Home office Split to happen this time!

According to the news this evening splitting the Home Office is on the cards again, presumably as Labour just don't seem to be able to get the hang of running the department.

Expect an "official" announcement tomorrow to Parliament, after just about everybody else has heard it first. It is nice to know new Labour still has the same level of respect for Parliament that it always had.

Well, here is some comment I prepared earlier (in fact on the 22nd of January) which as far as I can tell still applies:

Well, there has been a lot in the media over the last few days about Dr Reid's alleged plans to split the home office into two parts.

Some bloggers (such as Iain Dale here) have suggested this may be to bury bad news.

Well what ever the news management merits of the case, is there a case for splitting the home office.

Well, for the split are John Reid, Lord Falconer, and Tony Blair. (oh, and some weird centerish party called the Liberal Democrats, you won't have heard of them)

Against are David Blunkett, and the Conservatives.

What was interesting about David Blunkett's comments was that he objected to the weakening of a senior cabinet post, possibly leaving only the Prime minister and Chancellor as senior members in the cabinet. He thinks that would be bad for representative democracy. I don't often agree with Blunkett but here I do.

William Hague for the Conservatives pointed out that the issues the Home Office is currently facing are primarily lack of communication between sub departments within the Home Office, so he was unclear on how splitting them up would help. I also agree there.

However, if you look into the detail what is actually proposed is to create two departments, one responsible for policing, terrorism, and immigration, the other responsible for the Courts, prisons, probation, rehabilitation and sentencing.

This is no split of one department into two, it is in fact handing tricky bits of the Home Office over to what was the Lord Chancellors office and is now the Department of Constitutional affairs.

The issue here is that the Lord Chancellor is there to represent the courts in government, which despite it seeming odd has been for 1400 years a useful thing. Now that particular role is being changed beyond recognition for no particularly well explained reason.

However, there is also another issue. The Lord Chancellor has never been responsible for locking people up. If he (or indeed she) was then you run into the problem of sentencing being unduly influenced by prison places, and indeed departmental budgets.

At the moment they are not. The courts apply sentences according to guidelines based on sentences. If prisons get over crowded that is someone elses problem. It is a firewall if you will. It is there to give the public some sense of confidence.

However, the real issue has to be, will handing Lord Falconer more work fix the problems? The answer is no. If the Home secretary can't get the individual bits of his department to cooperate then how is that going to get better if it is complicated by having to talk across departments?

The real problem is that John Reid can't sack his ministers, after all if he could, surely he would have got rid of Tony McNulty? He seems to have had his hands on all sorts of disasters but is still there!

Of course, the real problem that the Home Office has, is that Tony Blair can't sack Dr John Reid because he has not got the political capitol left.

Meanwhile the BBC has this, and the Ft has this.

Home Office's novel news management strategy

You have to wonder just what is going on in the Home Office these days. Well perhaps they are trying a novel news management strategy. Keep the bad news stories flowing so thick and fast that the seriousness of the last one is lost as people move on to discuss today's latest blunder.

The latest one we have is the failure of the passport agency to do anything to stop convicted drug traffickers from traveling, after a court has made an order that they can't.

Apparently most are still in prison, or at least are supposed to be, while 15 need to be tracked down.

Brilliant!

The BBC has this here.

Home Office in crisis again. Can it get any worse?

Well, we have had all sorts of bad news about the Home Office in recent days. For example they are now in a panic over prison places, or rather the lack of them, (see here) that has now led to a man convicted of downloading child pornography getting off with out a prison sentence (See the BBC's article here). It seems that sentences are being set by the number of prison places.

A man who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a teenager has been released on bail. The judge said that last week he would have sent him straight to jail.

We now have the Rod Morgan, head of the Youth Justice Board resigning because the system is being "swamped" by minor offenders who would not have ended up in prison in the first place before 1997.

Why are we in this situation? Well, in short Labour have been talking very tough on crime, and sentencing but have not provided the prison places to back up the rhetoric. Whether or not the policy is a good one is another matter. If you want to send more people to prison for longer you do need more places.

Government has had advance notice of this looming crisis for years. However there is also a real problem in our system is that there is no time and space to rehabilitate people, particularly young offenders. We can't afford to have 10 year olds locked up in prison and not rehabilitated moving on to a life of crime. This is just very wrong and wasteful of future tax payers money.

We also have worsening crime figures as well. You are apparently more likely to be a victim of crime this year than last, the first rise since 1995. (See the BBC's article here)

Can it get worse? I think it can, we will have to wait and see.

Home Office in more crisis

You will no doubt have heard that John Reid the Home Secretary, Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, and the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith have sent letters to magistrates and courts asking them not to lock up so many people. if you haven't you can read the BBC's article here and the Daily Mail here.

Well, this just smacks of incompetence and muddled thinking. For quite some time now convicted criminals have been getting longer sentences and prisons have been filling up. In fact a government study in 2000 predicted we would need 100,000 prison places by 2006. Well we only have 80,000.

Norwich prisons A wing, condemned and closed as unfit has had to be reopened for remand prisoners (these are people who may well be guilty of no crime, but seem to get the worst prison places).

This government has had plenty of warning that it is running out of places but has done nothing.

However the letter makes interesting reading. It points out that prisons are an expensive resource. They are. It says that only dangerous and persistent offenders should be locked up. I agree. However you can't have sentencing policy decided by the number of prison places. What about all the first time non dangerous offenders who were locked up last week? It is bizarre. What is more when you have a resource as expensive as prison, you must make sure it is doing it's job correctly which it can't do if they are too full.

Home Office in Meltdown part 94

Another person, not actually convicted of anything has absconded from a control order.

It gets better (or worse, depending on how you look at it).

According to Iain Dale here, getting the government to admit to it was a bit like extracting hens teeth.

The BBC has this article.

From it we can get these quotes

The orders were brought in for cases where there was not enough evidence to bring suspects to trial.

I see. So innocent under the "Old School" rules of innocent until proven guilty.

"In the latest case, the suspect absconded shortly after being served with a control order."

Well, there are only 18 of these in place, according to Dr John Reid, so why is thee a problem. It is not like they are swamping the system.

"The control order was designed to address the risk posed by an individual who had recently been radicalised and wanted to travel abroad for terrorism-related purposes."

I see. no problem here then. How exactly do we know he wanted to commit acts of terrorism abroad, as opposed to being very upset at what happens overseas? What does radicalised mean exactly? having a chat with your local Socialist Workers Party newspaper salesman, or chatting to a member of some radical Islamic group?

"The individual is not believed to represent a direct threat to the public in the UK at this time."

So why is he the subject of our most draconian laws then?

Mr Reid said public safety was the "top priority" for the police and government.

You do jest don't you? After all we have had the foreign prisoners fiasco, followed by the criminal records fiasco.

He said police were trying to track down the suspect and "an anonymity order is in place".

After consulting the police, the government is currently not seeking to overturn the order, added Mr Reid.

No kidding? He is so dangerous that he is subject to our most draconian legislation, but you don't want to tell us who he is or show his photo so we can tell you where he is?

A Home Office spokesman said: "Control orders are essential where it is not possible to prosecute individuals for terrorism-related activity and, in the case of foreign nationals, where they cannot be removed from the UK.

Right, so you have no evidence but just know their wrong uns. Hmm.. lots of coppers have ended up with egg on their face with that sort of attitude.

"However, we have always made clear that control orders were introduced as a next best alternative for dealing with suspected terrorists."

What is the next best way of dealing with them exactly?

"We have sought stronger controls to deal with suspected terrorists who cannot be prosecuted, but have been prevented by Parliament and the courts."

Really? You have lost three people on control orders, out of 18, that is one fifth, or 20%. The latest of whom is no threat to us in the UK, and you wonder why Parliament refused stronger measures? I wonder why they just did not tell you to f*ck off, you incompetent useless bunch of w*nkers who would seek to find any excuse to bring in a police state.

Shadow home secretary David Davis said: "Far from getting a grip since John Reid took over, the Home Office has been marked by murderers walking out of open prisons and suspected terrorists escaping from control orders."

He said the control order legislation "has achieved the remarkable double of being both repressive and ineffective at the same time".

He called for the absconder to be named.

"Unless there are special circumstances, such as if it could prejudice another trial, this individual should now be named," said Mr Davis.

"If there is sufficient suspicion that this man is involved in terrorist activities to restrain his activities, there is sufficient suspicion to name him in the interests of protecting the public."

Well, all I can say is I agree. If they are so dangerous, why not do that? Because he is not.

Control orders are a sham. They are there to stoke up fear. They need to go.

Home Office in meltdown, John Reid to resign?

Well, Dr John "Comrade" Reid said 8 months ago when he took over the home office, that it was unfit for purpose. A read of today's newspapers indicate that it still is, but ministers are in some bizarre game of buck passing and ducking responsibility. Dr john Reid, Tony McNulty and Joan Ryan all need to go, and soon.

We have of course the latest foreign criminal scandal, this time relating to mostly UK citizens who get a criminal record in the EU, and then return to have their files carefully piled up in boxes to be ignored. I wrote about it here.

Well, more news has surfaced since. The Observer has this about a criminal, Dale Miller, convicted in Switzerland and Germany for violent offences latter went onto commit manslaughter here. Were his record known he would of course have got a longer sentence.

The Sunday Telegraph has this on the buzz of activity around ACPO's criminal records office, or rather lack of it.

Micheal Howard also wrote this opinion piece which lays into John Reid over this scandal but as a foot note tells us that the Assets Recovery Agency is to close, having cost the tax payer £18 million to recover £4.3 million.

Could it possibly get any worse?

Apparently yes. Apparently funding issues will mean a cut in front line police numbers, which may well see crime start to rise again. Remember also that the police are burdened as never before with paperwork. It just makes you weep. The Sunday Telegraph has this whilst the Observer has this.

Update 18:00

According to the BBC a senior civil servant has been made a scapegoat suspended over the criminal records fiasco. You can read the BBC's article here.

it looks like the civil servant is also a member of the First Division Association which covers the arses of serial cock up merchants looks after the interests of the most senior civil servants.

Dr. John Reid Scuppered by latest farce

You will no doubt have heard about the latest farce at the Home Office, where it appears that records from other EU countries about convictions for people coming back here have just been lying on some ones desk. That is details of 27,529 cases (That is one big desk!)

Well Comrade Reid is holding an "urgent" meeting this morning after which he may make a statement. Will that be his resignation? Probably not. What I think we can be certain of is that he won't be challenging Gordon Brown for the job of Prime minister, as he is losing credibility is fading very very fast.

You can read the BBC's article here.

Update 16:16

If you are looking for other reasons why John Reid won't make it you can also read this and this.

Home Office Still unfit for purpose

It appears that the head of the prison service, Phil Wheatley has admitted that his service has no idea of how many escaped prisoners have been recaptured. Originally he said he did not need to know because they know who they are looking for on a local level. This has unsurprisingly drawn incredulous remarks from both the media and opposition parties who find this position a bit bonkers.

The story developed over the day, and now Phil Wheatley says there is an urgent need for a database. It seems that this is the case so hat he no longer has to face the incredulity he has faced today, rather than the more obvious reason that you need the feedback to know what is going on. We need to know how many people are left to catch, and of what class of criminal they are in order to know how big the problem is. The fact that he thinks he needs a database as some sort of PR exercise rather than the more obvious management feedback, indicates that he does not understand why he is doing what he is doing and goes to show just how bad things in the Home office really are. It is clearly still not fit for purpose, and as John Reid does not appear to have made it better I think it is safe to say that the Home office will have ended another ministerial career early. I wonder if the betting prices on John Reid becoming Leader if the Labour party will start to drift out now on the betting markets.

You can read the BBC's article here, and the Telegraphs here.