Examination of Witnesses (Questions 960
- 979)
TUESDAY 6 JUNE 2006
MS LIN
HOMER, MS
MANDIE CAMPBELL
AND MR
PHIL WHEATLEY
Q960 Chairman: I am sorry, you (or
somebody) must know how many hearings there have been since the
Home Secretary wrote to us, and in how many of those cases the
Home Office was unable to defend the case? I accept the total
number will be a fluctuating figure; I entirely understand why
that is it the case with cases going back and you might win some
or lose some; but you must know how many you have lost so far?
Ms Homer: No, I do not because
I have not got yesterday's figures to hand. I am happy to provide
those.
Q961 Chairman: Do you have the figures
up until last week, for example? It is a fortnight since the Home
Secretary wrote to us.
Ms Homer: No, we will have more.
There are three or four bail applications happening a day at the
moment.
Q962 Chairman: Have any more murderers
been released?
Ms Homer: Not that I am aware
of.
Q963 Chairman: Have any more serious
offenders been released?
Ms Homer: I think there has been
an application for bail by somebody in a more serious category,
yes.
Q964 Chairman: Which has been successful?
Ms Homer: I think so, yes.
Q965 Mr Winnick: Can you give us
the figures by tomorrow?
Ms Homer: I can give you the information
on a daily basis. The difficulty is that it will only ever be
accurate at the point I give it to you.
Q966 Chairman: On one level I can
understand the difficulty you have in providing an exact figure
on a day-to-day basis about how many people in total are out on
bail. I have to say though that you have confirmed to us this
morning that somebody has temporarily been removed from their
duties because you are investigating their conduct in this matter
for not informing the Home Secretary. That suggests that the issue
of bail is a rather important issue. It seems to me extraordinary
that you come in front of this Committee on an issue where the
Home Secretary was forced to write and apologise to us without
that very basic piece of information which is: are you doing any
better; how many people are you successfully defending? Surely
you must be asking that question yourself on a daily basis?
Ms Homer: I am receiving a daily
report. I have to make a judgment about what facts and figures
I have brought with me. I am anxious not to give you a guess from
my memory.
Q967 Chairman: I do not want a guess.
Ms Homer: I am happy to give you
today's figures as soon as I get back to the office, Chairman.
Q968 Chairman: Are all the serious
criminals who have been returned to prison currently held under
immigration powers and therefore eligible to apply for immigration
bail?
Ms Homer: Not all serious criminals
who are in detention are held under our powers. There are a small
number held under powers relating to the breach of their licence
or supervision arrangements.
Q969 Chairman: A question we asked
at our last session—it is not clear to us how many of the
foreign prisoners who had been released as part of the original
exercise on bail were subject to probation requirements that should
have required them to report and so on?
Ms Homer: In the original figure
of the most and more serious, 19 were subject to licensing
requirements.
Q970 Chairman: How many of them comply
with those requirements?
Ms Homer: To the best of our knowledge
all of them were complying. At the point where we re-detain any
of those, the licensing requirements stop and we have sought to
put in place arrangements where we tell probation if any of those
are bailed so that the licensing re-starts upon bail because that
would be the normal procedure.
Q971 Mr Winnick: At the core of the
latest crisis, as you know, is the question of over a thousand
prisoners, foreign nationals, recommended by the courts for deportation
who were not even considered by the Home Office for deportation.
How far would you say this was a total failure of communication
between the police, the courts, the prisons and your Department?
Ms Homer: I think clearly there
has not been an adequate level of communication between us all.
Q972 Mr Winnick: That is putting
it mildly!
Ms Homer: I was trying to answer
your question. I would prefer to see an improving level of
communication. I think there are clear instances where, when we
work better together, we get better results. I think in the last
12 months the work between IND and the Prison Service has shown
that. I think the Home Secretary referred to a number of the challenges
in the system that make that quite difficult, not least this issue
of there being no unique identifying number that attaches to an
individual. Someone can go through the court process, through
the prison process and through our Home Office process with a
different name, a different spelling of that name, a different
address and a different date of birth and it can be quite difficult
to match that information up. I think there are things, therefore,
we could do systematically on communication as well as continuing
to improve our working between departments that would make it
easier for us to spot and deal with all foreign prisoners as they
go through the system at the right point.
Q973 Mr Winnick: What many of us
find very difficult to understand is the answer that you gave
to the Chairman a few moments ago at the beginning of this session
when you said it was the junior people, presumably to a large
extent employed in the Home Office in IND. What you did not explain
was what appears to be the total lack of any management supervision,
because if the junior people were not doing what should be done
what on earth was management doing?
Ms Homer: I had already commenced
this discussion more generally within the Home Office. I have
to say, I think my business is an under-managed business. If I
compare it to operations I have been involved with before, the
sheer number of senior managers we have in relation to the scale
of the business seems to me to be insufficient. I think truthfully
the answer is that in many cases managers were casting their view
over too wide an area of the business to have the capacity to
look in-depth with enough rigour and enough challenge on a regular
basis. If I gave you just some ball park figures—the Enforcement
and Removal Directorate has about 3,500 people in it. I am relatively
recent as a civil servant and I am not great on grades yet, but
we only have a very small number of senior civil service managers
in that business of 3,500 people. When Mandie introduced herself,
one of the things I have done in reaction to the crisis is simply
to increase the number of managers because I think that will give
me managerial depth so that we can interrogate with rigour what
is going on in smaller units. It is the reason why I think one
has to be circumspect about blaming the relatively junior managers
who are not getting very much management time, because that management
time is spread out over a wide area of business.
Q974 Mr Winnick: What we are trying
to find out is how far up the management scale at the Home Office
this matter went before it went into the public domain. After
all this has led to the Home Secretary resigning, and next Monday
we are going to have a former Permanent Secretary of the Home
Office giving evidence. Are we being told now that at that level,
Permanent Secretary level, no-one knew what was happening over
the fact that foreign nationals who were recommended by the courts
for deportation on their release were not even being considered?
Ms Homer: The generality of the
issue was being considered. I have already referred in an answer
to the Chairman to the fact that the general level of resources
in this team was raised with me shortly after I arrived within
a context of more demand than resources; and that steps would
be taken when it was raised to recruit some additional agency
staff at that point; and to put a sum of 2.7 million in the budget
with effect from the beginning of the financial year to make that
addition permanent, so in that sense I was appraised. The more
specific question was the question of whether there was a clarity;
that the consequence of that was for the more serious cases to
be part of those that were not being considered. When we answered
the PAC query in November we gave an estimate of around the 400
figure, and a management view at that time that those did not
include serious cases. To a degree, as we invested in the area,
our depths of understanding of the failures I think became much
clearer; to the extent that when we put the submission to ministers
in March we were able both to start putting a figure on it (that
is when the figure of a thousand was shared) and to share with
ministers that stat, contrary to what had been believed when we
wrote to the PAC, included cases that would be regarded as serious.
Yes, there is a degree to which there was a stepped understanding
of the depths of the challenge.
Q975 Mr Winnick: Did the most senior
people in the Home Office let down the previous Home Secretary?
Ms Homer: I felt I let him down.
Q976 Mr Winnick: When you have a
figure of 1,019 foreign prisoners who were not removed (and that
is the latest figure) does that include foreign nationals in Scotland
and Northern Ireland?
Ms Homer: No, it does not include
figures in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Q977 Mr Winnick: Just for the moment
1,019 is not the total figure for the United Kingdom?
Ms Homer: No. I think in the written
ministerial statement that the Home Secretary made he was very
clear that he thought there were a number of categories where
we had not fully identified the risks of failure of the system.
Q978 Mr Winnick: Are you in a position
to give us a later figure?
Ms Homer: No. We are undertaking
some detailed work with Scotland, with Northern Ireland and with
the Prison Service around those categories that were set out in
the ministerial statement. I think the Home Secretary was very
clear with you that we lack confidence in our data collection,
and he and I have agreed that we will try and undertake a very
thorough audit of figures and cases in order for him to try and
update Parliament more accurately. The caveat he shared with me,
that the investigative process is uncovering flaws as we go forward,
I think is one that I would need to repeat.
Q979 Mr Winnick: When are we going
to have the latest figures?
Ms Homer: I think the Home Secretary
is very keen to share accurate information with Parliament as
soon as he is able.
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