insist they have “done their bit” with £8billion support to the industry during the pandemic — and say airports were too slow to recruit.

A senior source at one airport said: “We urged the Government to make changes to speed up what is a complex recruitment process and ensure airports, ground handlers and the border force had sufficient resources.”

Manchester airport has more than 500 people going through background checks and training but only 200 are due to start work this month.

An insider said: “We’re not surprised that government officials are unable to help — most are still working from home.”

Last month, an average 33 per cent of HMRC staff were in the office and 48 per cent of officials at the Department of Transport.

Labour’s Shadow Transport Secretary Louise Haigh said: “Conservatives are missing in action.”

Border guards from Scotland and Northern Ireland could be drafted into English airports to avoid more flight disruption.

An HMRC spokesman said: “Where our staff work has nothing to do with the current delays at airports. We have a responsibility to protect sensitive information and so cannot arbitrarily give access to it on request, which would be a dereliction of our duty to safeguard taxpayers’ personal information.”

A government source said: “The aviation industry was asking for quite a lot of access to HMRC records — even our own departments aren’t allowed to see this sort of sensitive information.

“Security vetting of baggage handlers is unfortunately a long process. We can’t cut corners.”