Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
HOME OFFICE
26 APRIL 2006
Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon and welcome
to the Committee of Public Accounts where today we are considering
the Home Office's failure to render audited accounts to Parliament.
The factors leading to the Comptroller and Auditor General being
unable to form an opinion on its accounts are set out in the Comptroller
and Auditor General's Report on Home Office Resource Accounts
for 2004-05. We welcome Sir David Normington, the Permanent Secretary
at the Home Office, Sir John Gieve, his predecessor, and Helen
Kilpatrick, the Director General of Financial and Commercial at
the Home Office. Thank you particularly Sir John for coming back
to see us this afternoon; we are very grateful. Sir David, your
Department has failed to protect the public in the matter of deporting
convicted foreign nationals. You have failed to render accounts
to Parliament that can even be considered by the Comptroller and
Auditor General. What are you going to do to get a grip on your
own Department?
Sir David Normington: As a new
Permanent Secretary I have been assessing the Home Office's capability,
of course. I am sure you will want to discuss this later, but
I think it is a Department that has been improving significantly.
I very much regret that these two events cast such a shadow over
its performance. I am ensuring in both the instances that are
being discussed this week, the accounts and foreign national prisoners,
that we do have proper arrangements in place to ensure that this
does not happen again. Some of that action did not start with
me but in both instances I am confident that we are going to put
these things right. I have a good senior management team in place
to do that. We are putting in place, and in some cases have put
in place, the arrangements to improve the position.
Q2 Chairman: Ten months after the
end of the financial year your Department was incapable of presenting
proper accounts to the external auditor. Can one conceive of this
situation happening in the private sector? And if it did happen,
would not the chief executive of that company be held to account
and indeed would have had to resign by now?
Sir David Normington: Maybe. All
kinds of things happen in the private sector, do they not?
Q3 Chairman: That is rather a facetious
reply. It is actually a serious question. This disclaimer of your
accounts is unprecedented for a great department of state, a big
spending department, accounts which were in such a chaotic state
that not only were they riddled with errors but the Comptroller
and Auditor General could not even consider them. There is no
point just making facetious comments about what might or might
not happen in the private sector. We know what would happen in
the private sector. People might end up in prison for this sort
of behaviour.
Sir David Normington: What I was
going on to say was the Home Office's performance in not producing
satisfactory accounts was clearly unacceptable. We made two attempts
to produce those accounts. The accounts that we produced in December
were the ones that the NAO disclaimed. We have since then been
working on those accounts with the NAO to reconcile the balances.
I am more confident now than I was then that those accounts were
true and fair accounts and that they will also provide the opening
balance for the 2005-06 accounts. I do not claim that this is
satisfactory performance. It was unacceptable performance. It
does not mean—
Q4 Chairman: Then are you prepared
to apologise to Parliament?
Sir David Normington: Yes of course
I am. I do apologise to Parliament. It is unacceptable. It is
the responsibility of the Accounting Officer, my responsibility,
to produce proper accounts. We failed to do that. We are putting
that right.
Q5 Chairman: Sir John, if you look
at paragraph 10 can I ask you a question based on that, please.
Why did you not take your financial reporting obligations seriously?
Sir John Gieve: Paragraph 10 of
the C&AG's Report?
Q6 Chairman: Yes?
Sir John Gieve: I did take them
seriously. I am sorry, I do not think this says I did not take
them seriously. I did take them seriously and, as you know, I
have apologised to you and through you to Parliament for the fact
that we failed to produce proper accounts.
Q7 Chairman: Sir David, was the National
Audit Office Report in July on dealing with failed asylum seekers
cleared with Ministers?
Sir David Normington: I am afraid
I do not know that.
Q8 Chairman: If I put it to you that
the National Audit Office has informed me that it was cleared
with the Immigration Minister, can you gainsay that?
Sir David Normington: I cannot
gainsay that. I think those Reports usually are cleared with the
Minister. I know I should not say as the Accounting Officer who
signed this that I was not there, but I was not there, so I am
afraid I personally do not know the answer.
Q9 Chairman: Can you give us a monthly
breakdown of this figure of 1,023 foreign nationals who have failed
to be deported month by month?
Sir David Normington: I cannot
at this moment give you that monthly breakdown.[1]
Q10 Chairman: When will you be able to
give it to this Committee?
Sir David Normington: I could
give you the monthly breakdown tomorrow or maybe by the end of
today.
Q11 Chairman: This hearing might
last some time. I understand that you were rung earlier warning
you that this question might be asked. I would have thought in
view of what has been happening in the last 24 hours these figures
should be available at the Home Office. The fact that they are
not readily available to you, the Permanent Secretary, leads us
to question even more whether you are in control of your own Department.
Sir David Normington: In that
case let me be quite clear what I was asked to do at a quarter
to three and that was to provide, I thought, a monthly breakdown
from September to March, these last six months. I have come with
those figures and I can provide them. That is what I thought you
wanted.
Q12 Chairman: Give it to us now.
Sir David Normington: I will if
you want: September, 61; October, 49; November, 34; December,
49; January, 40; February, 30; March, 25.
Q13 Chairman: If any further months
come to light before the end of this hearing or the latest by
tomorrow we would be grateful to have them because you can understand
in the light of our experience of what was told us in October
we are rather dubious about promises of notes these days. Sir
David, when a judge makes a recommendation for a foreign national
to be deported at the end of their sentence, if the Home Secretary
fails to even consider that recommendation because apparently
the immigration part of your Department is not in contact with
the prison part of your Department, could he be held in contempt
of court?
Sir David Normington: I do not
know what the legal position is. Obviously we should follow what
the judge says and in all the cases that are in question here
we are seeking to do that, to consider their deportation. I think
only in a proportion of the 1,023 cases did the judge recommend
consideration of deportation. I think it is quite a small proportion
of those. My recollection is under 200 of those was where the
judge recommended that. We are following up all those cases. It
is true that we have not followed then up expeditiously but we
are following them up and seeking to ensure that both in the cases
where the judge did recommend it and where he did not that we
are considering deportation.
Q14 Chairman: Sir John, we are very
grateful, as I say, for you coming back. I know that you are now
at the Bank of England but perhaps you could walk us through the
chronology as best you are able because Sir David only took over
the Department in December. Just give us an idea of what was happening
in this Department. You had the National Audit Office Report available
to you, which you cleared of course, which was shown to the relevant
minister in July. You came to give evidence to us in October.
You gave us a figure of 403, which we now know was not a correct
figure. Why were you not in a position, when presumably alarm
bells were ringing in the Department back in July, to be able
to give us a proper figure back in October when you came before
us? I may say straightaway that I do not believe for a minute
that somebody of your distinguished background would ever seek
to mislead the Committee or not tell them the full facts, but
I want to get to the bottom of why apparently there was some systemic
failure in the Home Office which resulted in you giving such wrong
information.
Sir John Gieve: I will try. In
October, Mr Bacon asked about asylum seekers, I think, or ex-asylum
seekers and offences they had committed, and we gave some answers,
which I think were true, which were we had set up a new unit and
that we were trying to get on top of this and shorten the period
between the end of their sentence and deportation. He asked for
a further note which we sent, I think, a fortnight later.
Q15 Chairman: This did not give the
information that Richard Bacon had asked for.
Sir John Gieve: No, but we sent
a note a fortnight later with the transcript of evidence, which
gave all (and I still think it is true) that I am aware we had
at that stage by way of information. We said that we were aware
of 400 cases in the period 2001-05. Subsequently we found another
200 cases in that period and some earlier and later cases. What
was going on? Well, I think the systemic problem was the problem
of communication between the Prison Service and the Immigration
Department in getting them both to share the goal of removing
prisoners. What was happening in the autumn was that, alerted
to this problem, we had set up a unit to try and get a better
grip on this. As far as I could see, by October they had only
got so far and in fact the latest data is the result of another
six months' work.
Q16 Chairman: Sir David, what meetings
were there between ministers or top officials in the Department
drawing together the Prison Service and the Immigration Service
so that the two sides of your Department could actually talk to
each other? We were told during this hearing that it was very
difficult to deal with failed asylum seekers because they vanish
into the community but when part of your Department is actually
locking somebody up and even knowing what they are having for
breakfast, it is very difficult, is it not, for another part of
the Department to claim not to know where they are?
Sir David Normington: There are
two answers to that. One is that I personally have been at a number
of meetings in the three and a half months that I have been there
where the management of the Prison Service and the management
of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate have been round
the table with ministers talking about foreign national prisoners,[2]
who are a big proportion of the prison population and obviously
a matter of concern therefore. I, too, since I run the whole thing,
have reporting to me both lines of management and I have a management
board which brings together at the top level of the Department
both the National Offender Management service as it now is, which
includes the Prison Service, and the Immigration and Nationality
Directorate. My predecessor and I have worked hard to bring those
together. It is not true that there are two separate departments
here that are not talking to each other. Indeed, there is a protocol
in place for ensuring in these cases that the Prison Service notifies
the Immigration and Nationality Directorate of prisoners who are
foreign nationals.
Q17 Chairman: By the way, is that your
recollection as well, Sir John, that while you were in charge
of the Department up to December that these meetings were taking
place between Ministers and between officials of the two departments
meeting together? Is that your recollection?
Sir John Gieve: Yes, well, certainly
all the comments about the management board are absolutely right.
In terms of meetings on this specific subject, yes, I do remember
going to several meetings. We were approaching it from two angles.
One was the size of the prison population and the fact that a
large proportion of the increase was accounted for by foreign
prisoners, so we were looking at it from that angle to see whether
we were deporting people early enough and thus reducing pressure
on the prisons. And then secondly we were approaching it from
not just the asylum angle but the immigration law angle and asking
are we deporting people expeditiously and therefore getting organised
to do that before they come out of prison? I remember going to
several meetings particularly from the summer onwards about that.
Q18 Chairman: Which of course leads
us to the obvious question of why, whilst these meetings were
taking place after the National Audit Office Report had been published,
these foreign nationals were still being released into the community.
Sir David?
Sir David Normington: Because
all the changes that were being put in place had not properly
taken effect. I cannot defend that. That is not acceptable. That
is the bit that is not acceptable. It should have been happening.
It was being gripped but it was not yet reducing the figures that
I gave to nought, which is where we have to be.
Q19 Chairman: This paragraph 10 that
I alluded to earlier: "These accounts contained numerous
errors and internal inconsistencies. In particular, amounts relating
to cash, Exchequer funding and non retainable income due to the
Consolidated Fund were contradictory and did reconcile between
the different places in which they appeared in the accounts. There
were also material omissions and misstatements . . ." Why
did you issue a statement of internal control, Sir David, on these
accounts? You signed it.
Sir David Normington: Why did
I sign the accounts?[3]
1 Ev 31-32 Back
2
Ev 32 Back
3
Note by witness: Paragraph 10 of the NAO Report refers
to "errors and internal inconsistencies" in respect
of the first draft of the accounts which were put to the NAO in
September 2005 and not the second draft which were put forward
in December 2005. The Accounting Officer signed the Statement
of Internal Control based on the second draft. Back
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