From the “you really couldn’t make it up” school of government administration:

1. The Government spots there is a problem with bogus passport applications.
2. The Government introduces a £93 million scheme to tighten up security on passport applications.
3. This includes blanket interviewing of 38,391 people when they apply for their passport.
4. Of these, 99.4% are given the go ahead to get their passport, and only 0.6% are referred on for further checks. Oh, and none of those ongoing checks have yet found a fraudulent application.

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.