Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
HOME OFFICE
26 APRIL 2006
Q40 Kitty Ussher: I look forward to receiving
another note then perhaps. My final question which is based more
on the accounts, earlier in the exchange you just had with the
Chairman you said you felt you had a choice between signing off
the accounts to enable Parliament to have something or not signing
them off. My question to you as Accounting Officer is if you were
not completely happy with them why did you sign them off?
Sir David Normington: I signed
them off with the qualifications that are there about the accounts.
I signed them off and said at the same time I acknowledged that
they were not fully acceptable accounts. I am afraid I just took
advice about this. This is on 24 January, I think I signed them.
I was advised that if I did not do that they could not be laid
before Parliament. I was advised, I stand to be corrected, by
the NAO as well as my own finance people that I should sign them
because that would enable the Comptroller and Auditor General
to issue his Report and for them to be laid before Parliament
at the time. So I had a choice really. We would not be here, would
we, if I had not signed them off because there would not be any
accounts laid. I was advised to do that and I thought that was
the right thing to do. I did not sign them off without putting
in some qualifications about the accounts and also saying that
we were seeking to improve the position, which is also what is
in the Comptroller and Auditor General's Report.
Q41 Kitty Ussher: When you debated
internally that dilemma, did you feel that if you had more time
you could potentially have solved some of the problems that were
very obviously there?
Sir David Normington: I think
the late submission of the accounts to NAO meant that they did
not have time to complete the audit of the accounts. I do not
blame them for that; we submitted them late. We thought that if
there had been more time, and I think the NAO thought that if
there had been more time we could do more checks and we would
be more sure, or less, but we would have more information about
whether the accounts that we presented in December were accurate
accounts, but of course we presented them late and therefore there
was not time to do the level of auditing you would need to do
given the question marks that there were over the accounts.
Q42 Kitty Ussher: So you decided
to let it go for this year and try better next year?
Sir John Bourn: Perhaps I could
say that there is a requirement to produce accounts by 31 January
so something had to be produced (of a defective kind if necessary)
as Sir David has explained, so that was the requirement to produce
something by 31 January that required him to go forward and produce
something by that time for me to be able to produce an audit opinion,
given it was a disclaimer, but nonetheless audit opinion on that.
Q43 Kitty Ussher: Is that a legislative
requirement?
Ms Diggle: Yes it is.
Q44 Chairman: I am going to call
Richard Bacon next but just following that line of questioning,
this has gone on since July so why did the Home Secretary write
to me yesterday the day before this hearing to reveal what previously
was unknown? Was it because you were worried or you advised him?
Was there any discussion in the Department that this question
might be asked again by Richard Bacon and therefore you had to
get this out in the public domain yesterday?
Sir David Normington: We did debate
the timing, of course. I will be completely frank with you. We
thought it was important to put this in the public domain before
we met the Committee of Public Accounts today. If we had done
this tomorrow you would have considered it very sharp practice,
so we decided to put it in the public domain yesterday and that
is what we did. That was the Home Secretary's and my decision.
Chairman: Fair enough, that is fine.
Mr Bacon?
Q45 Mr Bacon: I would like to ask
some questions about the accounts too, but I would like to start
with this question arising from the earlier hearing. The reason
I wrote to you on 20 March, Sir David, was because in my question,
155 in the Report published on 14 March, I asked: "If you
can possibly send a note, in as far as you have information on
this, about the number of criminals who are failed asylum seekers
and are then released from prison: how many there are, where they
are, what type of crime they have committed, what sentences they
were given and how long they served . . ." This was actually
a question to Sir John Gieve of course. "Is it possible for
you to do a note on that?" and Sir John replied: "I
can do a note and let you have the information we have",
but the note that came back was of course about only one of those
questions, namely the number, and it turned out to be a wrong
number. You were right, Sir John, in answer to Kitty Ussher that
500 was the estimate given and you were also right that the tenor
of the meeting was that a note would follow with more details,
and the details were 403. The reason I wrote to you, Sir David,
on 20 March was because that was the only question you answered.
There was no answer to the questions of who the criminals were,
what crimes they had committed, and how long they had been sentenced
to, and so on, and that was all the information that came out
yesterday, in addition to the fact that it was not 403, it was
609. Why was it that when the answers were being prepared—and
it is very easy when you have got the transcript here in front
of you and that is why we have a transcript and record these sessions—why
was it that only one of my various questions was answered?
Sir David Normington: I do not
know that. I think it was a mistake actually.
Q46 Chairman: Can you speak up.
Sir David Normington: I think
it was a mistake. I do not know that. I cannot account for it.
It was not done, I agree, and that of course came to light to
me when you wrote to me saying that.
Q47 Mr Bacon: I gather that it has
emerged last night that there were some 288, I take it since the
beginning of September last year until March 2006. Is that right?
Sir David Normington: I think
it is the end of August.
Q48 Mr Bacon: Right, but roughly
seven months.
Sir David Normington: May I just
say—
Q49 Mr Bacon: Yes.
Sir David Normington: —this
figure is in the letter to the Chairman yesterday. It was not
released last night as was given the impression. It was in the
letter to Mr Leigh.
Q50 Mr Bacon: I would like to pursue
this question about unpacking the figures. You very kindly set
out 61 in September, 49 in October, and so on, which is on the
record. It is a total of 288. That is basically 41 per month,
whereas the 609 in the previous answer relate to the whole of
2001 until August 2005, do they not?
Sir David Normington: Yes.
Q51 Mr Bacon: So that is a considerably
longer period and on a monthly basis far fewer. There has been
a big acceleration since the end of last August, has there not?
Sir David Normington: There has
been an increase, yes.
Q52 Mr Bacon: Roughly three to four
times more per month being released since last August than was
the case over the preceding four years. That is correct, is it
not?
Sir David Normington: There has
been an increase in deportations over that period.
Q53 Mr Bacon: I am not asking about
deportations. I am asking about people being released from prison
without consideration being given to whether they should be deported
or not. That was 609 over a period of nearly four years and that
excludes the last five months so you have to knock that off. It
would be 609 divided by 43 months which is 14 per month during
that period. I take it that the phrase in your letter "2001
to August 2005" means January 2001 to August 2005?
Sir David Normington: Yes.
Q54 Mr Bacon: That means 14 per month
in that nearly four-year period. Then in the period from the end
of August/early September until now, March 2006 you have said,
it goes up to 41 per month. Now if you divide 41 by 14 you get
nearly three, 2.9 so it is three times higher in the last seven
months than it was previous to that. Why? What has happened to
accelerate the number of prisoners being released?
Sir David Normington: Over this
period as well there is a significant increase in foreign prisoners
going on, a very significant increase. I have not got those precise
figures. In a sense, one of the reasons this is happening and
we were having difficulties with it is that the number of foreign
nationals in prison was increasing and IND's efforts to cope with
that have not been keeping pace, and we have been putting extra
resources in during the autumn to try to ensure that we do keep
pace. I think that is basically the underlying story, that we
have a great increase in foreign national prisoners.
Q55 Mr Bacon: These 1,023 over this
period since February 1999, you have got them divided as between
arsonists, rapists, murderers, burglars, kidnappers, drug dealers,
paedophiles and so on. Presumably you also have them divided by
time, by month, so for example the 61 that you are referring to
who were released in September 2005 or the 49 that you are referring
to who were released in October 2005, you would be able to say,
would you, how many of those were drug dealers, how many of those
were burglars, how many, if any, were rapists and so on?
Sir David Normington: I do not
have those figures, Mr Bacon. You very kindly gave me the notice
and we do not have the breakdown month by month.
Q56 Mr Bacon: But you could create
it?
Sir David Normington: I expect
we could create it.
Q57 Mr Bacon: In order to create
this 1,023 and you know how many of them are in each category,
you must have that information, must you not?
Sir David Normington: It follows
that we must have the information. We have been concentrating
on identifying these people and dealing with them and not breaking
the figures down any more.
Q58 Mr Bacon: I understand, although
you have got quite a few thousand civil servants and I had hoped
one might be able to help with this. I did telephone you and I
did only ask for the information that you referred to that you
very kindly gave us because I realised it was not going to be
possible to break down over 1,000 in the space of an hour or two.
Sir David Normington: I very much
appreciated the notice.
Q59 Mr Bacon: I think it would be
helpful if we could have a breakdown of the whole of the 1,023
in two ways, first of all by month, so that we know from February
1999 onwards how many were released each month so that we can
clearly see a trend, and, secondly within that by offence so that
we know how many were murderers, how many were burglars or how
many were convicted of driving offences or whatever it is, if
it is possible to break it down in those two different ways.[6]
Sir David Normington: I will do
my best.
6 Ev 23-24 and 31-32 Back
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