consolation you are not the first Home Secretary to experience this. I know what it feels like.
When the going got rough I used to comfort myself by reading the passage of Willie Whitelaw’s memoirs where he recounted the time when he had to make emergency statements to the House of Commons on three successive days. The first was that the Queen’s policeman had been in a longstanding homosexual affair with a prostitute. The second related to the deadly IRA bomb attack on the household Cavalry in Hyde Park. The third involved improvements to security at Buckingham Palace following the entry of an intruder into the Queen’s bedroom the previous week.
So allow me, from my experience of four years as Home Secretary, to offer a few words of advice. I must admit that I am now not very confident that you will take them. But at least I shall have done my bit. The rest is up to you.
The day I was appointed, the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office came to see me in my office at the Department of the Environment. I never forget the advice he gave me, “The Home Office” he said “responds to strong political leadership. If it doesn’t get it, it drifts.”
Strong political leadership was what I tried to give it during my four years in the job. As you may recall it was during those four years that we turned down the tide on rising crime. For the first time ever, crime fell by 18%. There were nearly a million fewer crimes committed in 1997 than there were in 1993.
So it is possible to get a grip on the Home Office. Don’t be led astray by the siren voices that are suggesting that the Department should be broken up – though there is a case for a separate Minister for Homeland Security. After all, the recent difficulties over the release of foreign prisoners were explained by your predecessor as the result of a failure of communication between the Prison Service and the Immigration Department. If that is true those difficulties would hardly be prevented if the two were in separate Government Departments.
And do be cautious about trying to put a positive spin on the Department’s failures. I understand why you tried to present the wildly embarrassing spectacle of illegal immigrants working as cleaners in the Immigration Department itself as a triumph of enforcement. Frankly that was almost certain to compound your problems. It was only a matter of hours before it became clear that some of those had been working there for years.
It’s much better, too, not to invent excuses for failure which are not going to survive the most superficial scrutiny. One of the defences, for example, which was used to excuse the failure to deport foreign prisoners, was that the Home Office didn’t know which country they came from. But these are people who have been through the process of a criminal trial. They have been found guilty and sentenced. The judge has made a recommendation that they be deported.
It is hardly likely that someone just about to be sentenced would refuse to tell the Court where he came from. It is even less likely that a judge would make that recommendation without knowing to which country he was recommending the prisoner should be deported.
Nor is it much use trying to blame me, as you did in your first few days. After all, most people are aware that your lot have been in office for nine years. So if things needed to be put right you and your predecessors have had ample opportunity to do so.
Perhaps you missed a letter which was sent in to the PM programme on Radio 4 last Friday.
It was from Peter Watts, an immigration officer of 25 years standing who retired in 1996. In his day, he said, foreign prisoners were deported at the end of their sentences and illegal immigrants were apprehended and properly dealt with. As Dave Roberts conceded in his evidence to the Select Committee, it used to be the case that illegal immigrants feared a knock on the door. That state of affairs needs to be reinstated.
Above all, what you need to do is to get a grip on the department. I’m afraid this means a great deal of hard work and long hours. It means rolling up your sleeves and applying yourself to the unglamorous business of making sure that officials are doing what they are meant to do. A lot of it is rather boring. It can be a very hard grind. And it is not the stuff of tomorrow’s headlines or eye-catching initiatives.
This was the mistake your three predecessors made. And I’m sorry to say you have not made a very good start. Yesterday’s proposal to involve victims in decisions on parole may have a good deal to be said for it. But it is pointless if the Parole Board can’t do their job properly because they are told they can no longer interview prisoners before reaching decisions on their cases. So forget about the headlines and the new initiatives. Concentrate on getting the basics right.
You won’t get much help on this from your boss. Tony Blair’s whole approach to government is based on eye-catching initiatives and newspaper headlines. He has never bothered to understand or apply himself to the serious business of government - or “process”, as he dismissively labels it. But “process” is how things get done.
So you will have to tell him to stop interfering. You will have to try to get him to understand that the way to avoid the very damaging headlines you’ve had over the last few weeks is to stop trying to get good ones tomorrow. This won’t please him. But it’s the only way to do what needs to be done.
When I was at the Home Office, John Major let me get on with it. From time to time I needed his support and when I asked for it, I got it. The rest of the time he left me alone.
So here’s my advice in a nutshell. Tell the Prime Minister to keep his nose out of things. Forget about eye-catching initiatives and tomorrow’s headlines. Concentrate on providing the strong political leadership that will encourage officials in the Home Office to do their job properly. And put in place the systems you need to make sure that it is being done.
You might then make a decent fist of the job and give the country what it is yearning for – a sense of security and competence from a Home Secretary with the right priorities who’s determined to get a grip.
Best wishes,
Michael |
