Welcome to the Home Office Watch blog, a single repository of all the shambolic errors and mistakes made by the British Home Office and Ministry of Justice compiled from Parliamentary Questions, news reports, and tip-offs by the Liberal Democrat Home Affairs team.
Today’s Observer brings news that the Government’s own security experts have many concerns about Labour’s plans to introduce mandatory ID cards:
In a potentially damaging revelation, which undermines claims that the scheme will enhance national security, the group has concluded that [ID cards] will be prone to corruption…
The Isap report goes on to warn that the scheme may not be embraced by government departments, suggesting the cards are not being well received in some Whitehall departments.
The panel also warns the initiative is struggling to fulfil its remit. It states that the scheme lacks a ‘robust and transparent operational data governance regime and clear data architecture’, suggesting there is confusion over its roll-out.
Released two months late, conveniently after the local elections, the Home Office has produced its latest ten year cost estimate for the ID scheme.
Campaigners NO2ID have pointed out that the report actually admits to an overall increase in costs but then dumps almost a billion pounds off its headline figure by creative accounting. This is done by delaying the rollout of the scheme to 2012, enabling ministers to omit a number of high volume costs that will occur after 2017/18, and dropping plans to check every applicant individually and take their fingerprints.
The Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Huhne, says, “Minor changes in cost estimates cannot disguise the fact that nearly £5bn of taxpayers’ money will be squandered on a scheme that will fail to combat identify fraud, illegal working, crime or terrorism. This colossal waste of money should go on putting 10,000 more police on our streets instead.”
A bonus of course. £22 million has been paid out in bonuses to Home Office staff in the last five years according to figures dug up by Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary Chris Huhne.
Chris Huhne said, “How on earth can the Home Office justify these huge bonuses given its lamentable performance in recent years? Immigration is in chaos, asylum cases are falling behind again and violent crime has risen sharply.” Quite.
From the “you really couldn’t make it up” school of government administration:
Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: “It was predictable that this would be a costly and unnecessary scheme and so it has proved. The best solution is for immigration officials to have the right to conduct interviews in some circumstances but they are clearly not needed in every case.”
We learn, via the Daily Express, that the Office for Criminal Justice Reform (”Who are they?” we hear you perfectly reasonably cry) has advertised for some media staff. Six, in fact.
We’ll let the Criminal Justice System website (yes, the system has a website) explain about the OCJR:
The Office for Criminal Justice Reform (OCJR) is the cross-departmental team that supports all criminal justice agencies in working together to provide an improved service to the public.
As a cross-departmental organisation, OCJR reports to Ministers in the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office and the Attorney General’s Office.
One might innocently ask why there’s a quango for this, rather than just the Ministry of Justice itself. And why they need six new media staff.
The OCJR also spent £29 million last year on consultancy fees, but we dare not suggest that this might have been anything other than an excellent use of taxpayers’ money.
The Express quotes Liberal Democrat MP Jeremy Browne, to whom we’ll give the last word:
With prisons bursting at the seams, employing armies of new spin doctors is the wrong priority.
Another missing disc case from the Government, this time from our friends at the Home Office.
An IT repair firm in Lancashire was repairing a computer for a customer, who said they bought it on eBay, and discovered an optical disc marked “Home Office” and “Confidential” in the machine. It had been hidden under the keyboard.
The good news, in this case, is that the data on the disc appears to have been encrypted and the disc has been returned. The Home Office has said that the laptop was encrypted too, which suggests it was an official machine but makes us wonder what it was doing on eBay.
The Home Office hasn’t revealed what sort of data was on the disc, but, as The Register wryly suggests, “all the data may have already been lost in other massive governmant data blunders of recent times.”
Ok, we know they’re not very good at things like counting immigrants or keeping track of offenders, but this week brings news of a new failure to count.
The Home Office can’t even work out how many people it’s made redundant. Good news for the department though. The MoD can’t either. Other government departments can mind you, but at least they’ve got a fellow department in the same mess as them this time round.
Liberal Democrat peer Lord Oakeshott had this to say:
“The Home Office and MoD are totally incompetent for failing to give answers, when other big departments can give us these vital figures. No wonder the Home Office loses track of who to deport if it can’t even count its own redundancies,” he said.
Today’s Guardian brings news of the latest poll asking the public for their views on ID cards. Overall, the public oppose them by 50% - 47%, which continues the recent trend of polls showing a majority against. (Looking at the state of the Home Office, would you trust the government to run ID cards successfully or sensibly?)
The proportion of people who strongly oppose ID cards has grown noticeably - from 17% to 25%, whilst only 12% strongly support them.
For more details, see The Guardian website, but don’t forget also, if you haven’t yet, to pop over to the Liberal Democrat ID cards petition and add your name.
The scene: the entrance to the Home Office.
Home Secretary enters stage left, shows security pass to guard at the desk and walks past him, muttering, “Where’s the illegal immigrant?”
Audience responds, “Behind you!” because yes indeed, the person checking security passes at the front desk of the Home Office is an illegal immigrant.
