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See other news storiesJohn Reid's Sunday Telegraph article
22 January 2007
The Home Secretary wrote about the future of the Home Office in the 21 January issue of the Sunday Telegraph.
In an article in the Sunday Telegraph, Dr Reid wrote that the work needed to fix the Home Office's problems is likely to take years, rather than months, but that it can be done.
Adapting the department to the demands and dangers of the 21st century is critical to the safety and security of the nation, he wrote: "Protecting the public and guarding our nation's security are huge responsibilities, never to be taken lightly, particularly at a time like this. They demand the utmost focus and dedication. That is what I have tried to give this job since May of last year."
He continued, "When I came into this post I made clear that the Government had already achieved a huge amount since 1997. In contrast to our predecessors, crime had fallen – by 35 per cent. Police numbers were at record levels. Asylum applications were at their lowest level since 1993. The passport service was back on its feet and now outscoring Tesco on customer satisfaction levels.
"But I also made clear that there was a major job of work still to be done to make my department, and the criminal justice system more generally, 'fit for purpose'. Rapid global change and the associated challenges of mass migration, terrorism and organised crime had presented huge challenges to the Home Office which it struggled to keep up with. As a result, despite incremental improvement, performance in some areas still wasn't good enough. We needed to move from mere improvement to transformation of the department and its operational arms."
Major reform underway
The Home Secretary explained that, based on those facts, he ordered the department to develop three reform plans designed to bring the Home Office into the 21st century.
These plans called for real, practical changes that are now underway, he wrote.
This change includes radically overhauling the core systems and structures within the Home Office itself, reforming the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, re-balancing the criminal justice system, reforming the probation service and reviewing counter-terrorist capabilities.
But it has not been all smooth sailing, and a number of serious issues have been uncovered as reform got underway.
"The backlog of asylum cases which have been started but not finalised is far greater than was initially realised. Our counter-terrorism capabilities need further enhancement in the face of the current threat. The systems which the Home Office had put in place historically to deal with notifications of overseas criminal convictions of UK nationals were wholly inadequate. And we have severe and on-going issues around prison capacity which have forced us to use police cells to hold prisoners overnight," he wrote
However, he said, these problems must be weighed against the department's many successes, including reducing crime by more than a third.
Far still to go
Still, there is far to go, and the work to get there will be difficult and complex, he wrote.
"There must be no sacred cows either when it comes to protecting security and administering justice – the two fundamental roles demanded of the Home Office and of the Home Secretary," he wrote. In the long term, he added, "more radical change may be unavoidable."
"Nothing must be ruled out if we are to properly protect the public and ensure that offenders are brought to justice and effectively punished for their crime."
Read the full article on the Telegraph website (new window).
