UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 775-ix

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

 

 

IMMIGRATION CONTROL

 

 

Tuesday 23 May 2006

RT HON JOHN REID MP, SIR DAVID NORMINGTON KCB,

MS LIN HOMER and MS HELEN EDWARDS CBE

Evidence heard in Public Questions 866 - 933

 

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Home Affairs Committee

on Tuesday 23 May 2006

Members present

Mr John Denham, in the Chair

Mr Richard Benyon

Mr Jeremy Browne

Mr James Clappison

Mrs Ann Cryer

Gwyn Prosser

Bob Russell

Mr Richard Spring

Mr Gary Streeter

Mr David Winnick

_______________

Memorandum submitted by the Immigration and Nationality Directorate

Examination of Witnesses

 

Witnesses: Rt Hon John Reid, a Member of the House, Secretary of State for the Home Department, Sir David Normington KCB, Permanent Secretary, Home Office, Ms Lin Homer, Director-General, Immigration and Nationality Directorate and Ms Helen Edwards CBE, Chief Executive, National Offender Management Service, gave evidence.

Q866 Chairman: Good morning. I am pleased to see that the Home Affairs Select Committee has its normal packed attendance. I am very pleased to see all our regulars here. Home Secretary, we are very grateful indeed to you for honouring the commitment your predecessor made to appear at our session today. As you would imagine, there are many questions that members would like to ask but we are going to concentrate today, as part of our immigration inquiry, on two broad areas - the deportation of foreign prisoners and the issues that were raised at last week's hearing about the position of illegal migrants in this country and their removal. Obviously, Home Secretary, you have only been in the job a short period of time and many issues have been raised in that time. We know that you have made a written statement today on the deportation of foreign prisoners, and we are grateful for advanced sight of that, and figures on asylum and so on are out today. Could I ask you a fairly broad question just to begin with, which is: could you tell the Committee what your assessment is of what you have found in the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, particularly issues that dominated the last few weeks about foreign prisoners and illegal migration?

John Reid: Thank you very much, Chairman. I should introduce my colleagues who are with me. To my immediate right is David Normington, the Permanent Secretary of the Department, who has been in post about four months; to his right is Lin Homer, the Director-General of IND, who has been in post about eight or nine months; and to my left is Helen Edwards, who is the Chief Executive of Offender Management (in my day it was called prisons) and Helen has been in post since November, about five months; and I am John Reid, and I have been in post two weeks going on two years, it seems! Thank you for your kind invitation to make a broad response, Chairman. I think anybody who has been watching the events of the last couple of weeks will know that there has been a plethora of subjects on which we might have discussion this morning; and I will of course attend to the questions that you want to ask, insofar as I can two weeks in, on the subject of immigration, asylum and foreign national prisoners: but I have also tried to use that two weeks, in the midst of tidal waves of events, to try and take a little time to stand back and to look at the strategic context in which we are trying to face these problems, the Department itself and particularly IND, and what I think needs to be done in terms of strategic leadership. It is in that context that I will answer your questions today but perhaps if I could just make three or four big broad points first before going into the detail. The first is that for the last 15 years we have been facing a huge and mounting challenge because of global changes. In effect, the post-Cold War world gave way from a position where we had fixed borders, sovereign states that were relatively unchanging, where ethnic tensions were suppressed, where civil wars were unlikely, where the world, in the hinterland of the two great glaciers of the Cold War, was frozen pretty stiff, and when one of the glaciers melted, rather than a degree of stability we got a huge torrent of problems, civil wars, ethnic tensions, border disputes, failed states, mass migration on a hitherto unimaginable scale. It is in that context that my predecessors, latterly Labour but before that Conservative, have been trying to deal with what is effectively, aided by transportation advances, mass migration on a scale that was pretty hitherto unimaginable. I asked for some figures in this - and you will probably be more aware of them than I am, Chairman - but we are talking about UN figures of almost 200 million international migrants. It is the equivalent of a country the size of Brazil. It is more than double the number than were moving in 1980. That is the scale of the problem we have all been trying to cope with. There have been some successes in response to that. If you look at this morning's asylum figures you will see that we are deporting more false asylum claimants than ever before. You will see that, instead of over 100,000 on the asylum waiting list, that there are now less than 6,000. You will see that instead of 22 months, we are now taking eight weeks to deal with these. There have been big advances I believe in some of these areas. However, I want to be straight with the Committee today and honest with you because I believe that, despite these advances, in the wake of the problems of mass migration that we have been facing our system is not fit for purpose. It is inadequate in terms of its scope; it is inadequate in terms of its information technology, leadership, management, systems and processes; and we have tried to cope with this new age, if you like, with a system that has been inherited from an age that came before it. That is an attempt that has been made by both parties, and my predecessors have introduced, I think, very meaningful reforms, of a technical nature, of a legal nature through legislation, of resources; but my own view is that we are in a state of transition from a paper-based system that was not designed for the problems we are facing, towards a technologically-based system that seems to be on an horizon that never gets any nearer. That is the strategic scope of the problem, in my appreciation after only a couple of weeks in the job. I share with you, and probably even more so with the public, in the frustration at our failures. Some of you are experts, far more than I am in this, and you will be able to (I hope) help me as we face this. I conclude by saying this, that we have faced similar challenges in other areas of Government - the Strategic Defence Review which renewed and reconfigured our Forces in the face of global changes; the Public Reform Programme that is going through in terms of the changes that have taken place domestically; the reshaping of our financial institutions to deal with globalisation - and I believe that it can be done in our own Department as well. I believe that we can carry out, and must carry out, a fundamental overhaul of our whole Immigration and Nationality Directorate. That is why today I have set out, and you will be able to see it in my ministerial statement, eight strategic action points which I have given as a guide to my officials. It is not my job to manage this Department - it is my job to lead this Department, to set a policy, to give the leadership, to give the strategic direction; managers are there to micro-manage it and, as they expect competence from me, I expect competence from them. I have this morning given them guidance. In addition to the general strategic guidance on IND, I have also given instructions to the Permanent Secretary last week to examine and audit a number of key managerial areas: performance, weak services, leaderships and skills, and particularly fragmentation in silos across the Department, where I believe it has contributed towards problems. I have put in charge of that Liam Byrne because he has qualities which he brings to that job, including management experience, which I think supplement anything that I can give. I would just say this morning, because of some of the misleading headlines, he has been put in that because of the quality he brings to it; and Tony McNulty, who has been a stalwart over the past period, has been asked to deal with another major issue with me, which is police restructuring, because of his experience and qualities in the field of parliamentary affairs and on local authorities, because local police authorities are very key to this. That is what I set out before you, Chairman, at my first meeting. While dealing with the urgent task of FNPs and asylum, which you will to address me on and I will try to speak on, I have also tried, as I say, to set out the strategic direction My first priority is to deal with those who have been released mistakenly without consideration for deportation; but simultaneously I intend to set out strategic leadership. I am very grateful for the chance to discuss these matters with you this morning.

Q867 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed, Home Secretary. No discourtesy was intended to your colleagues by not welcoming them to this Committee. Can we pursue some of those issues and then the more detailed ones. I think if I heard you right, the leadership is inadequate, the management is inadequate, and the processes are inadequate. That is a fairly stark assessment of the state of the Home Office. Can we try and understand a bit more about what that has meant over the past few years. One of the questions which we do not understand is that the problem of foreign national prisoners, to take that issue, was clearly flagged up, at least by external sources like HMIP, as far back as 2003, yet it appears that neither ministers nor officials took any real response to grip it. What is it about the way in which the Home Office works or has worked that meant that when a serious problem was flagged up nobody seemed to own the problem or say, "I need to do something about it?"

John Reid: I think that is a problem of management structures. I think, in all honesty, it is also a problem of information flow. It is a problem of coordination between the various silos in the Department. I do not believe that this Department is intrinsically dysfunctional, in the sense that it is incapable of being led in a coherent fashion; but I do believe that from time to time it is dysfunctional in the sense that it does not work, and it does not work within or across silos. To be honest with you I ask you to take the information I give you today, of a statistical nature, in the manner in which I give it to you - as the best information made available to me. I think I would have to be honest and say that I do not think I could remember a fact or figure I have been given in the past fortnight that has not been revised quickly within a very short period of time. On one occasion I was given information where I decided (perhaps unwisely in retrospect) to go out and defend the Department only to find the next day that it was half correct. Fortunately I had put a caveat on what I said which allowed me to at least accept the fact that there had been information that appeared not to have been available which I was able to correct. Basically I think there are problems that can be resolved but I do not pretend to you they are going to be resolved quickly. The sort of things I mentioned earlier - the SDR, the financial institutions and the public services - the SDR took 18 months just to formulate an overhaul. I hope that by the recess, working with Liam Byrne and with David, the Permanent Secretary, they will be able to come back with some pointers and directions but it will not be done easily because it is a profound overhaul that is necessary. One word perhaps about the details of when ministers knew about the foreign national prisoners, because I have looked at this and in fairness to Charles Clarke I ought to say this: not only did he accept the responsibility but in a sense he accepted responsibilities for failings that perhaps in retrospect we might judge whether he should have carried all the can on this one. It is true that this subject was a matter of discussion for some time prior to this year - and I have dates back as far as 1995, that this was a matter of discussion up to 2001 - however, I want to make it plain that the first time that any minister was told that there was a problem of magnitude, even without figures, was 17 March; and what Tony McNulty was told was, "There appears to be a problem of uncertain magnitude; we're looking at it". The first time a submission was sent to Charles Clarke was 31 March. As it happens, it was put in a box because he was going to the Balkans. The first time he read it was on 6 April and immediately, on reading it, he asked (because it was recess) for all the figures to be checked and a statement was made the week after Parliament came back. I ought to place that on the record.

Q868 Chairman: You have placed it on the record. Ministers will have received the HMIP Report of 2003. Whether they had a submission or not, that was there. Let us go beyond this because the impression we get is that there were plenty of people in the Home Office who knew there was a problem with foreign prisoners but no-one seemed to think it was their responsibility to deal with it. In addition to leadership and management, have you not got a fundamental problem with the culture in the Home Office that people do not own these problems? If it is not their job, they may be aware of the problem but they are not going to do anything about it?

John Reid: You are asking me for my impression of line management and accountability there and responsibility individually for actions. I agree with you, I do not believe that is necessarily a result of the culture. I personally do not like being told, when I ask who is responsible for something, "It's this Directorate", or "this group of people". I like to know that there is something there responsible for it. One of the things I have asked the Permanent Secretary to do is to look at the whole of the management systems and structures precisely for that reason within each of the departments (silos, if you like) and across them, because I believe there is weak management across them as well. Perhaps I could ask the Permanent Secretary just to comment on that, Chairman, because I do believe it is my job, as I have said, to lead this, to set policy and to drive it; but as I was advised by one of my predecessors this morning, Mr Howard, it is the manager's job to manage this.

Q869 Chairman: Sir David I will ask you to reply but perhaps I could add a supplementary which is probably more appropriate for you than for the Home Secretary. It does not appear as though anybody will lose their job as a result of failing to take action on this issue.

John Reid: Do not count on that. Once we get over this crisis I can tell you already I have asked the Director-General to carry out a review and investigation into what went wrong. If there are people culpable then they will have to bear responsibility, but we should not pre-judge that. Part of it may be the inherited system.

Sir David Normington: I will not repeat what the Home Secretary has said but just to add I am completely clear that we have to have accountability of officials and we have to pin that on them. Looking back, I think it is certainly true that there was not someone who was responsible for foreign national prisoners. There were people responsible for the prisons and prisoners in general, but there were not people focussed on this specific issue. That is clear actually from what happened. We have discussed this and we are absolutely clear that people have to have accountability and have to be held accountable for how they have performed. That is what I would put in place.

Q870 Mr Streeter: Home Secretary, I would like to ask you two specific questions if I may about your thoughts of restructuring the Home Office or looking at its weaknesses and trying to do better. The first question is: in your assessment, and in the review that you put underway, is it possible that one of the outcomes will be to break the Home Office up into different component parts? Are you prepared to be as radical as that?

John Reid: I think when you embark on a review, when you point directions, if you find that the facts warrant a particular position then you should be prepared to countenance that, so in that sense anything is possible. However, I think what I should do is share with you briefly my view after going in and indeed before going in that is: I do not believe it is intrinsically dysfunctional; indeed, I believe as time has gone on, the range of areas which are under the framework of the Home Office have become more interrelated in a sense. Let me take the question of security. If you are going to deal with the question of security then the coherence and coordination of asylum, immigration, deportation, prisons, probation, law and order, police, Special Branch and MI5 they are all absolutely vital now; because the complexity of fighting against international terrorism means that you need that range of response in the most coordinated fashion. I do not myself see the argument for splitting up the Home Office as being an a priori solution on the basis of what I see. No doubt there will be others who take a view. I am astounded to see that again (and I am sorry to quote him again in the same day) Michael Howard agrees with me on that one as well, or rather I agree with him!

Q871 Mr Streeter: Then it must be right! Touching on what the Chairman asked you a moment ago, in your list of concerns about your Department, Home Secretary, and we all wish you well in getting to the bottom of this issue, you do not mention the culture of the Home Office. You are going to be asked a specific question later on about culture and human rights and I am not asking about that. Do you not think that many of us who have had dealings with the Home Office over the years have found that there is a culture of anonymity, of lack of responsibility and maybe even a 1970s politically correct mindset that has not moved on with the times; and is that not partially responsible for what has gone wrong in this case - an inability and unwillingness to take tough decisions which the country requires? Is there not a hidden iceberg in the Home Office that you need to dig out and break up if you are going to really tackle the root of the problem?

John Reid: I think I have answered that already. If by that you mean, is there a lack of clear structures which put people in a position of having to accept responsibility, the answer is yes. If that is what you call a "culture" - I am not sure I would blame the people in the Home Office for this; this is about leadership and a willingness to carry out a profound and wholesale transformation of the Home Office and that is what I think is probably necessary, certainly inside IND (and across to my right I see Lin nodding) and I can assure you is what I have been discussing with my officials. I will do all I can to give that leadership but I look to those who work with me, and are sitting at the front here, to convert that into the managerial leadership, prowess, skills, structures and systems which, if there is such a culture, will get rid of the culture. I would not like this to be interpreted as saying, "Look there are people in the Home Office who don't want to work". I think we have to accept responsibility at the top, rather than just say it is the people down at the bottom who have got the wrong culture. That is what I am trying to say. I went on a surprise visit on a Friday afternoon; in many offices in the country you would find that perhaps not everybody had been at their desk; I was unannounced; nobody knew I was coming; it is always the best way to do a visit - you do not smell the fresh paint as you walk in; and I went into Lunar House and it was full with people working, who had been working 14 hours a day in some cases almost every day. I do not think it is up to us to say, "It's their fault". It is up to us to have the leadership skills and the management skills to put them in a position where they accept responsibility, incentivise that and train them for it. If there is a culture there that is wrong then we will change the culture as well if it is within our powers, but that is not going to be done overnight, but endurance in this is as important as knowing what you want to do - that is the capacity to keep going. In the Home Office one of the great difficulties is, as you sail this ship towards its destination, there are all sorts of squalls, tempests and broadsides being fired at you and you have to be able to take them and keep towards that destination.

Q872 Mr Browne: Home Secretary, would you expand on the point you touched on earlier, which is the job swap between Tony McNulty and Liam Byrne that took place yesterday. Were not Tony McNulty's limitations and, for that matter, Liam Byrne's experience known about a fortnight ago? In which case, why were those changes not made then? A briefly supplementary to that is: people will be concerned, if Tony McNulty has been deemed to be insufficiently capable to run the immigration aspect of the Home Office, he may not be sufficiently capable to run the police aspect?

John Reid: The answer to your first question is also the answer to your second. I work on an old-fashioned basis that I like to find the facts before I make a decision. Therefore, going into the Home Office on the first day and suddenly deciding what everybody was going to do did not seem to me to be a good idea, any more than coming here on the first day and telling you what I thought ought to be done without a chance to look at it. What we did, if you care to check, is we made plain that the positions that were being given to the ministers on allocation on the first day were provisional and were subject to my further announcements. I then arranged for a stock-take to take place a fortnight in, that is last Friday, Saturday and Sunday, where I would look at priorities, objectives, strategic framework, management and allocation of priorities. That timescale was in my mind. Why did I give Tony McNulty policing? Because I think he is particularly well equipped for the particular problem that we have at the moment, which I will describe to you briefly if you will allow me because this is important. I believe the Police Restructuring Programme - which should have at its heart not some abstract restructuring but putting more police on the beat, more visibility, more local community control - that restructuring programme is right in the sense that we cannot state the status quo; I think it is probably also right in the destination and where we want to go; but I was not convinced when I looked at it that the way we were going in the journey (from where we were to the destination) was the right one. Indeed many of your colleagues have made representations to that. In short, getting from A to B was not a matter of management - we have got plenty of mangers were; we have got HMI and we have got others - but it was a matter of profound attention to politics and persuasion. Therefore, someone like Tony McNulty, who had experience not only inside Parliament as a parliamentarian and through the Whips' Office but is a council representative and leader, seemed to me to be particularly strong in that field. Whereas the problem we are facing in IND is a wholesale and profound managerial transformation, as well as transforming the structures. Liam happens to be someone with a background in project management and IT so I thought that was quite a sensible decision and I hope the Committee would accept it was horses for courses.

Q873 Mr Browne: Both your admirers and your detractors would think it was interesting and indicative of your style that you were deciding the ministerial responsibilities within the Department. In many other departments the Prime Minister presumably would decide?

John Reid: Who else would decide the ministerial responsibilities inside my Department but me? I would not believe all the myths that all of us get up in the morning to receive a text message telling us what to do during the day. There are a lot of people in the higher echelons, with whom you might not agree, but they are quite single-minded. I have been given a task by the Prime Minister; he has given me the framework in which he wants me to move. As it so happens I had already independently reached the same conclusion so I was not surprised when he sent his missive! I have now given my marching orders to my ministers and to my officials. Whether or not at the end of this vision we get there, in those famous words, "I may not get there with you", but I have a good idea where the Department should go.

Chairman: Thank you. Let us turn now to the detail about foreign prisoners.

Q874 Mr Winnick: If you can survive the Home Office, Home Secretary, I am sure you can survive anything! I want to ask you about foreign prisoners because this controversy started about foreign prisoners sentenced by courts here in Britain who were recommended for deportation and where, having completed the sentences, these people (the prisoners) were not in fact deported. There seems to be (and perhaps you will be good enough to try and clarify this now) confusion over the numbers. Originally there was a number given of 403 to the Public Accounts Committee between 2001 and 2005; that went up to more, according to your immediate predecessor, to 1,023. What numbers are we now talking about - the most up-to-date figure you have of foreign prisoners who were not in fact considered for deportation when their sentences were completed?

John Reid: Chairman, I will assume when I give any of these answers you will see the health warning on my chest which says, "I have been given these answers in answer to my question". The figure that I have been given as the last reliable figure is 1,019, which is because four of the 1,023 are duplicates. One of the great problems I have found when I started asking about this, and it is identified as action point one in my written statement today, is there is no such thing as a unique identifier in the law and order system. There is no number that you are given by prisons which crosses the Home Office, police and others. That means, in counting this and recounting this, you can sometimes get duplication. I understand the figure to be 1,019 at present. That is the number who, over the last several years, since February 1999 have not been considered for deportation who ought to have been considered for deportation. Subject to one big qualification, and again you will see in my written statement, that I have discovered in my tour through this audit to personally satisfy myself, that there were several changes to one recommendation, which was those who were not in custody but who had committed either (at various stages it was described in the regulations as) "several minor non-custodial offences or three or more than three". It is not clear to me over this period who ought to have been doing this reporting. One of the action points I have made is to get absolute clarity on regulations, which I do not believe is there. However, leaving that aside, the answer to your question (about those who have served a custodial sentence since February 1999 who ought to have been considered for deportation and were not) on the figures I have been given, is 1,019; that is four different from 15 May.

Q875 Mr Winnick: Any explanation why they were not considered for deportation when the courts presumably had recommended deportation?

John Reid: No. This is a separate group. When Charles Clarke responded to the House on 3 May he said that the groups that ought to have been considered for deportation were EU nationals, or European Economic Area nationals, who had been given a custodial sentence of more than 24 months; 12 months in the case of non-European Economic Area nationals; and those who had been recommended for deportation; and all of those are included in those figures. However, there was a fourth category which he said, on the advice of officials, was anyone who had committed three other offences, non-custodial ones. Actually he was wrongly advised, it was four; but it has changed from three and at one point several. It is not clear that any of these changes were ever given ministerial endorsement or ministerial authority. We have had a series of changes of unknown origin over a period of time which probably were not implemented, which is the reason I have said we have got to have clarity in these things in the future.

Q876 Mr Winnick: At the end of it all, those who should have been recommended for deportation, foreign nationals, were not actually so considered by the Home Office?

John Reid: These 1,019 were not considered for deportation and ought to have been.

Q877 Mr Winnick: Who was responsible for the fact? This is what I am trying to get from you, Home Secretary, and I asked you a question on the floor of the House. Who was actually responsible for the failure to act accordingly?

John Reid: I will tell you what was responsible and then ask my officials. Once we have dealt with the urgent priority - which is to try and find some of these people, because that is the great public concern at the moment and ought to be my priority - once we have done that, we will then carry out a review of how this happened and whether there was culpability. Why it happened was simply that the Prison Service was notifying, over a period of six or seven years, the Directorate, IND; and at various times the workload and the backlog of IND was so high that one or two fell off the end at a very regular period. That is why the 1,023 built up.

Q878 Chairman: It is a more bit more than one or two?

John Reid: No, one or two at a time. As far as I can make out it was not hundreds and hundreds at a time until quite recently, and then the figures were moved up. Perhaps I could ask Lin Homer just to confirm the detail. This is the information I have been given, Mr Winnick.

Ms Homer: Chairman, I think Mr Winnick asked a question about particularly the 403 figure rising to a bigger figure. The explanation for that is, that at the time in November when the detail was provided to the PAC, the management information that the team dealing with this had was not good, and that was at that time their view about the number of cases that had been released before consideration. We were at that stage putting extra resources into the team, and it was as those extra resources came on-line greater detail was found out about what was the backlog the Home Secretary referred to; and a physical search of files held by the criminal casework team was undertaken in late February and March. It was as a result of that physical search that the number was increased and reported to ministers and then to the House. I think the description the Home Secretary has given is right. In very simple terms, more cases were going into the criminal casework team than the caseworkers could deal with; and I think what one has to say is that the management process for noticing that and responding to that did not work. When the general resourcing problem was raised in the middle of last year we immediately put some extra agency staff in and then some extra money in the budget from April of this year to deal with that. As those resources come on-flow one is able to actually make more of a judgment about what is needed.

John Reid: You are right, this is another failure. It is my experience, and looking at all of these points has led me to the action points I have in my statement today. Unless we get that fundamental overhaul of a lot of these practices, we will be left in a position where every figure we have given will shift; every fact we have given will be unreliable; and it will be a result of the failure of the systems, the coordination, the communication, the management, the leadership and so on and that is now our task to change.

Q879 Mr Winnick: You are going to carry out a thorough investigation into how this occurred?

John Reid: As soon as we finish this priority I have already requested that information be carried out on this.

Q880 Mr Winnick: There will be a report to the House?

John Reid: I will be happy to report back to the House or to this Committee.

Q881 Mr Winnick: Finally in this batch of questions, Home Secretary, can I ask you about the understandable concern of parliamentarians and the public at large about those who have been released from prison, foreign nationals, subject to deportation where no action has been taken; what about the numbers involved in re-offending?

John Reid: I will stand corrected on the detail of this, but on the most serious and more serious categories, I think we have had eight re-offenders. I will explain, one of the reasons why the initial figures were sometimes wrong was because of the systems. Another is actually on a more rational ground, Chairman. Of the 1,023 originally, now 1,019, we gave an original estimate of what we considered the most serious and the more serious categories. That was on the basis of the information we had about their most recent conviction. Two things happened, one of which Mr Winnick just mentioned. One is that we carried out scrutiny and study of previous convictions which resulted in some of those more and most serious categories expanding now to 186; and, secondly, I redefined the category, that is the more serious category. It is my view, and this is a matter of judgment, armed robbery ought to have been in it and that was added. Even if no violence was used in the robbery, in my view, it was still a serious offence. The third thing that happened is we also studied re-offending, and Lin Homer will give you the exact figures for that now.

Ms Homer: 20 have been reconvicted of offences categorised as "more serious", of which six were sex offences, none against minors; three were violence; and 11 were ABH or GBH. There is a further category of re-offenders which are the other offences to which the Home Secretary has referred. To date we have identified 184 of those. There is a small amount of checking still to be done. Those are convictions, six for robbery, 29 for drugs offences, seven for burglary, then others for driving offences, fraud, theft, deception and other minor offences.

John Reid: We can supply them in detail to the Committee. The inference of Mr Winnick's remarks I entirely agree with. We ought to be in a position, when I have managed to deal with the present problems, of saying that anyone who is a foreign national who comes to this country and enjoys the privileges of this country and commits a serious offence, for which there is a custodial sentence, should be deported full stop. That is what we should be aiming for. There are all sorts of difficulties, we know, but the presumption should be that anyone who is here who is a foreign national who does not, in return for the privileges and rights of being in this country, observe our laws and commits a serious offence for which there is a custodial sentence given should face deportation.

Q882 Mr Winnick: The victims of such re-offending as Ms Homer has just told us will obviously say that if the Home Office had acted as it should have acted they would not have been the victims of such criminality and, therefore, the responsibility lies with the Home Office insofar as the foreign nationals were allowed to stay in this country, and that is a very heavy responsibility.

John Reid: I inherit that responsibility, and it is that responsibility and the awareness of it which drives me to the conclusion that nothing less than a full and fundamental overhaul of this Department and this Directorate will be sufficient.

Mr Winnick: Blaming Sir David's predecessor presumably!

Q883 Mr Clappison: Dr Reid, now that you have assumed your ministerial responsibilities and looked at this problem, I imagine from what you have said already that one of the things which might have concerned you was that some of those who had committed what you described as the "serious offences", which I believe are those involving sexual offences and violent offences, and the most serious offences, which are those involving murder, manslaughter, child sex offences or rape, that some of those people were released without the authorities knowing what had happened to them or where they were?

John Reid: Yes, that is obviously a concern. It was over a period of seven years so the task of the police now is very difficult. I know they are putting in a huge amount of resources, as are IND and Probation and others, but it is not easy once mistakes like this have been made over a period of time for the police to discover some of these people. Fortunately most of the most serious people have been detained; the four murderers are in prison. Most of the more serious have now got a decision on deportation. I think there are three who have not: one has turned out to be a British citizen; one the courts, despite us opposing the court decision, have decided they can stay; and I think the other one is still being considered.

Q884 Mr Clappison: Can I ask you about the most serious category, which includes manslaughter and murder (and I think we know about the murders) child sex offences and rapists. Am I right in thinking that there are some out of that category that you do not know where they are?

John Reid: Yes, there are some in that category, out of the 37, that we have not yet detained.

Q885 Mr Clappison: Am I right in thinking that the number is about eight?

Ms Homer: Yes, it is eight.

John Reid: It is not "about eight", with the caveat that that is from an unreconstructed Home Office.

Q886 Mr Clappison: You will understand the concern of the public, that these people have committed very, very serious offences in the past. You have been looking for them, I think, for at least a month, have you not, and have still not managed to find them?

John Reid: Not personally. I have been in charge of the Home Office for two weeks and three days, and the police have been looking for them during that period and before.

Q887 Mr Clappison: You will share my concern that they have not been found yet. Would you consider publicising who these people are and the details of their offences so the public could assist on this and so we could see it, for example, on the front page of the newspapers?

John Reid: If the police thought that would help us to discover them, rather than to alert them or whatever. This is, I believe, an operational decision for the police. If the police tell me that they would like something then of course.

Q888 Mr Clappison: You said that your objective is that non-EEA nationals who are given a custodial sentence should face deportation. In using the word "face" do you mean that they "should be" or they "should be liable" to be deported?

John Reid: No, I mean there should be a presumption that they are deported.

Q889 Mr Clappison: A "presumption"?

John Reid: Yes, that they should face deportation. I cannot make it any more plain.

Chairman: We will come on to that issue in later questioning, Home Secretary.

Q890 Mrs Cryer: Home Secretary, can I ask you about updated figures. According to our updated figures we have started considering the case for deportation against 778 released criminals but do not know where 533 of them are. What are the chances of ever deporting them? What is being done about the 241 other cases where there has not yet even been an initial decision to deport? Can I add to that a personal query I have thought of the last day or two and that is: once you have been through all this trouble, this work, of deporting prisoners (and perhaps Lin could reply to this) what is to stop them re-entering the country perfectly legitimately as a spouse? If they did that there would be absolutely no criminal records check on them and there would be no supervision of them?

John Reid: I think what you have pointed to are the sorts of failures or inadequacies of the system which I have tried to address honestly in my statement to Parliament today, by saying these are the very things we ought to address. For instance, if you do not have a unique identifier when you go into prison, which is recognised across the police, the Home Office, courts and the prison then it becomes very difficult to make sure that you can be tracked from beginning to end. What we want to do (and this is partly another subject for the National Offenders' Management System) we want to try and track someone right through the process. You are also right that this is not just about foreign nationals, it is about immigration policy. I am very clear, the view on immigration at this early stage is uncluttered by sophisticated structural thinking and that is: illegal immigrants should not be coming here; if they get here we should find them; and when we find them we should deport them. That is basically what I believe. There are a few obstacles to that: if you do not have a system that is computerised; if you do not have identification; if you do not know the number here; and if you do not know the number leaving. These are not problems explicit to me or even to Labour home secretaries; they have been problems that have pre-existed for 20-odd years. I am going to try to address some of them. I cannot promise you I will solve all of them, but I think there are things we can do to make it easier to do that which we want - which is keep illegal immigrants out, find them when they are here and deport them when we find them.

Q891 Mrs Cryer: Would this identifying number come into play with people who were entering the country perfectly legally as a spouse?

John Reid: Who had previously been given such a number?

Q892 Mrs Cryer: Yes.

John Reid: ID cards, I have to say, would help in this as well but that is another topic.

Q893 Mrs Cryer: Would the post abroad in any way know that?

Ms Homer: The question you asked about re-entry would not be correct for a deportee. A deportee would not be able to re-enter as a spouse. That would be the case for someone administratively removed who subsequently, not necessarily through marriage, made the right application; but a deportee would be barred. Obviously if we had fully biometric systems at ports, ID cards, as the Home Secretary has indicated, and a unique number that would all help us run a checking system that could be more effective.

John Reid: At the moment I thought the question Ann was asking was: what about these 1,023 who have not actually been considered or found; and, if they left, could they get back in? They could not get back in.

Ms Homer: If we are pursuing deportation we would have entered them onto our warnings index and would bar them.

Q894 Mrs Cryer: The post abroad considering them for permanent immigration would somehow know that when they interviewed the person?

Ms Homer: If they did all the right checks and looked at the information then, yes, their deportation order being pursued would prevent them making another superficially legal application.

Q895 Mrs Cryer: How is it that some part of the Home Office is unable to find a convicted murderer, who would have been released on licence and therefore subject to recall to prison at any time?

John Reid: We have all the murderers. The four murderers are in prison.

Q896 Mrs Cryer: So there is no problem there?

John Reid: Not as long as we keep them in prison, but do not hold your breath! There is a serious point that out of the 37 most serious offenders we have not managed to find eight. That is not due to inadequacy by the police or lack of effort; they have been given a very difficult task, because these releases range over a seven-year period. In the most serious, in the case of the murderers, they have been detained and they are in prison.

Q897 Chairman: Of the eight, Home Secretary, how many, if any, are nominally subject to supervision by the police; and, if that has broken down, why has that broken down?

Ms Edwards: I am not sure whether we have that information here today. We could check that information.

John Reid: Can I send that to the Committee, Chairman.

Chairman: That is at the core of Mrs Cryer's question. Foreign prisoners or not, serious prisoners who are released are supposed, in many cases, to be subject to continuing supervision and we do need to know whether any of the serious people we are now looking for should in fact have been somewhere where the Probation Service could have done that.

Mr Clappison: Also the 83 serious offences as well - serious violence and sexual offences.

Q898 Chairman: If we could extend that same query.

John Reid: Let me ask if we can get an answer from the Offenders' Management Service at the moment, and then we will write as Mr Clappison asked.

Ms Edwards: All the offenders who would have been subject to supervision would have been supervised at some point. The problem is, as the Home Secretary has said, this is over a period of years. Some of them would have been supervised but not still be subject.

Chairman: I think what the Committee would like to know is how many of those were at least nominally subject to supervision at the time you started looking.

Q899 Mrs Cryer: Sharon Beshenivsky, the WPC who was shot in Bradford, was my constituent and now the rumours are that this chief suspect has gone off to Somalia. When he was reviewed for deportation it was decided that it was a dangerous place to send him. Apparently we are hearing rumours that he has gone back there. What I want to ask is: what can we do about that sort of case? Would we be seeking extradition - because I do not think we have any arrangement with Somalia - or do we just leave him there; and if we leave him there, there is a danger he will come back and commit another offence?

John Reid: I am not in a position to speculate about a specific case, but let me put it like this: if such circumstances were to arise you could be sure we would not just leave him there. You could be sure that we would make representations at the highest level, for instance through Cabinet colleagues who might be talking to the heads of such states.

Q900 Mr Spring: Home Secretary, I just wanted to turn to the whole question of deportation policy, and just remind you of what the Prime Minister said on 3 May: "I think that it is now time that anybody who is convicted of any imprisonable offence and who is a foreign national is deported". The following week he narrowed this to "foreign prisoners", and last Wednesday 17 May he talked about "the vast bulk" of foreign prisoners. You in your statement today have talked about a new prioritisation which has consideration according to the degree of risk a person poses to the public. This is what you have defined today, and you have alluded to a 12-month sentence for non-EEA nationals. What I would like to know from a practical point of view, because this is exactly what the public needs reassurance about, what is the practical effect of introducing a presumption in favour of deportation as you have set out and echoing what the Prime Minister indicated before?

John Reid: Can I first of all relieve you of the confusion, Mr Spring, that you seem to have between my objective, as described to this Committee which I stand by - which is to see that all foreign nationals who are in this country and given a custodial offence face deportation - and what you picked out from the back page of my statement - which is actually a short-term priority given the resource implications we have at the moment - which is a statement that we should concentrate our resources on this 1,023, on the very serious crimes which have been the subject of questioning from all of your colleagues around the table. I think they are two different things and I would not like you to add that into some other redefinition, because obviously if you confuse what I am saying we ought to do in the short-term with my long-term objectives you will find a discord. Let me go back to what I have said consistently and that is: foreign nationals who are in this country who commit an offence which is sufficiently serious to get a custodial sentence should face deportation. That is where I stand. If you are asking me at the moment what would be the obstacles to actually giving effect to that in every case, which is maybe what you are asking me, there are a range of obstacles, some of which relate to our own rules and regulations, for instance. If you look at the Immigration Rules, Rule 364, which is what you must consider before you deport someone from this country, you will find that they are cast much more widely than the Human Rights Act. Therefore, we have taken a burden upon ourselves which I think we should relieve ourselves of, and that is one of the points I have made in the eight-point action plan today.

Q901 Mr Spring: Of course we all accept that you have resource pressures and you have administrative pressures and you have to set out a priority, nobody is disagreeing with that; however, you have set this out and public opinion does need to have some assurance on this. The question is: if you are going to prioritise considerations for deportations as you have set it out in all cases where non-EEA nationals have been given a 12-month prison sentence, how are these to be assessed? This is a perfectly reasonable question. I accept that this is a short-term one, but one which I think we need to understand a bit more about.

John Reid: Basically what I am considering, far from liberating or liberalising the regime, is actually considering cuffing it. What I am saying is, actually rather than equating together those who have committed a serious offence for which they get perhaps years in prison and somebody who had had three offences for a parking fine and not paid their television licence, I think what the public are concerned about are those at the end of the scale that can be called "serious". At the moment we denote "seriousness" by saying a 12-month sentence. What I would do is say, "Never mind the parking fines let's reduce the 12 months to six months"; so that anyone who has served six months, or an aggregate of six months from several offences, ought to face deportation. That is what I think in the short-term we should do in concentrating our efforts.

Q902 Chairman: That is in dealing with the backlog?

John Reid: That is dealing with the backlog; that is right.

Q903 Chairman: And future cases?

John Reid: No, where I want to get to -----

Q904 Chairman: Before you change the law, I mean?

John Reid: What I want to do is deal with the backlog by being tougher on those who have committed the more serious offences. Where I want to get to I have outlined, which is exactly as I have described, which is that all foreign nationals who have a custodial sentence given to them will face deportation. To get from where we are in dealing with the backlog to where I want to get to, I have set out for you in the written Ministerial Statement, for your discussion, consideration, debate or whatever, the eight priorities I think ought to be actioned on deportations and, incidentally, it goes on to those who are false asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants as well, and then I have given five directions to the Permanent Secretary about the quality of the systems, the people, the management and the leadership that are necessary to accompany those points. I hope that is clear both in the short term dealing with the short-term problem and the long-term one. I do not claim that it is perfect; I have only had two weeks to examine it, but I can assure you I have spent a lot of time on it when not dealing with illegal immigrants, statements to this Committee, absconders from open prison, 7/7, parole board and the various other things which make the Home Secretary's life interesting.

Q905 Mr Spring: Home Secretary, your predecessor said that in the two calendar years 2004 and 2005 around 3,000 foreign national prisoners were deported. I think our understanding is that the total foreign national prisoner population is just over 10,000 currently. What I think would be of interest to know is how many foreign national prisoners considered for deportation are actually deported or removed per year, what proportion this is of the total and what impact, and I absolutely accept that this is a short-term presumption, this is going to have, and have any projections been made of what the impact will be on foreign national prisoners by the introduction of this presumption?

John Reid: I am going to ask the Chief Executive to answer those detailed questions, if I might.

Ms Edwards: You are right, there are 10,232 foreign national prisoners which is a significant increase. We have seen the numbers go up very much. We have a number of schemes in place where we want to work closely with IND to increase the numbers who are deported. I would look to Lin Homer to give the actual figures of the rate of deportation at the present time, but we have the Early Release Scheme that we are using and we also have arrangements to repatriate prisoners where they agree and the country agrees to take them back, so we have a number of measures in place and a much closer working with IND colleagues, I think, means that we expect to see the numbers over time in our prisons go down.

Q906 Mr Spring: Is there any estimate with regards to what the Home Secretary has actually announced today as his priority, and we understand that, but is there any estimate of the increase in numbers?

John Reid: Increased numbers of deportations?

Q907 Mr Spring: Yes, as a result of this presumption.

John Reid: I have not got the estimates yet. What I would say is that the emphasis is on putting people who are in prison with custodial sentences out and not implementing those who are not in prison because they have had very minor offences, so the emphasis will be away from the rule which I mentioned earlier which has appeared to change over time from unknown authority and never been implemented. What I am saying is that, if I were to implement that now, it would divert resources away from dealing with the 1,023, so there will be more effort going into deporting prisoners as a result of this, so more will be deported than would otherwise be the case.

Q908 Chairman: We understand, I think, the policy, Home Secretary and, if you cannot give us the answer today, perhaps you could come back to us. Clearly the implication of what you are saying is that a much higher proportion of the foreign nationals who are in prisons will in future be deported. I think the Committee would like to have an estimate from your knowledge of that stock of people of whether that is going to be 100% of them, 75% of them, 40% or whatever. At the moment you do not, for example, generally deport people at the lower end of that scale who are married to a British citizen with children because that is what your own rules to your own officials say. Is that going to change, is that going to be overridden and, if you could come back to us in the fairly near future with an estimate about the actual impact on the number of deportations, that would be enormously helpful?

John Reid: I will do that. Just so that you understand that this is not just driven by resources or the present crisis, it is actually, in my view, a better, tougher and fairer way of dealing with it. I give you the example that at the moment, if somebody serves a prison sentence of three days three times, they will automatically be up for deportation or indeed three days and two fines outside, whereas, if somebody serves several sentences of ten months or something like that, they do not fall into that category, so making it an aggregate toughens it up, but we will come back with those figures.

Chairman: Thank you.

Q909 Gwyn Prosser: Home Secretary, we have gained the impression that most of the controversial decisions not to deport have been taken by Home Office officials rather than the courts. Today you hade made a statement in order that all decisions on deportation are now made according to the most robust interpretation of the requirements of international obligations.

John Reid: Yes.

Q910 Gwyn Prosser: But would you accept that, up until now, there has been an over-developed human rights culture in some parts of the Home Office and that officials effectively have been putting the rights of murderers and rapists ahead of the rights of the British people to be kept safe?

John Reid: Well, I think that is a big accusation. I am only in there two weeks, so I could not comment on that, but what I will say is this: that the rule which determines what those officials will judge as cases for deportation, whether they will have to be more careful of people's rights before deporting them and make it more difficult to deport them, that rule actually comes in from 1984. In other words, the rules were written in 1984 under the last Government, which are far more liberal, if you like, than even the Human Rights Act. Secondly, the judgment which makes it more difficult for us to deport, which is a judgment from the European Court of Human Rights, which says that, in considering the deportation of someone to an area where his safety may be at risk or he may be at risk of death or torture, you cannot take into account the safety, security and the rights of the rest of the British people if he stays here, that judgment is actually 1996. In other words, it was under the last Government as well and before the Human Rights Act came in. I am all up for scrutinising legislation, whether it is the Human Rights Act or anything else, and interpretation and our competence in administering it in the Home Office, which is the point you made, but I think it is slightly more complex than people make out. The two most difficult sets of regulations, I think, the European Court of Human Rights' decision of 1996, which you may well be aware of, and paragraph 364 of the Immigration Act, which I think is from 1994, both were inherited by this Government, so it is not quite as simple as saying that it is all down to the introduction of the Human Rights Act by this Government.

Q911 Gwyn Prosser: Can we expect that quite robust statement, that order to officials to need backing up with changes to the Human Rights Act?

John Reid: What I have said to them is that what I want to do, as one of the eight ways of getting from where we are to a more robust system of dealing with deportation and illegal immigration and so on, is to make sure, before anybody starts criticising an Act, whether it is the Human Rights Act or anything else, that, if our own regulations are much wider than would be otherwise obliged under that Act and, therefore, make it more difficult for us to deport people, we should reduce those regulations in keeping with the Human Rights Act, but do not extend endlessly beyond it. That is one of the things I have asked them to do, to be more robust in being on the side of the law-abiding majority of citizens of this country and to put more emphasis on their rights. I believe that is what people want in the immigration system; they want a fair system, one that is fair and effective, and I do not believe at the moment that in every area people believe it to be that.

Q912 Gwyn Prosser: We have been talking about decision-making rather than administration. In terms of administration, you have noted in your statement that there is the issue of silos and effectively you are saying that you want more joined-up government within that particular department of the Home Office. Now, there is a view which has been expressed that sometimes people are being released simply because the Prison Service was not notified by the Immigration Service about the status of a particular prisoner, so he was just released. I have been told, Home Secretary, by an immigration officer, who was an enforcement officer, that it was his job from his side of the process to telephone one particular number at the prison as a particular prisoner came close to his release date and he said that it was as simple as this, and I had this discussion before this became a big issue: that he had one telephone number, no email contact and no other process, and that telephone number was used by the public and he said, "I could phone up seven days before, five days before, three days before and eventually the day would come when I would say to my colleagues, 'There's another one been released'", meaning a foreign prisoner with a serious criminal conviction. Does that make sense?

John Reid: It does not make sense, but I believe you. It is precisely for these sorts of reasons that I have asked the Permanent Secretary as well as my two other colleagues to make sure these systems work. What you have got in many of these cases of the 1,023, and I will stand corrected if any of the officials want to do so, but what you have got in these cases is faxes and phone calls, faxes getting piled up and paper files. I was in Lunar House the other day and, God knows, the staff are working away there, but there are files so thick sitting on top of each other in trays and systems and so on. The minute I walked into that, especially if you go unannounced because you then find out some of the things which would be more tidy if you announced you are going, and when I talked to the staff when I was there, and I know the Permanent Secretary in his short term has been out there and seen this as well, these whole systems were trying to face a 21^st Century problem with a late 20^th Century system, and it falls to me to try and build on what my predecessors have done. My predecessors have addressed the technical aspects of this, the legal aspects of this and, in many cases, the resource aspects, but in fact, even if you change the policy, change the law, change the technical aspects of it and put in more resources, unless you have a fundamental overhaul of the system, I do not believe this is going to work, but that means we have to be in this for the long haul.

Q913 Bob Russell: Home Secretary, I wish you well as you sort out the mess you have inherited and could I suggest that one way of regaining a lot of public goodwill in many parts of the country is to drop the police mergers, and particularly that in Essex! Home Secretary, did ministers know that officials had been encouraged not to go after foreign prisoners in case they claimed asylum?

John Reid: Not to my knowledge, no, not as far as I am aware.

Q914 Bob Russell: How many foreign prisoners have been repatriated to serve their prison sentences abroad?

John Reid: Do you mean out of this 1,023?

Q915 Bob Russell: In total, where the courts have sent illegal immigrants to prison, how many of those have actually been sent overseas to serve that sentence either all or in part?

John Reid: Last year the figure was 108, and I am still wearing the health warning, but the figure I have been instructed to say is 108. If that should change, which may well happen, I will write to you.

Q916 Chairman: Home Secretary, perhaps we could move now to the question of illegal migrants and their removal. We have been told that there is a target of removing 12,000 non-asylum cases a year and that it is being met. Can you tell the Committee how that target was agreed?

John Reid: How is the target - sorry?

Q917 Chairman: Agreed. Why 12,000?

John Reid: I am going to ask, if you do not mind, because I do not know the methodology behind the target, Lin Homer.

Ms Homer: My understanding is that this is a target which we set ourselves aligned to the amount of resource we had and to improve on our previous years' performance, so it is a target that is an improvement and is aligned to the number of resources we have got.

Q918 Chairman: So basically the target of 12,000 ----

Ms Homer: It is a management target.

Q919 Chairman: ----- is the number that you thought you could achieve if everybody worked hard and it has not been set in relation to the number of people you need to remove to get on top of the illegal migration problem?

John Reid: There is another indication of why we need to look at this system. I think you always obviously, and I am not defending the indefensible here because that decision was made the wrong way round if that is the case, but you always have to bear in mind the resources which are there, but we ought to be trying to tackle the problem on the basis of what is the extent and nature of the problem.

Q920 Chairman: Do you think you are likely to be able to come back to us, Home Secretary, in due course with an idea of how many you would need to be removing to satisfy yourself that we were getting on top of the problem of illegal migration?

John Reid: Subject to one very big problem which no government has been able to address accurately, and that is the problem discussed at your last Committee meeting. For probably generations, but certainly on the record since Michael Howard was honest enough to say it, no government, as he said, has been able to say with accuracy and definition, "This is the number of illegal immigrants". If you do not know that number and you inherit a number of unknown quantity, as we did from Michael Howard, as he no doubt did from his predecessor, then it becomes impossible, if you have at the heart of any calculation an unknown number of significant proportion, to decide what the total is. It is then compounded because at present, even if you left that aside, we do not have the number of people who leave the country. We know roughly the number of people that come into the country, but since embarkation checks, our reports and so on were abolished, as it happens, by Michael Howard again, and I do not blame him for that because my understanding, to be honest and fair to him, is that the CAB-based system of counting embarkation, those who are leaving the country, was itself highly inaccurate, but, if you do not have that and you are building that on top of a big figure you do not already know, then you have a difficulty in giving any precision to these figures and no government has ----

Q921 Chairman: I am sure the Committee understands that, but you do accept that really choosing a figure of 12,000 people to remove, because that is what you have got enough money and enough staff to remove, does not really make sense in terms of the overall problem of getting on top of the issue?

John Reid: I do understand that and, in my third week in the job, I will go and look at it. What I do not want to promise you is that I come back with a figure which is based on the number of known illegal immigrants because no government has been able to tell that, but I will examine this in detail and I will come back to you.

Q922 Mr Winnick: In the interesting session we had last week with the Director of Enforcement and Removal, which no doubt you have heard about, I did ask the question about tracking individuals, not necessarily those here illegally, but those who have been here with permission and, once their permission has exhausted, what was done to ensure that they left the country. Mr Roberts said this, "I do not think that tracking individual cases at the level that you suggest", what I put to him, "is an effective enforcement strategy". What I am asking you is what is being done to change that?

John Reid: Obviously I cannot speak for the official who was here last week since he had a particularly personal way of addressing these matters.

Mr Winnick: You can put it like that if you like!

Q923 Mr Spring: A bit of an honest way!

John Reid: Yes, and he just got accolade after accolade for his honesty, did he not, Chair? What I hope he meant was that, in terms of allocating resources, many more illegal immigrants would be caught and deported if we concentrated efforts at firms which are employing large numbers of illegal immigrants. As it happens, I am told that in the last year several thousand of these operations were so directed. What I find rather disconcerting, however, is the small number of prosecutions that came after it. I have asked about this and I have been told that that is because, up until relatively recently, such prosecutions were very, very hard to pursue right through to a conclusion, but that recent legislation introduced by the Government should make that much more effective, so I hope, on that case, that we get a higher number of illegal immigrants through that work. I am going to ask, if I might, the Director General to comment on the specific case of the singles and tracking and then come back.

Q924 Mr Winnick: So that there should be no misunderstanding, what I did put to you, and I think you have got the point, I am talking about people who came here legally, no question, had an entry certificate and entry clearance to come here on a temporary basis, but have not left the country when they should have done so and there seems to have been absolutely no follow-up. What amazes people, Home Secretary, and why, and to some extent there are other reasons, there is a lack of confidence amongst the general public, and this is reinforced by the answer we received last week, is that, having exhausted their right to be here, no action is taken and they simply stay on endlessly.

John Reid: Let me address that head on. One of the things I have charged Liam Byrne with in oversight and the Permanent Secretary in detail along with Lin is addressing the journey of someone who comes into this country and then goes out because I am deeply concerned that we do not have any way of tracking once somebody gets beyond, and even up to, an immigration desk. Now, this may appear to be matter of process and detail, but it is crucial. If someone can walk off a plane with no documents or walk through immigration and, as you said, come in legally and then stay here and overstay, once they are in that position, it seems to me it is much more difficult to solve the problem, so the key to this is before someone leaves their own home and gets off the plane. I understand you are asking about a subsequent thing, but you cannot handle the subsequent thing if you have not addressed the identification as they come off the plane because it becomes much more difficult to track anyone. I do not pretend, a fortnight in, that I have identified the solution, but I can tell you that I have identified in my view one of the problems and tasked people already to look at it. Can I ask Lin Homer to comment on the specifics of this.

Ms Homer: I think the Home Secretary is right. What we are trying to do is tackle the problem from both sides. We clearly need to undertake enforcement action in relation to people in this country, but we have to be able to attach an identity to more of our visitors so that they cannot change identity, simply leave the address they gave us when they arrived, change name, lose their documents and, therefore, become untrackable. Therefore, one of the major activities that we are undertaking is biometric visas and we are introducing those on 26 of the routes and what that means is that we can then attach an identity to that person wherever they then appear in the system, and that, as well as extended enforcement and compliance, we believe, is the right way forward. Some of that, I think, is not what I would call 'classic' enforcement; it is the work we need to do with employers and with educational institutions so that, when people are coming in to do a particular job or to study at a particular place, there is a responsibility on the people bringing in that individual also to keep us informed of their whereabouts and that way round, I believe, we stand a much greater chance of bearing down on more overstayers.

Q925 Mr Winnick: So there is going to be a change of policy from what we heard last week where in effect, we were told, individual cases are not going to be the subject of tracking? That is going to change?

John Reid: What I want is to try and find some method of tracking individuals who come to this country. I know it is difficult and I cannot pretend to you that there it can be instantaneously comprehensive in the short term, but it does occur to me, without prejudice, and again I say I am only in two weeks, but it has occurred to me as I have studied this that, rather than just waiting on information technology, which I am prepared to accept will create a solution for this, I ought to be, or at least my officials ought to be, looking at those countries which are the worst offenders in overstayers and saying, "Is there a way that we can say that you do not get into this country unless you hand over some form of identification to the carriers?" I do not know if we can do that, but it is one of the things that I would like to explore and that, I think, addresses the very point you are making.

Q926 Mr Browne: Home Secretary, you have just been talking about systems and tracking methods, but we have been told that there is no central list of people who are entitled to be in the country, this is non-EEA nationals, or who have the right to work or who have been asked to leave the country. Is there not a danger that we are talking about biometric visas and other technological solutions when the very basics that these are built on are not in place and maybe, as you keep going back to the 1980s, we need to go back to basics in terms of trying to address this problem rather than trying to find technological solutions when these lists do not exist?

John Reid: I thought I had made plain that that is precisely what I was saying, that we need to get a fundamental overhaul of this. I do not pretend that I have identified every element of that, but I think, if you look today at the written Ministerial Statement and the eight points and, first, the five managerial general points that apply to the whole Department, you will see that I do take this seriously and I am thinking along the lines that you are suggesting. Now, IT may or may not help, but it will only be a part of, if you like, an add-on to a fundamental reform and transition of the whole system. Incidentally, Chair, can I just make plain in this that I am not saying that my predecessors, Labour and Tory, did not, in the wake of these huge problems they faced, make major advances. If you look at the closure on the French coast of Sangatte and others, if you look at the methods that are being taken for inspection of lorries coming in for illegal immigrants, if you look at the regime on the Channel Tunnel, if you look at the figures on asylum today, big advances have been made. The problem is that the challenges have been growing even greater, not only in the post-Cold War world that I mentioned, but also Europe which has now got a bigger movement of people and goods than ever before, so I would not want anybody to think that I think nothing has been done. Huge steps have been taken, but I think that they have been taken on top of a system that needs a fundamental overhaul and that takes time, effort and endurance, and I think, Mr Browne, that is exactly what you are suggesting.

Q927 Mr Benyon: Home Secretary, in talking about the people who employ illegal immigrants, can I start with one particular employer, you, and ask whether you think that confidence in you might rightly be questioned by the public because of the fact that you went on air last Thursday with a statement which was subsequently proved, concerning the five employees, to be different from what actually was the case? Do you not think you should have checked in greater detail about those employees with the contractor concerned?

John Reid: Well, I thought I dealt with that right at the beginning, that I had actually answered the question ---

Q928 Mr Benyon: You stated an element of regret, but do you not feel ----

John Reid: I did not actually state an element of regret. I said that I had found to my experience that not every fact or figure you were given in the Home Office existed 24 hours without revision, and I actually mentioned that specific thing right at the beginning when I think you were present. What we are doing on that is the Permanent Secretary, as from that night, was checking all our procedures and, on my instructions, the use of that firm has been suspended. I understand that an investigation is under way. I have my own views which I will not express here because there are certain industrial tribunal regulations, so I cannot, about whether or not there should have been suspensions immediately or not. I am not sure whether there have been, and not yet is the answer, but we will have to go through those processes which of course you would support. In that case, it is not right that that should have happened and we have got to do everything to make sure it does not happen again. All I would say is what I said that evening, if that is what you are referring to me, three things in fact. One was that we ought to congratulate the security guard, and I say that again, because she did a very good job and, now that I know the full facts, she did an even better job than I thought at the time for reasons that I cannot go into at present. The second thing is that I understand this is the first time that they had turned up and that is the one thing that proved to be incorrect. I should say that this is not cleaners who are in there every night, incidentally, but this is computer cleaners who come every six months, but that was wrong and I regret that that was wrong. The other thing was that I was wise enough to say that, because the security guard that evening had dealt with it in, I thought, an exemplary fashion, we should not for a minute believe that this meant there had been 100% certainty in the past and it may well be on past occasions that the rules had been broken and people had got in. As it happens, that was a wise caveat based on my one week in the Home Office.

Q929 Mr Benyon: On the more general subject of employers, do you believe there should be zero tolerance of employers who knowingly employ illegal immigrants?

John Reid: I think there are two things out of this. One is that in future I should not take care of cleaners or anything else that ought to be under the management of the Home Office, and that is why today I have stuck to the strategic issues. The second is that, like anyone else, if someone knowingly breaks the law, they should face the law.

Q930 Mr Benyon: In order that we can have confidence that some of the disturbing evidence we took last week is being addressed, yesterday I met the person whom The Observer term as "Tanya" and I heard a really horrendous story about her treatment.

John Reid: Absolutely.

Q931 Mr Benyon: I am dealing with a continuing, very serious problem relating to ancestral visa routes for people from Zimbabwe which is terribly upsetting for those individuals concerned. We have heard catalogues of evidence to this Committee about real cultural, intrinsic problems at IND. Can you give us the confidence that, in terms of this specific area dealing with employers of illegal immigrants, there is the ability and you are going to give the leadership which will really address these problems?

John Reid: Yes. I am as horrified as you are about the details of that case. It is bad enough if you are vulnerable without someone preying on that vulnerability, if that is what has happened and I am not prejudging anything. I can tell you that a man has been suspended, he has been investigated and he has now been investigated by the police for criminal activity as well, that I have instructed the Permanent Secretary that, once that has been done, he has to find ways of carrying out a wider appraisal of whether this may in any way not be an isolated incident, which I hope it is, and I am glad to say that, when something like this was discovered before in the public enquiry office, two were sacked and several more, a lot more than two, are under investigation and they should be treated pretty robustly.

Q932 Mr Benyon: Sorry, these issues were sort of raised by another person back in January and there is some feeling that these matters are not being addressed. In terms of this inquiry, we want really to know that the IND is going to move on from this.

John Reid: All I can say is that that would be my intention as well. I think I have referred to what happened in January and it is not true that nothing happened. I think two people were sacked there and there is a number which I know, but I cannot tell you, but it is more than two, who are still under investigation and they will be treated similarly. In the case of this one, not only is there an investigation, but there is a potential criminal prosecution, which limits what I say. Until such times as that is finished, then I am not in a position to order a further and wider investigation, but I have already spoken to the Permanent Secretary about that. Do you want to say anything, David?

Sir David Normington: This behaviour is totally unacceptable and I do not believe it is endemic across IND, but Lin and I will be doing everything we can to ensure that standards across IND and across the rest of the Home Office are higher because this is totally unacceptable behaviour and we will not tolerate it.

Q933 Chairman: Home Secretary, could I just raise one final point which follows on from a question earlier. If you are going to deal with the problem of illegal employment, employment of illegal workers, whether it is employers turning a blind eye or conniving which, we have had evidence, takes place on a large scale, and most illegal migrants are here because they are working, if you are going to deal with those problems, you are going to need support from well outside the Home Office, from other government departments, whether it is clamping down on dodgy colleges, whether it is tax enforcement, whatever. You are new in the job, but do you have the commitment right across government to deal with this or are you out there on your own with the IND trying to fight it and everybody else is looking in the other direction?

John Reid: Can I tell you at the next meeting? I work on the basis that I will have such support. I have not yet had prolonged discussions with anybody on the subject actually apart from yourself, Chair, but I would say that I would be looking for help, assistance, advice and support not only across government, but, if I might respectfully say so, from you and your Committee. You have been involved in these things a lot longer than I have. I am a couple of weeks into this, so I do not believe that this is an issue which actually should hugely divide us up. I know there are difficult subjects involved here. I believe ID cards and biometrics are actually, the more I look at this, an essential prerequisite, although they are not a sufficient condition of arriving at this. I know others have different views and want to be persuaded of this, but I think, apart from that, there is a pretty common commitment among us all to address this because it is a matter of fairness. The people of this country are very welcoming to those who come and who contribute towards our society, who accept the responsibilities as well as the rights, they are very welcoming and that is the nature of our culture and has been for a long, long time. I do not want to see that threatened by the perception of people that this system is not being fair to them and that it is being misused or abused through incompetence of a government department. I will, therefore, attempt to address this and, on the issue of illegal employment as well as everything else, I look to you, if I might, and I will start reading your back reports, but also in the future, Chair, for what advice and assistance you can give me because I have a feeling after a fortnight that I am going to need all the support and friends I can get.

Chairman: Home Secretary, we will, I think, all acknowledge the progress which has been made in a number of areas, but nobody could accuse you today of understating the problems that you face and we look forward to seeing you in the months to come. Thank you very much indeed to you and your officials.