UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 162-i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

 

 

THE WORK OF THE HOME OFFICE

 

 

Tuesday 12 December 2006

RT HON JOHN REID MP, SIR DAVID NORMINGTON KCB, MS LIN HOMER
and MS HELEN EDWARDS CBE

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1- 82

 

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

1.	This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.
2.	Any public use of, or reference to, the contents should make clear that neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record. The transcript is not yet an approved formal record of these proceedings.
3.	Members who receive this for the purpose of correcting questions addressed by them to witnesses are asked to send corrections to the Committee Assistant.
4.	Prospective witnesses may receive this in preparation for any written or oral evidence they may in due course give to the Committee.

 

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Home Affairs Committee

on Tuesday 12 December 2006

Members present

Mr John Denham, in the Chair

Mr Richard Benyon

Mr Jeremy Browne

Ms Karen Buck

Mr James Clappison

Mrs Ann Cryer

Mrs Janet Dean

Margaret Moran

Gwyn Prosser

Bob Russell

Martin Salter

Mr Gary Streeter

Mr David Winnick

________________

Memorandum submitted by Sir David Normington

 

Examination of Witnesses

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

Q1 Chairman: Home Secretary, I am very grateful to you for coming, obviously not for the first time but for the first of the Annual Report sessions, I believe. For the record, could you introduce yourself and those who are with you. I know that you would like to bring the Committee up to date on recent events, so once you have introduced your colleagues for the record would you like to start your statement?

John Reid: Thank you very much, Chairman. To my left, and your right, is Lin Homer, who is the Director-General of IND, the Immigration and Nationality Directorate; to my right is a senior official, David Normington, who is a Permanent Secretary; and to his right, Helen Edwards who is in charge of the National Offenders Management Service, that is the Probation and Prison Service for those who do not like acronyms. Thank you for your kind invite. I will start by wishing you and your Committee a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year and Season's Greetings, thus covering all tastes. The Home Office, Chairman, obviously touches everybody in the United Kingdom, so it is a pretty important Department and it is vital, therefore, that we are trusted in delivering improvements to people's quality of life. You will by now, since my last visit to the Committee, have seen the Cabinet Office Capability Review and also the Autumn Performance Report, and you will have seen, I hope, that both confirm my original and previous assessment, that some areas of my Department needed urgent improvement. I think I made that plain to the Committee when I last visited. However, I hope you will also have seen how we want to change and we are trying to change. Within eight weeks of our last discussion we had published new plans laying out the route to reforming and transforming some of these areas across the Home Office core and particularly in IND, the Immigration and Nationality Department, and the criminal justice system. We have made very public plans with very public performance indicators against which we can be judged not only by you but by the public. We are now in the course of implementing those plans. Substantial change will take some time, but I believe we have at least made a substantial start. I want to thank my staff for taking my blunt assessment as a spur to action and for the way in which they responded. I am determined that we drive just as hard in implementing those plans as we did in producing them in the first place. Certainly the Department is driving hard at the particular challenge I inherited on foreign national prisoners; Lin Homer, the Director-General of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, updated the Committee in October. I believe that you have received a further update this morning to bring you right up to the position we have today. I will give you an indication of further progress when we come to that subject, as I have no doubt we will. What I can say now is that the figures for last week show a record number of deportations or removals of foreign national prisoners, 88 last week. That is the highest that we have ever removed in the normal course of our activity. There are some indicators of progress that I could perhaps point out without in any way claiming that we have reached perfection or anything like it, but for Home Office reform we are on course to meet our end of December commitments and we have made over 20 changes to the leadership of that Department since we last met. We are improving our risk management through a new and more rigorous process that is already in place and we have taken steps to improve the accuracy of our data. Since July, as I said, we have 20 changes at the senior leadership of the Department and we have also reduced the headquarter staffing by just over 200 posts since we last met. On immigration and nationality, asylum applications for the year to date are the lowest since 1993. That is not a matter of luck, it is a matter of recognition internationally that we are now handling these matters in a fair but a very effective fashion. This is also the first time where for the first three quarters of any year the Home Office has managed to remove more failed asylum seekers than the number making unfounded claims, the so‑called "tipping target", with the tipping target exceeded by around 700 for the first three quarters of this year. None of this guarantees future success, none of it means, for instance, that we will meet the tipping target automatically for the year as a whole, but it is a substantial achievement, particularly when you consider we have also had to deal with foreign national prisoners and other difficulties which we have identified. In short, I think that we have made significant progress in delivering some of the things we said we would deliver. For example, the legacy programme over the inherited case files, which had been opened but never finished, has now started. I said we would start that by the end of the year. We have published proposals for the Migration Advisory Committee, we are well advanced with plans for putting the new Border and Immigration Agency in place and we are ready to pilot a higher degree of visibility with uniforms from next month. On the justice system, we have already implemented a service commitment in all 43 police forces, so people know what to expect from the police. We legislated to double the maximum sentence for carrying a knife in public to four years. We have started a consultation on how to make sentencing clearer and to tighten the role for squashing convictions and we have published proposals for new powers to tackle anti-social behaviour. I mentioned a few of those things to indicate that there has been some progress and I would like to thank my officials and all of my ministers because there is no doubt in a department as large as the Home Office unless the Secretary of State is prepared to devolve decision‑making powers to the ministers and they are prepared to face up to making those decisions themselves, then it cannot be made to work efficiently. I want to thank my ministers and officials, but I also want to put in a major caveat because we started in this Department with a self‑critical analysis and I want to continue that way. We have made progress in some areas, but we are still far from perfection, I know that. The key now is to continue the way we started, to follow through the implementation of the plans and to carry out the reforms of our systems, but you will no doubt wish to know, Chairman, that we are committed to that continual effort of further improvements and I look forward to trying to answer some of your questions today.

Q2 Chairman: Thank you very much, Home Secretary, for bringing us up to date and we will, indeed, I am sure, return to those issues in the questioning. It may be fair to say perhaps that what you have promised us today, as you did in the summer, was to do what the Home Office has set out to do much better than it has done it in the past. Could I ask quite a big question to open with about the challenge. We have been looking on the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit website and that tells us that the United Kingdom spends more of its national wealth on law and order than any other industrialised country, including the United States of America, yet, for example, we had over 4,000 criminal offenders per 100,000 of the population a couple of years ago; the European average was 1,600. What is it about Britain that says that we spend far more of our national wealth on law and order than any comparable country, including the United States of America, yet we get an outcome like that?

John Reid: First of all, I think if you look at international statistics we have to be careful about comparisons which are based on figures that are not always compiled in the same fashion. The example I would give you is the number of people who are in prison. If you look per 100,000 of the population, it certainly is true that we are way above the European average but we are massively beneath the United States, but nevertheless in the European dimension you would put us near the top. However, if you look at prisoners per crime committed or offence detected, then you find that we are very much in the middle of the European league. For instance, Sweden is down at something like five, we vary between 12 and 16 but are about 12 at the moment. The average is 17 for Europe. The first thing is statistics can be misleading depending on how they are compiled. The second thing is I think it costs us a bit for the type of policing that we require. The British people want to see policing that is visible, accessible and responsible. That is why we are rolling out neighbourhood policing teams. That is not the same in every culture and every country, not even in the United States. People like to see the bobby on the beat and, therefore, we have got a record number of police numbers, 141,000, which are now supplemented in many ways by police community support officers and so on. There is a third question which I do not think any of us can answer and that is why do certain aspects of our life, whether cultural or social, lead to a very high instance of crime, or is it the case that our police services are better at detecting crime than many other countries because crime levels as well can depend on how the crime and crime detection is recorded. For instance, I dare say that in some of our areas we have changed the nature of recording some forms of crime, you suddenly find a large increase which is not necessarily because the crime has gone up but because the detection and compilation of the statistics is now more accurate than ever before and certainly more accurate than many of our competitor nations. At the bottom there is the question, why is Britain the way Britain is? It is because of our history, culture, structure and so on.

Q3 Chairman: Somebody else could look at the figures allowing for all of those caveats and say, "Look, it is not just that we are not being effective as a Home Office, we must be doing something wrong to be spending so much on trying to tackle this problem and apparently doing less well in making inroads into it than many other comparable problems". Do you ever lie awake at night wondering whether this is not just about Home Office performance but actually over the last long period of time this country has got its strategy wrong?

John Reid: If you take one big aspect of that, which we no doubt will come on to, that is re-offending rates. One of the reasons that we get such a high level of crime, or an apparently high level of crime here, is that we have a very high re-offending rate and that is one of the reasons why having put so much money into probation, 40% more in the last five years and having put in 5,000 more staff, indeed increased staff by 50% since the Labour Government came in, to find the figures stubbornly staying at around 60%, depending on which category of people that we are looking at, suggests to me that we need to do something quite dramatic to take care of that particular problem. I realise that it is controversial when you say what we ought to do is to break up the monopoly of the public sector being the only people who are attending to re-offending, and bring in the expertise in the charitable sector, in the voluntary sector, or indeed, in the private sector where it has been shown that they can work, but not to accept fatalistically the fact that re-offending has stayed at that rate, because if we can tackle re-offending and reduce that rate I think that will probably have a bigger effect on reducing the crime rate than anything else that we can do. That is why we are bringing in the National Offender Management Service Bill.

Q4 Chairman: Given that we have a system which consumes a large amount of public spending, you have now got a very tight spending settlement for 2008-11. Given everything that you yourself have told us about the capacity of the Home Office to manage change, are you really going to be able to get through those three years without frontline services not feeling the pinch because it is impossible to squeeze out efficiency in other areas?

John Reid: First of all, you are right in saying that we spend a lot of money on the services which we provide, whether it is policing, probation, prisons or whatever. Indeed, I think I am correct in saying that since the Government came in in 1997 there has been something like a 75% increase in real terms. That has had some obvious results. We have got more prisoners and particularly more dangerous prisoners in prison for longer than ever before. The numbers have gone up by about 40% of those in prison and the sentences have gone up. We have got more police on the streets than ever before. We are rolling out neighbourhood policing teams and so on. However, it is also true, as you say, that the public expenditure limits, not just for the Home Office but I suspect for every department, in the coming years will be much tighter and, you are absolutely right, that means very tough choices. There is an infinite variety of needs, there is a finite amount of money that we have got towards it. I have already made some of those tough choices. I already shelved a number of projects that I would like to have proceeded with because the reality is in the real world you cannot do everything that you would like to do unless you have an endless supply of money, and we do not. I do not hide from you that very tough choices have to be made. On top of that, I have identified new needs which add to those choices, or at least to the toughness of them, because I believe that we need far more prison places than we had planned for when I became Home Secretary. I want 8,000 more prison places and I will keep that under review, that costs money. You cannot spend in one area without taking money from another area on a budget that is largely even. I do not hide from you that this is tough, it is my job to make those decisions and to take the plaudits or the unpopularity that goes with them.

Q5 Mr Streeter: Home Secretary, you did commit yourself to make reductions in central headquarters' costs when you last came before us. How have you got on since then in reducing the costs of HQ and moving those resources to the frontline?

John Reid: I am going to ask the Permanent Secretary to deal with the detail of that. I might give you the initial position. This here is the plan for the Home Office, it is one of the three plans we worked out. I promised that we would develop such plans within 100 days and we did. The important thing about them is not making the plan, it is implementing the plan. We have got a series of internal audits going on, there will be an external audit which we have requested as well from the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit and other outsiders. They will report early in the New Year on our plans and in terms of numbers, as I said, there have been leadership changes and personnel changes at the top and we are doing that in order to reallocate money to the frontline. David, do you want to say something on the specifics?

Sir David Normington: Yes, to be clear, in the plan we recommitted ourselves to making 2,700 reductions in head office staff, that is the Home Office and its agencies, by 2008 and then on top of that a further 10% by 2010. The actual position is we are just over 1,300 reductions on the way to the 2,700, about 45% of the way there, so we have got to keep going but we are on track. We made commitments in the 2004 spending settlement to achieve major efficiency savings. The one thing the Home Office has done is delivered those efficiency savings, it has delivered £1.9 billion, which is the target, and it has done it 16 months early, so I am a bit more confident that we can keep on the underlying efficiency and step that up.

John Reid: Is it possible to give an indication of where we are on the last six months on those efficiency savings, for instance, which I think is partly what is being asked here?

Sir David Normington: I cannot at the moment break them down for this last six months, I can try and do that after the Committee.

Q6 Chairman: Perhaps you could write to us after the Committee.

John Reid: There is not a huge number of things where we can say that we are ahead of probably the rest of Government and certain of the plans, but on our efficiency savings at the Home Office we are.

Q7 Mr Streeter: Home Secretary, in my second question I would like to commend you personally for the effort you have made since you have taken on this role, but could I ask you to turn your renowned icy grip to the accounts that your Department produces because the last two sets of accounts have been qualified and this year's accounts have a number of issues about them, including uncertainties about the Home Office's liabilities: a £246 million overdraft with the Paymaster General; an inability to reconcile payroll and personnel records to determine exact staff numbers; reliance on temporary staff and so on and so on. It is not a very pretty picture and I understand that you do not even know how many people you employ. How has this happened, and what are you going to do about it?

John Reid: First of all, thank you for your commendation; I collect them. That is one I have had now. As far as the accounts are concerned, I am going to ask David to deal with the detail, but let me make a couple of points on it. First of all, last year, that is the year ending just before I came in, the accounts were not qualified, they were disclaimed, so there has been considerable progress. One of the reasons this year they have not been unqualified, though they have not been disclaimed, is that if last year's accounts were disclaimed the starting point for this year is inevitably qualified because the end point of last year having been disclaimed is the start point for this year, so there has been considerable improvement. The second point is that you will be glad to know that I immediately asked for some clarification on these, which David will now give you, but it appears it is not entirely accurate that we do not know how many are working for us. I will ask the Permanent Secretary to share that with you.

Sir David Normington: The Comptroller and Auditor General said that these accounts were a significant step forward for the Home Office, that was the first thing. On the numbers of staff, it is quite a technical issue about our ability to reconcile our HR, human resource records, with our payroll and there were some difficulties with that which we have now put right. It is not the case that we do not know how many staff we employ from one month to another, it is about 77,840, around about that at the moment, including the Prison Service, but it is a technical matter about the reconciliations. I want to say something else: the disclaimer was a very serious matter and we are step-by-step climbing out of that, but we have a long way to go. The NAO says the underlying systems remain a problem, that is what we talked about in the summer, that is what we are trying to put right, but it is a step forward. These accounts are a step forward from last year.

Q8 Mr Streeter: Do you know though how many senior managers received bonuses last year and, given the performance of the Home Office last year, why did any?

Sir David Normington: As the Home Secretary said in the summer, not the whole of the Home Office was dysfunctional, some parts were. The Home Office board and the management of the IND took no bonuses. We accepted our responsibility for the problems and there were no bonuses taken there. Also, from recollection, the number of bonuses given to senior staff was very significantly down, about 20% down, from the previous year, so we have taken our responsibilities for that and the senior management particularly.

Q9 Chairman: Home Secretary, we were disappointed as a Committee that none of the bills that were promised to the House in the Queen's Speech for draft scrutiny by the select committees came from the Home Office and we put quite a store by our ability to give useful scrutiny of draft bills, as for example with the Corporate Manslaughter Bill. In the debate last week in Westminster Hall, Tony McNulty, the Minister of State, did give the impression that there might be some flexibility on the Terrorism Bill if it is to look at major proposals to have a period at least for scrutiny ahead of legislation. I wonder if you could confirm whether you think that might be possible and also whether, even at this late stage, there will be a chance of publishing the Criminal Justice Bill, so this Committee could have a brief scrutiny of it before it goes into the formal process?

John Reid: First of all, let me say that we pay very serious attention to the views of this Committee not just on bills but issues as well, Chairman, for instance on the rehabilitation of prisoners and the recommendations which have been made and so on in that area. We have tried to pay very careful attention to them as in many other areas. As regards the Terrorism Bill, we have got a pretty tight timetable for that because, as you may know, I was asked to conduct a review of our counter-terrorism capabilities, structures, resources, strategy and so on for the Prime Minister which I reported to him. He will want to consider that and anything that arises out of that we will want to bring in as soon as possible. What I will look at, however, is if it is impossible to do a draft bill and put it out with the commensurate delay in that - and I could probably guess two or three specific areas in which you might be interested, for instance, if we were to look at the area of going beyond 28 days or something of that nature - then I could look at finding some mechanism for us to enter into discussion or dialogue or to put those proposals to you so you could come back on that. That is an obvious one. Questioning after charge is another one where you have made views known on it, and so on. Perhaps that would be our way of meeting our deadlines while facilitating the receipt of your views on it.

Q10 Chairman: That is very helpful, Home Secretary, and I am sure the Committee would be as flexible as we could be at meeting the pressures which we know are there in the House. Picking up on a small point, did I understand from what you said that your review has now been completed and has passed to the Prime Minister or is it about to go?

John Reid: Yes, I have now passed that to the Prime Minister. Obviously, given the time that was available, I did try and deal with headline issues, but I have sent a review to the Prime Minister. Obviously I do not want to get into details here, but I would say that in terms of analysing the threat from terrorism now there are some features of it which we should take very seriously indeed. This is now a seamless threat, it is no longer easily divided into foreign affairs, defence or domestic affairs. Therefore, it needs, I think, a seamless, integrated, driven, politically overseen counter‑terrorist strategy which places at its heart the recognition that, above all, this is a battle for ideas and values. It might express itself in different parts of the world from here to foreign fields in different ways, military ways, protests or whatever, but it is at heart a struggle for a set of values and set of ideas. It is also, as I said, seamless and integrated and, therefore, our response to that has to be seamless, integrated, driven, overseen politically and increased in terms of its capacity to a far greater extent than just a few years ago. Those are obviously the ballpark headlines of this, but the details of it I have passed to the Prime Minister who obviously is ultimately responsible for this.

Chairman: Home Secretary, that is very helpful indeed. We will continue this area of questioning.

Q11 Mr Winnick: So we work on the assumption, Home Secretary, that there will be counter‑terrorism legislation before the House in the New Year?

John Reid: Yes, I would work on that assumption, Mr Winnick, but I would not work on the assumption that any particular element might be in it. Some of what we have found, and some of what I have put to the Prime Minister, goes way beyond legislation. Legislation may have a part to play in this, but it is not the be all and end all of it either in counter‑terrorism or, in my view, the future of the Home Office spending a little more time delivering rather than passing laws. What we want to deliver would be, I think, a commendable approach in the Home Office in the future.

Q12 Mr Winnick: So it will be early in the New Year?

John Reid: In the New Year. I have inherited a number of bills which are going through. I will do my best in future years in parliamentary sessions to make sure that you are not overburdened with legislation. On the terrorism side, I think you could expect something in the New Year, but I would not jump to the conclusion that any particular issue will be in there.

Q13 Mr Winnick: We will come to that. You have given a warning, obviously on the advice given, that the country faces an acute terrorist danger this coming holiday period, Christmas and the New Year presumably. Is it any different from previous dangers to our country in the last year or two years ago in so far as you are able to give us any information? Obviously we understand the position of how far you can or cannot go, but could you explain whether this danger is greater than it would have been a year or two years ago?

John Reid: The danger has remained at a very high level ever since we indicated that it was at the second highest threat level of severe. I was asked the other day, "How likely is a terrorist attack?" and my answer was, as it would have been two or three months ago, "It is very likely". That is the definition of severe threat level, that an attack is very likely. However, it is not imminent in the sense that we know of a specific date, place or attack, which I think is what you are asking from me.

Q14 Mr Winnick: Not really, I would not have expected that you or the security people would have that information or if you did you would not tell us and rightly so. Is the danger this coming Christmas greater than it would have been last year or the year before? That is really what I am asking you.

John Reid: If I could comment on what you have said. We have agreed that we would put the threat levels into the public domain and the difference between the second highest and the highest is that there is some indication there is a specific threat imminently with a date, so we would actually indicate. That has a downside operationally as well as an upside, but since it is not at that level you may take it that the severe level, which means an attack is very likely, is the same as it was for the past period and unless it goes to the first level of threat then there is no indication that we have information suggesting a specific threat over the Christmas period.

Q15 Mr Winnick: I think you could take it for granted, Home Secretary, that this Committee, as the House as a whole, endorses what you have said about the thanks we have, the country as a whole, to the police, security and politics in trying to protect us from terror and mass murder.

John Reid: Thank you.

Q16 Mr Winnick: There are two people who have absconded from Control Orders. Is there any indication they are likely to be apprehended in the very near future?

John Reid: We are doing everything we can to apprehend them. I think one absconded about two months ago and one four months ago. I would never claim that Control Orders are the ideal. As you know, there is a series of things we would like to be able to do with suspected terrorists: the primary thing is to deport them; if we cannot deport them, then we would like to detain them, but sometimes we cannot deport them because of human rights issues and then when we try to detain them we cannot detain them because of human rights issues. Therefore, we try what is the third level of surveillance and control which is Control Orders, but they are not by any means perfect, as you would understand, they are limited. You will also know that when we tried to put on Control Orders for 18 hours out of the 24 hours the courts judged that itself was a breach of the European Convention and, therefore, we had to reduce the time under which some of these suspects were under surveillance and control. It was one of those suspects, who is one of the two you mentioned, who absconded. We continue to look for them. Should we have put their names and pictures up on websites, if the police had wanted that, then we could have appealed to the court because it was under the court order they had anonymity. We have asked Alex Carlile to look at that whole area, but at the moment I have no news to give you on that today. I have news hot off the press about some of the foreign national prisoners today but not on the case of the two absconders.

Q17 Mr Winnick: I think Lord Carlile has said about these two, and obviously everyone hopes that they will be apprehended, that they are not a great danger, as far as he could see, to the security of the country. That is his view apparently. On the 28 days, were you notified by the Attorney General before he made his comments which were that, I am quoting Lord Goldsmith: "to extend it further", beyond the 28 days, "would need evidence to demonstrate that was needed ... I haven't seen it yet"? Did the Attorney tell you that he was going to make these comments?

John Reid: The Attorney was courteous enough to let me know that he was doing a press briefing that day. He did not have to tell me his views on this because he had said them to me and you may be interested to know they are my views as well, which I have expressed privately and publicly, so it did not cause me any discomfort. What I have said on 28 days is that if someone brings me a factually‑based case which illustrates that there is an evidential basis greater than the last time it was taken to Parliament and if, at the other end, I could find a means of reassuring Parliament that an extension beyond 28 days would not be used arbitrarily as a pattern to supplement the judicial oversight that goes on weekly, then I would be prepared to take that back to Parliament, but that case has not yet been put to me. That is where I stand, that is why I have an open mind on it and why I said earlier that nobody should work on the assumption that any particular piece of legislation will be brought before the House. I have an open mind on it and if the police bring me a case where they feel they have factual evidence supporting the case that was originally made, and therefore strengthening the case before Parliament, then I would seek to bring a secondary reassurance to Parliament and bring it back, but, as the Attorney General said at that point, this case has not yet been made to me.

Q18 Mr Winnick: So your views, Home Secretary, are the same as the Attorney's?

John Reid: I think my views are the same as the Attorney's at this point. That is why it did not discomfort me in any way that he expressed that view. I hope his view would be the same as mine that if that case is brought to us, then of course we will come back to Parliament. We want to give the police the tools to do the job. I am aware that when we went to Parliament last time two of the worries were the lack of persuasion on the factual and evidential basis that was expressed by this Committee and many others, yourself in particular, Mr Winnick, and the second one was that people wanted reassurance not just that each individual case would be looked at week after week but that there would be no pattern of misuse of such powers in an arbitrary fashion. I would like to try and bookend any proposal, were we to bring it, by a factual case at that end and a reassurance for people like yourself at the other end that this is something we take very seriously, but we also take very seriously concerns about the arbitrary misuse of power.

Q19 Mr Winnick: Home Secretary, if I can put it to you like this: if the Attorney states that he has seen no evidence to extend the period of detention without charge for terrorist suspects beyond 28 days and you say his views are the same as yours, then, surely, the House of Commons was right on 9 November last year to reject what the Government intended, 90 days? If there is no evidence as far as the most senior legal officer and you, as the Home Secretary, are concerned, then the Commons was right and the Government was wrong last year.

John Reid: Do you mean the Commons was right to limit it to 28 days? Let me put it another way to you, Mr Winnick, you did not believe there was evidence that the extension from 14 to 28 days was merited, I believe.

Q20 Mr Winnick: Home Secretary, I am not suggesting you should read for one moment my speeches, that is not compulsory for you or anyone! In the debate last Friday in Westminster Hall on our Committee's report on terrorism I made it perfectly clear that I had supported 14 to 28 days at the time of the terrorist danger and, moreover, if I may say so, I made the point that there was no vote in the Commons or in the Lords at the time to increase it from 14 to 28 days; reservations obviously, so there was no controversy. At the time I know you had other ministerial responsibilities.

John Reid: I did not have the ministerial responsibility and apologies for having missed that particular speech which you made. However, the point I was going to make was that many people in Parliament were not convinced that it should even be increased to 28 days.

Q21 Mr Winnick: There were no votes on it against.

John Reid: Hold on. Many people in Parliament were not persuaded that it should be increased to 28 days and at the time they said, "The evidence does not exist". I think most people, probably including the Attorney General, now believe that the evidence does exist, that the events of August last year were sufficient to add weight to the argument that 28 days were necessary because many of the charges involved there, and I have got to be careful about speaking about a particular area, but many of them took until that 28-day limit. In other words, what I am saying is it is possible for something to be right at a given time even in the absence of evidence which later becomes available. It is not necessarily true that because the evidence of something did not exist at a particular time, for instance, that the genome did not exist, it is possible for something to be true but the evidence only discovered later.

Mr Winnick: We will not pursue that because of lack of time. Home Secretary, I think I have made my point.

Q22 Chairman: Have you been talking to Donald Rumsfeld?

John Reid: Well, I hope I last a lot longer than that.

Q23 Mr Winnick: I hope John Reid will never have the same protection as Donald Rumsfeld, that would be a curse indeed. The last question, if I may. We recommended in our report on terrorism and community relations that the Muslim community should be engaged obviously in the Government's anti-terrorist strategy. We had the report from the Government Preventing Extremism Together Task Force in the summer of last year. Has there been any further progress? Basically, the overwhelming majority of Muslims are as much against terror as we are but it is a question of isolating the prospective mass murderers. How far do you think progress is being made?

John Reid: I absolutely agree with both your sentiments which is that the battle is not between Islam and others, it is between the terrorists and everyone else and it is fundamentally important that we understand that because if we fall into the trap of believing the propaganda of either Islamist extremists and advocates of terrorism or the extremists on the other side, like the British National Party, that there is a division between Islam and everyone else, then we will do the work of the terrorists and extremists for them, so you are absolutely right. It is also true that in engaging with the Muslim community, because that is essentially if we are going to have a united front against the terrorists, they threaten all of us, it is true that there was a very slow start. That is one of the reasons why parts of that portfolio were passed to a relatively new department under a new secretary of state, Ruth Kelly, at the Department of Communities and Local Government. I think she has added a great deal of energy, dedication and determination to that engagement. I think we have now got a higher level than we had before. I have tried to do that as well, as have my ministers, and indeed I was engaged in this two weeks ago, a few weeks before that and I will be towards the end of this week as well. That is an essential part of our engagement and an honest exchange on everything including, where appropriate, foreign affairs. People are entitled to raise foreign affairs. I have never believed that our foreign policy is the primary or significant cause of international terrorism but it is certainly one of the factors that motivate young Muslims and potentially creates the atmosphere where people can recruit terrorists in this country and, therefore, that is an area in which we have to engage frankly and honestly with everyone in this country including the Muslim population.

Q24 Chairman: Home Secretary, regrettably I am going to move us on, but we probably will return to this one. I have got one final question on terrorism. In last year's Terrorism Bill, one of the things that came out in the discussions about glorification and those causes was that Lord Carlile was asked to go and review the definition in British law of terrorism, which is very broad. Home Secretary, can I ask whether you anticipate bringing any changes forward to that definition in the review of terrorism in the terrorism legislation that is likely to come in the spring?

John Reid: Chairman, it is not on my agenda at present.

Q25 Chairman: Have you had Lord Carlile's report yet?

John Reid: I do not think we have even received Lord Carlile's report yet. I will check on that but I certainly have not had it put in front of me.

Q26 Mr Benyon: Home Secretary, moving on to the Offender Management Bill, yesterday in the House you said: "In the Prison and Probation Service about 25% of services are already provided from other than the public sector".

John Reid: Yes.

Q27 Mr Benyon: What percentage of Prison and Probation Services do you think can safely be delivered by the private sector and do you have a target in mind?

John Reid: First of all, let me go and burrow down a little into that 25% figure which I gave. I said in the Probation and Prison Service, there is 25% already put out outside the public sector and therefore there is no great question of principle involved here. I was making the point, since we had already accepted the principle, that we were talking about a judgment about how far they should go in trying to, if you like, persuade those who have a dogmatic approach to this that the principle had already been conceded. When you look at the details, the truth is that inside the Probation Service the proportion of services contracted outside the public sector have been much smaller and have fallen in recent years. At the moment it is only around 2% or 3%. It was at one stage 5% when there was a target of 7%. As soon as the target was withdrawn it tended to fall again. What we want to do is try and open that up again so that while the offender management for the foreseeable future, the next two or three years, will be controlled by the Probation Service, that is the public sector, the interventions, the education and many of the other things which they do not have to be doing can be done by the voluntary, the charitable or the private sector. I would hope that in the first instance we could go to something around 10% of that working up to, and this is an indicative figure, probably something within a few years of the value of about £250 million out of the order of £800 million to £900 million expenditure.

Q28 Mr Benyon: Baroness Scotland came in front of this Committee some months ago and found herself between a rock and a hard place. Some of us were saying that the use of the private sector in terms of the rigour of the private sector and the voluntary sector which we supported was a good thing and she was saying, "No, this is not a paradigm shift towards the private sector". Others on this Committee were saying that we were coming from the wrong place - I am getting Rumsfeldian here - but she was wrong to deny this. For the record, would you be prepared to give us your definition of contestability in terms of this legislation?

John Reid: Contestability is the process whereby different providers of services are evaluated against each other.

Q29 Mr Winnick: It is called privatisation, is it not?

John Reid: It is not, with respect, because privatisation is a policy of putting what you have into the private sector. This may or may not end going to the private sector but it may also go to the charitable sector who do not make a profit, it may go to the voluntary sector who do not make a profit and it may go to the public sector who do not make a profit. None of them run their organisations for private gain. The important point is that it is a process that allows you to evaluate the various providers and to get best value for money in terms of the output and capability. That is a non-dogmatic approach to it and it is the approach which I take, but it is also an approach that is already accepted in principle because there are 2 to 3% of services provided outside the public sector and probation and there is up to 25% between Probation and the Prison Service. We are not arguing the principle, we are arguing what is the best way of protecting the public. If there are skills available, for instance in the Prince's Trust, where there can be an evidentially based argument that they deal with offenders in such a way that it reduces re-offending better than some other ways or through NACRO or various other organisations, why would we refuse to allow those talents and skills to be used to help us reduce re-offending? I find that argument difficult to understand.

Q30 Mr Benyon: I think you are right, it all depends on how it is implemented, so you are right on the principle. How far can we take it? For example, with high risk offenders do you feel it is appropriate for private sector organisations to be involved in the management of them?

John Reid: There are two different things here. One is how do you go from where we are to where we ideally want to be, and that is choosing people because of the value they can bring, the expertise they can bring and the effect they can have. We should proceed cautiously because we are dealing in some cases with very dangerous offenders and, therefore, the way I want to do this is to maintain the management of those offenders, the oversight and supervision, for the next few years within the public sector who have the inherited expertise to do that while gradually allowing the charitable, the voluntary and the private sector to come in with interventions, education and so on and then to get to the stage where we can make judgments as we go along. That is a cautious approach. However, what you cannot do, I believe, is to envisage a future where you say, "You can only get low risk and you can only get high risk offenders". Apart from anything else, the low risk offender, because of extraneous circumstances in his life, could suddenly become, or over a short period a high risk. This is one of the arts and specialisms of probation. If you become a high risk offender, one of the worst things in increasing the danger to the public at that stage would also be to change your offender management, your supervisor, the person you rely on, because not only would the extraneous circumstances - it could be a death or an offence against you - make you more dangerous but if I then, the person to whom you relate, is withdrawn and it is said, "You have not covered the threshold, you have to go across to Mr Russell as your supervisor", that may be something that drives you to be a greater danger. I am using Mr Russell symbolically, I assure you. It is not easy to draw that distinction but it is right to say that you must proceed cautiously when it comes to all these offenders, especially dangerous ones, which is why we are leaving them at present, all of the offender management is controlled by the public service, and I envisage that will take several years to work through. This is not a rash rush to judgment or a rush to privatisation, it is a sensible, controlled and cautious way of opening up the talents of the whole of our society in bringing them to bear on an intractable problem which is the obstinate retention of a high re-offending rate under governments of both persuasions over a long period.

Q31 Mr Benyon: Your opponents in this legislation are saying that it is going to lead to a fragmentation of the service and, therefore, a weakening. How do you respond to that?

John Reid: I am not sure which opponents.

Q32 Mr Benyon: Those who usually sit behind you.

John Reid: Your enemies sit behind you. Your opponents normally sit across from you.

Q33 Mr Benyon: I think you are absolutely right in this case.

John Reid: Basically, I would say to them that offenders and offences are caused by a whole variation of circumstances, a whole variation of motivations and drivers. They are very complex causal factors. If it was as simple as saying, "Offenders are bad, therefore treat them as bad", then we would not have any re-offending, it would be very simple, but it is much more complex than this and, therefore, the response that you have to have to it has to be equally complex, comprehensive and varied. If you are going to have your complex, comprehensive and varied response you have to draw on all of the skills and all of the tools of all of the people available when appropriate. I think that there are people like NACRO and the Prince's Trust and others who bring to bear attributes that can help us to crack this problem, which has been so difficult in cracking, which is the reduction of re-offending. Helen, do you want to say anything on this, I ought to bring you in.

Ms Edwards: One of the very strong themes in our reforms is about partnership, this is about playing to the strengths of the different providers, public, private and voluntary. One of the things that we have said very clearly is that we want to see those sectors working together and not just on their own. There are some interesting examples of partnerships which are beginning to be established at the moment. I think also the last thing we would want is lots of small contracts because then you could get some kind of fragmentation. We will probably look to a lead provider to hold the contract and orchestrate relationships with other people. One of the big divides which we have in our system at the moment is between prison and community and our reform package as a whole is designed to help us overcome that huge chasm so that we can work more seamlessly across that divide, so I think in all kinds of ways this will help to join the things up better than we have at the moment.

John Reid: This circumvention is not fragmented. I think Martin has a question.

Q34 Martin Salter: Home Secretary, I would like to continue your theme of proceeding cautiously. You will be aware of considerable stakeholder concern over the national offender management proposals, concern that was reflected in the debate yesterday on both sides of the House and concern that was reflected in the consultation. Are there areas of the Bill that you are prepared to show flexibility around? I am thinking in particular of the concept of the automatic use of contestability for those Probation Services that are performing well and meeting their targets. Is there not a case for a greater concentration on those Probation Services that are not meeting their targets?

John Reid: I can confirm for the record that the Home Office has not yet received the report from Lord Carlile on the definition of terrorism, so I am glad to confirm what I said earlier. Obviously, it is expected in the not too distant future, I will consider any recommendations and we will come back to you. Of course, we did receive his report on Control Orders which we referred to earlier. Just on the point which you are making Mr Salter, what we want to do simultaneously, and I think this is important and will be discussed, I have no doubt, in Committee by Gerry Sutcliffe, who is very aware of people's concerns, not the principle but how this would work, we want to introduce as we go along those attributes from the non-public sector that can be used as interventions in dealing with offenders while maintaining for the foreseeable future the overall supervision of the offenders by the public service. Secondly, as we are doing that we will be transforming the local boards into trusts and some of those trusts who have been faring badly, the bottom half dozen, in terms of their output and outcomes, which is what matters at the end of the day, not the inputs but the outcomes, we are already giving, and Helen and I talked about this the other day, considerable assistance to try and move them up from where they are. At the same time there are some trusts or boards at present who are doing very well indeed, as you pointed out, and, when and if we get to the contestability of offender management, if they are performing the way they are at the moment, they certainly would have nothing to fear. Moreover, I would like to see them be in a position to export, as it were, their good management expertise and practice to other trusts and boards. In other words, we are not just opening this up to public sector versus non-public sector, but the boards and trusts that are doing very well will have scope not only to be commissioned in their own area but could give expertise, management, control and advice and so on to boards in other areas. I hope that goes in the direction that you would like which says that the best practising boards will not be for dogmatic reasons pushed out of the provision of offender management, they will be judged on results and not only be able to retain their own area but to expand to other areas. Helen, do you want to say anything on that?

Q35 Martin Salter: Can I just push you, before you come back. This is crucial. It goes to the heart of public sector reform. As the former Secretary of State for Health, you will be acutely aware of the damage that government obsession with structural fetishes (I think it has been called) can do and how it can destabilise those parts of services that are performing well. What I really want to push you on is: do you recognise the danger of destabilising the good parts of the service by top-down structural reform, and are you prepared to put in place a benchmark, much as we did with the Education Bill, when it comes to the criteria for local authorities being able to promote community schools, that would allow good, performing probation boards to be each excluded from the threat of contestability, rather than, if I may say, a vague notion that they have nothing to fear, so that you can focus on driving up standards in those areas, which is where standards are simply not up to scratch?

John Reid: Let me just say, Mr Salter, it will not surprise you to know, I do not think the old lady who used to have to wait six months for a cataract operation and now waits three weeks for one, or the people who used to be condemned to death on a waiting list for treatment for heart conditions, whose lives are now being saved, would regard the transformation turmoil that you get, in the Health Service or anywhere else, as a price that was not worth paying. There are millions of people who have now been taken out of pain because of the improvements in the National Health Service, but that cannot be achieved by keeping the Health Service the same. When you change things, there is a degree of surge, there is a degree of problems which arise, because the risks which have previously been borne by the patient are transferred to the provider. In order to get a better deal for the patient, the life of the provider has to become more uncomfortable in order that the discomfort be transferred through the competition process. I do not accept the premise in what you want; however, there is some common ground. Let me give you the common ground. If it is the case that, by definition, the trusts you are talking about are good performers, they will have nothing to be frightened of in a contest. By definition, you cannot start saying that we want the best out of this by being able to choose the best but, because you look pretty good, we are going to exclude everyone else and say a priori you are the best. It does not work like that. What I am saying is that the ones that you are naming, which are good, they have horizons that no longer extend to the local area because the other monopolies, which are the boards at the moment, which are local monopolies - they are commissioners and they provide the services commissioned - will no longer be monopolies. So there is a horizon now for the good trust to spread beyond it. The final thing is that we will retain the inspectorates. So the standards that are imposed on all of them, whether it is private, charitable or public sector, will be the same standards as are expected at the moment, and anyone who does not meet those standards will lose out and anyone who does meet those standards will be in the ball park for providing the service, and the judgment will be made, not on the inputs but on the outputs; and one thing is certain on the output, that despite a 50% increase in staff since this government came in (admittedly against the 30% increase in case load), despite a 40% increase in the past five years in the resources available (£900 million a year), reoffending has stayed at the same rate - the output has stayed the same. So it is not open to us to say we just accept it is always going to be like that, we have to at least allow the possibility that by bringing more we can reduce that because, ultimately, that is what it is about, the output and the protection of the public.

Chairman: We need to move on, Mr Salter, to take another aspect of the same issue. Bob Russell.

Q36 Bob Russell: Home Secretary, 45 minutes ago, in answer to a question from the Chairman, you said that another 8,000 prison places would be built.

John Reid: Yes.

Q37 Bob Russell: The last published figures we have, 31 October 2006, show that the prison population was 80,306, the highest ever in the country's history?

John Reid: Yes.

Q38 Bob Russell: Is that 8,000 on top of the 80,000?

John Reid: Yes.

Q39 Bob Russell: When do you expect the prison population to reach 88,000?

John Reid: At the moment the projections are that there will be an increase of at least 8,000, and possibly more, but you have to do two things. The first is that you have to make sure that there are sufficient prison places available for those that you wish to send to prison, and, secondly, you have to make sure that you have got a penal policy that sends to prison those who, for reasons of punishment, deterrents or public protection, ought to be sent to prison but get out of prison those who should not be in our prisons, because it is a very expensive way of protecting the public at something like £100,000 a place and £40,000 a year. So, if there are people in there who need treatment, primarily, rather than people who are in there for public protection, if there are vulnerable women, if there are foreign national prisoners we need a penal policy which removes them so that you try to make sure that the increase in numbers in our prisons is an increase only for those who ought to be in prison. I make one comment, incidentally, about the shortage of prison places. A couple of months ago there was a great deal of media interest in the fact that we had only 250 left. In 1997, when the Labour Government came in, in May, the month before, there were 250 prison places left as well, so it would appear that we have been doing no more than keeping pace with demand, but the position, I am afraid, was not any better in terms of shortages of places when we took over in 1997.

Q40 Bob Russell: Home Secretary, you have bandied lots of statistics around. You will be aware that the Select Committee, a few years ago, produced a report on alternatives to prisons. Prison populations continue to grow. You say it is going to go up to 88,000?

John Reid: Yes.

Q41 Bob Russell: You then indicate there are many people in prison who perhaps should not be there. Does the Government have a long-term penal strategy, bearing in mind that we already send more people to prison per head of population than any other country in Western Europe?

John Reid: We send more people to prison per head of population but fewer people to prison per detected crime than most countries in Europe; but you are absolutely right that we need a penal policy, and we have one, which is more than just saying we will send everyone to prison and we will build the prison places for them. Obviously, the taxpayer would not want that, but the public does want protection. Therefore, what we ought to be trying to do is to make sure that those people from whom the public needs protection are sent to prison for as long as is necessary, which is why we reintroduced indeterminate sentences, so that some people could be kept there literally for life, which is the answer to the question some people ask: why does life never mean life? With indeterminate sentences it can do. On the other hand, at the other end of the scale, there are people who are sent to prison for very short periods where it is questionable whether the taxpayer and the public would not benefit more if they were made to do community pay-back, thus saving the tax payer (in many cases the council-tax payer) money at the same time as they restore to the community that which they have taken out by their behaviour, which is why we brought in community service orders and more robust measures in that direction. I would say we are not yet functioning properly in terms of the 2003 Act, which was intended to keep more dangerous prisoners there longer but, at the bottom end, to remove from prison those who ought not really to be there but should be doing community service or should be fined The top end of that appears to be being implemented but the bottom end is not. So the quid pro quo is not there. Then, a final comment on foreign national prisons, I said that we would not release anybody who ought to be considered for deportation unless they had been. So that has added an extra burden over the last few months. I hope by the spring that will begin to ease.

Q42 Bob Russell: Home Secretary, you have acknowledged that there are many people in prison who, for a variety of reasons, should not be there, at least for that length of time. For more than half the people sent to prison each year for terms of less than six months, could I ask you and your officials to look again at the Select Committee's report on alternatives to prison to see whether, in fact, some of those recommendations would be a means for reducing the prison population to bring it more into line with the rest of Western Europe?

John Reid: You can, indeed, ask us that, Mr Russell, and you will be pushing at an open door, because the recommendations which were made by this Committee in the House of Commons report on the rehabilitation of prisoners, and so on, have featured very highly in our considerations. Last week I had a meeting with a huge number of penal experts on this very subject. So we would be keen to get this balance right, that is protecting the public from dangerous offenders by keeping them away as long as is necessary but making sure there are other ways of rehabilitation, through education in prison, treatment of addicts, drugs - and the amount spent on that in prison, incidentally, has gone up by 1000% since the Labour Government came in - because if you send the addict back out with his addiction unattended, then he begins thieving again automatically to feed the habit. So educational schemes, trades, all of the rehabilitation process, but also working in the community, contributing back to the community that which you have taken out, are all part of what we want to consider as part of a comprehensive penal policy.

Q43 Bob Russell: If I am pushing at an open door, let me move on quickly, before it starts to shut again, and look forward to a decline in the prison population. My last question, Home Secretary, is that with the reoffending rate amongst adult males going up over the last five years from 55% to 67%, was your predecessor right when he said, "Prison does not work in stopping reoffending"?

John Reid: No, it patently does stop in some cases.

Q44 Bob Russell: But it has gone up.

John Reid: Yes, but you gave me a figure of 67%. In 33% people do not reoffend, so it must work in some cases - one assumes it does, and I am using your figures - but where we have common ground is by saying that the reoffending rate is too high and obstinately too high, and that is why I have introduced the proposals in the Offender Management Bill, to try and bring new ideas and new facilities to bear and bring it down. It is too high. I have no problem in accepting that. Helen, do you want to say anything on these points?

Ms Edwards: We have begun to see a very slight dip in the reoffending rate for adult prisoners, which is encouraging because I think many of the things that you are recommending in your report we have started to implement. Our seven pathways out of offending, for example, which concentrate on accommodation, on skills, on employment, on health, on family support, all those programmes have started to come into play. Hopefully we are beginning to see them having a small but noticeable impact, but we have got an awfully long way still to go.

Q45 Margaret Moran: To follow up the point that was made about this Committee's report, perhaps you could come back to us on the issue specifically about the efforts to get ex-offenders into work. I am not asking for a response now, but I think that was one of the specific recommendations in that report. I want to take up the point, Home Secretary, you were making about vulnerable women being in prison. There is increasing evidence, as we know, that vulnerable women, people with mental health and other complex problems, are disproportionately in prison. There is also increasing evidence that survivors of domestic violence, people who have been subjected to violence and abuse themselves, are increasingly within the prison system without support. Surely, is it not better value for the limited resources that you have got, rather than spending your money on expanding prison places, to direct your efforts at preventing those vulnerable women being in prison in the first place? What are you doing about that? Why are you not shifting your resources in that direction to make space for the more serial, serious reoffending?

John Reid: I do not think it is an either/or; I think you have to do both. I think you have to protect the public from dangerous offenders; I also think that the prerequisite for gaining public acceptance of, for instance, community service and treatment of offenders is a recognition among the public that releasing people from prison to do either of these is not merely because you have run out of prison places. I think there is a central reason for doing what I am doing in increasing the prison places, but I think there is also a secondary reason, and that is to give the public confidence that there is a Home Secretary who will put in prison those who ought to be put in prison. That is not an alternative to saying that those who ought not to be in prison and ought to be treated better in terms of medical care, or psychological help, or treatment for their addiction ought to be treated better in prison or outside of prison. Let me tell you, in many ways the Department of Health and ourselves are working more closely on this than ever before. When I was Secretary of State for Health I tried to encourage that, and I gave one example on the amount of increase of attention to treating addiction, and I can go through the numbers for you, but it has gone up by, I think, 973%, the amount of money with all the caveats we have placed on statistics, Chairman, that was placed in that direction. We are doing a lot as well in trying to tackle the question of vulnerable women prisoners. Perhaps you ought to give us some details on that, Helen, for Ms Moran.

Ms Edwards: We do recognise that there are a lot of issues with women offenders that we have got to do more on. We have got the Women's Offending Reduction Programme set up and the Together Women's Programme, and both those programmes are designed to see how we can do more to deal with the problems women face in the community rather than in prison. We have got two pilots running really to test what we have to do so that the courts can feel that they are sentencing with confidence, and, of course, we are looking forward to Baroness Corston's report.

Q46 Margaret Moran: Is that not part of the problem: we suffer from "pilotitus"? Would it not be better to put some of that money into women's aid, into refuges, into preventing domestic violence so that you have not got this overcrowding in prisons? In terms of confidence, Home Secretary, surely it is better to do that than have miniscule sentences for child-abuse offenders? Because your prisons are so full, your own SOCA officers are telling us that the sentences cannot be longer in some cases than three to six months because you have not got enough places to put serious offenders in. Surely you have got to break that cycle.

John Reid: With respect, this is the first Home Office over to have reduced domestic violence against women. For the first time in history we have actually turned the tide down in that. I do not claim that as a great coup, but I do point out that no previous Government and no previous Home Office has done that. We have put a huge amount of effort into it and it is led from the top by Patricia Scotland, who has shown a considerable interest in this. Secondly, I merely remind everybody that in your questions I have been prepared to take responsibility for prison places and so on. We do have an independent judiciary in this country, and who ends up in prison is to some extent the result of the decisions made by magistrates and by judges, and so we cannot rule out the fact that there is an independent body. The third thing is that we are spending more money now on education courses, on treatment for health questions inside and on trying to apply ourselves to the particular problem faced by particular groups than ever before. Your objection is to pilots. So often at the Committee we are criticised, quite correctly, for embarking on projects without evidence that they work, and the idea of a pilot is to probe to see whether, on the basis of evidence and reality, the things into which we are putting money do actually work. Think it is a wee bit unfair to criticise us for not seeking the evidence for our projects and then to criticise us for having "pilotitus" (I think is what you called it) when we test them out in reality. Testing them surely is a good thing.

Q47 Mr Streeter: Home Secretary, to your 8,000 new prison places is it true that you are considering inviting people to invest in a new style property company that would build jails and then rent them out to private prison operators as reported in The Guardian, though unless it was Polly Toynbee I might not believe it?

John Reid: I do not even think it carried that stamp of veracity. This came, apparently, from some Investors Weekly, or Builders Chronicle, or something of this nature. I certainly have not been working on any projects, nor have any of the ministers, to launch certain shareholdings and tell them to buy or sell or anything of this nature. On the other hand, I suppose theoretically this is possible. If you are thinking of PFI schemes or, whatever, I suppose somewhere down the line somebody will buy shares in this, but it has not been on my desk. I will ask the Permanent Secretary to comment on this perhaps. David.

Sir David Normington: I would just confirm that. We are not doing work on that. It is possible that, out there, there are some people looking at ways of raising money for PFI deals and so on. I think that is where it comes from. We are not doing any work on it.

John Reid: To the best of our knowledge, that is the caveat, no-one in the Home Office is---. Who knows! I always have at the back of my mind, Chairman, the advice which I understand was proffered to one of my illustrious predecessors, Jack Straw, by, I think it was, Douglas Hurd, who said to him, "Best of luck my boy. Always remember that at any given stage there are 20 people in the Home Office who are quite separately working on projects that could finish your career."

Chairman: So that Guardian story remains an exclusive, does it! Can we go now, Home Secretary, to immigration and asylum and foreign prisoner issues. Anne Cryer.

Q48 Mrs Cryer: Home Secretary, can I ask one or two questions. There was a great fuss made a few months ago about the fact that foreign prisoners were being released without being considered even for deportation. At that time Lin wrote to the Committee saying that 1,013 foreign prisoners had been released without consideration for deportation. She has, very kindly, let us have an update on that and apparently 129 of those have now been removed, 216 there has been a decision not to remove and 745 deportations are still being pursued. How long do you think it is going to take to catch up with the 745 and consider deportation or otherwise?

John Reid: I am just looking for the letter which I think the Director General sent me morning. It should be in here somewhere. I think the good news on this is that, since we last met, I think of the order of 1,600 foreign national prisoners have been deported. Dealing with the 1,013 who created the problem in the first place (the backlog), we have deported 1,600. The second thing is that no one has been released from prison since without the consideration they ought to have been given. That means that some people have been detained by me beyond their release date, because it takes about six months for this whole process to go through, and we are working back from the position we were at when I first came to this Committee, which was the crisis position, where there was no lead time, where people were actually being released without deportation. We are now back at working to about two months lead time, and by the spring we hope to be at six months lead time. So, at that stage, we hope to have got to (if you want to use that terrible expression) the tipping point where people's consideration will have started sufficiently earlier but they will not have to be detained, and everybody, as they are now, will be being considered for deportation before they go. Then we have the 1,013. When I last came to the Committee, I said that we would work through those. I will ask Lin to go through the numbers, but basically it takes six months from that point, when I was last here, for the judicial process to be complete even when you are wanting to deport. They started to come through a month or so ago - the numbers were first 20, then 80, then 100. About 129, 130 at the moment have actually been deported. About two-thirds of them, 750 or thereabouts, have been considered for deportation and deportation has been decided and we are working through that. About a third of them the police are still looking for, but they are minor offenders in the main, and when I came here the last time I think there were four very major offenders at risk out there, four murderers. As of last night there were two, and as of today there is one, because earlier this morning we detained one of the two remaining very serious offenders - we arrested them this morning - so that is about the ball park. Perhaps I can ask Lin to follow up on any details that you want, Mrs Cryer.

Q49 Chairman: I think specifically Mrs Cryer asked when they will all have been deported. There are 540 here who have not yet been deported, and I think the central question from Mrs Cryer was: when will we have completed the process?

John Reid: Well, we will try to deport all of them, but it is not entirely within our power to say they will all be deported, because of the courts.

Q50 Chairman: But when do you expect them. I realise some have absconded, but some you have in detention.

John Reid: Yes.

Q51 Chairman: I am asking when do you think they will all have been deported or that they will have been dealt with?

John Reid: And the process would have been finished?

Q52 Chairman: Yes. Obviously, the courts may say they cannot be, and that ends it?

John Reid: Yes.

Q53 Mrs Cryer: From what Lin said, of the 745 that you are still considering or trying to catch for deportation, there is only one that you would be anxious about. Am I right in saying that?

Ms Homer: Yes, that is correct, Chairman. In terms of the timescale, what I can indicate is that we are now seeing a speeding up, as we anticipated, through the machinery. I think it will still be a number of months before we have concluded all of those, not least because some of them are quite complicated legal cases, but really what we are doing is we are twin-tracking our efforts to conclude the 1,013 completely whilst we actually continue to manage and improve the performance on what, I suppose, one would call the flow cases, the cases coming into the system now. It would be my intention to continue writing to you occasionally to keep you updated, and I think I will seek to give you, as I have been, as full an account of the figures at those points as I can, but my best guess is that it will still be a number of months before we conclude all of the deportation actions in relation to the original cohort that we did not consider before release.

Q54 Mrs Cryer: Do you happen to have any information about the people who were not considered for deportation but who should have been and were released? Do you have any information about the reconviction of any of those since then?

Ms Homer: Yes. I think I told you on the last occasion I spoke, and, indeed, when I have written to you, that we have looked at reconvictions. When I wrote in October there had been no further serious reconvictions over and above those I had reported to you in June. Again, when I make a full report early in the New Year I will try and give you a full update on reconvictions, but certainly the situation would be that if any of the more minor offenders commit a more serious offence, that will put them back in the system and they will be reconsidered for deportation. Other than those, and, you will recall, there are a number who by their circumstances are not capable of being deported, either the court has already concluded that they are length-of-time resident here or the circumstances of their case make that inappropriate. So it is something we have looked at but, as of October, when I last fully updated, there had been no further serious reconvictions.

Q55 Mrs Cryer: Can I go on to the mirror image of the questions I have just asked about justification for keeping foreign nationals in prison well beyond the end of the date on which they should have been released? I recognise there are problems in this, but I wonder if you could justify the fact that, because of delays, there are quite a number of foreign prisoners who are being kept in prison well beyond their release date.

John Reid: Yes. By definition, the people who have been considered for deportation have either committed a very serious offence, because it is judged according to the sentence line, or have been recommended for deportation by the judges. It was quite clear when I became Home Secretary that the system of ensuring they were considered for deportation, being such serious offenders, had broken down to some extent. We are now putting that system right, but the crucial part of it is that you have to start the consideration sufficiently early to make sure that all of the judicial process can be gone through, and many of these people will use every single part of the appeals process, the judicial process and judicial review. You have to make sure there is sufficient time for that to take place before the release date. Coping with the present crisis, as well as considering all of those who ought to be considered, as well as working back through the backlog, as well as getting an increased lead time is no mean feat in the middle of what we are doing. We are trying to do all four. In the meantime, I am faced with a question, would the public expect me to release onto the streets prisoners of foreign nationality who have committed serious offences? My judgment is, no, the public would not and, therefore, I made the decision, as I said to this Committee, that, with all of the constraints in prison places, all of the shortages we face and all of the difficulties involved in that decision, that these people ought to be kept in detention until we have fully considered their deportation. That is what I said to the Committee that I would do, and that is what I have done.

Q56 Mrs Cryer: To follow on from that, have any of the foreign prisoners who have been detained well after their release date, due to consideration for deportation, been compensated for to this?

John Reid: No. There was a case. I do not know whether you are referring to the case recently where compensation was awarded. That was awarded for something different from this. None of these have been compensated. I do not accept that that case is transferable onto these ones. To put it simply, I regarded it as my duty to make sure that the public were protected from people who had committed offences and who ought to be considered for being removed from the country for the public protection. Therefore, until such time as that decision can be taken, I have decided that they ought to be detained. I do not pretend that is an easy decision, but it is the one I think I had to take.

Q57 Mr Benyon: Home Secretary, you will obviously want to have an Immigration and Nationality Directorate that is free from corruption but also one that is seen to be free from corruption. In the last year we had the Paminani allegations which were the subject of Tim Gbedemah's Report. This Committee identified that 700 plus cases had been referred to the internal bodies that investigate corruption within the IND, and then, last May, we had the allegations concerning James Dawute, a Chief Immigration Officer, remarkably, seven months later, still under investigation. Do you agree with me that what we need here is some sort of external body, rather like the police have, to investigate cases so that we can really feel that the correct degree of scrutiny is being put into these cases?

John Reid: We have an external body. It is called the police. When people are acting illegally, as some of these allegations would assert, then the appropriate body is the police, if there is illegality. We also have an internal Code of Conduct for the Civil Service. We also have our own internal investigations. So there are three levels of investigation into that. You were, rightly, careful to use the word "allegations". I take any allegations of corruption very seriously indeed, especially if they involve corruption which impinges upon people - Sex for Visas, that sort of thing - and vulnerable people, and so we try to deal with that as robustly as possible. I think the case you have mentioned may have been passed to the police, which may be part of the reason it is a seven-month investigation. It is up to them to try and collect the evidence, and that is not always easy, but they will be dealt with robustly and, if found to be guilty, as ruthlessly as we can because we certainly want to root that out. Lin, do you want to say anything on that?

Ms Homer: Home Secretary, just to confirm that we always involve the police in cases of that sort. We work very closely with them. Indeed, they pursue a number of investigations with us before they come to light to ensure that they can gather the evidence appropriately, but we have also during the course of the year, following the discussions with yourselves, strengthened our internal security and corruption unit to ensure that we have the capacity to undertake the initial investigations which often then lead to joint work with the police.

Q58 Mr Benyon: The Gbedemah Report read quite well when we were in Luna House on the day it came out, but subsequent allegations made it seem, frankly, complacent when we perceived the degree of problems that existed in the IND. Do you not feel that an organisation rather like the Police Complaints Commission, which is seen to be independent from the organisation it investigates, is the one that is actually doing this work?

Ms Homer: The police are completely independent from IND. I do not know how many people have been sacked in the last year.

Sir David Normington: Five hundred and thirty-six in the Home Office, including IND.

Q59 Chairman: How many of those were from IND?

Sir David Normington: I have not got that, but from recollection about 80. I will have to confirm that.

Q60 Mr Benyon: How many of those were referred to the police for possible---

John Reid: Any one where there were allegations or any prima facie case of illegality would be referred to the police, and the police are a completely independent body from IND and will follow up their enquiries, as they do in every single case, and I think they would resent it if anybody suggested that they did not because it was the Immigration Authority and happened to come under the Home Office. There are hundreds of people who are sacked every year from the Home Office.

Q61 Bob Russell: Including the Home Secretary!

John Reid: Not on an annual basis, but with regularity, Mr Russell, indeed. Thank you for that vote of confidence. But, if there are allegations of illegality, of course we pass them on to the police. We would not do otherwise. Can I guarantee, any more than any other human organisation can guarantee, that there are not malfeasants which go undiscovered? No, and it is probably the same in Parliament, or the media, or anywhere else, but we certainly take robust action. It is in our interest to do that.

Q62 Mr Benyon: There is a new mood of transparency. I have trawled through endless Parliamentary Questions, but the victim of the case in The Observer was not actually informed that Mr Dawute had been sacked; I had to tell her?

John Reid: Had been?

Q63 Mr Benyon: Had been dismissed. There does not seem to be a particularly transparent process for investigating these things and keeping all the people who are interested informed.

John Reid: I was not aware of that. I do not know the specific circumstances of the case. Notwithstanding the fact that there are obviously proprieties to be observed on any case, I would have thought that the alleged victim in this case ought to have been kept informed of developments, but for all I know there are proprieties. I do not know, and I will look at that and, if any offence is caused, of course, I am very sorry.

Q64 Mr Benyon: The Immigration and Nationality Directorate has obviously gone through a lot of changes, and most of them, I am sure, we all support, but can you inform the Committee that it will not be blown off course by any other events that could occur in a similar way to, for example, the foreign prisoners problem that we experienced last year? We need to see that a firm leadership is in place.

John Reid: Yes. I said, I think, the last time to the Committee, I can promise that I will do my best to get leadership, but I cannot promise to be the Wizard of Oz. I am not coming here today saying that everything is perfect. I am saying that progress is being made, and let us remember that on asylum, which is one of the great issues of illegal immigration, we are now at the lowest level for 14 years. That has not happened, as I said, by accident. Decisions are now taken in under two months compared to 22 months in 1997, removals for the third quarter of this year are 89% up compared to removals in 1997 and in the first three quarters of 2006 are 19% up on last year. So there is a lot of good work being down by Lin Homer and her staff as well. We come from a position where the world changed so rapidly. As I said the last time I was here, I thought we were not up to meeting that challenge without a step-change, a transformation in IND. We published a document here.

Q65 Chairman: Home Secretary, you are intimately setting this out possibly at more length than the Committee can take at the moment. I think we should move on to the next question.

John Reid: We do not have a surfeit of good news.

Chairman: The Committee is trying to recover from the news that you are not going to be the Wizard of Oz, but, as we do not wish to be a bunch of Munchkins, we will move on quickly to Mr Clappison.

Q66 Mr Clappison: Can I just ask you a brief question about the removals process. One of the things that struck us in our inquiry into immigration control was that there was not a strong enough link between individuals who were given the news that they were not able to stay in the country and the process of actually removing them from the country. There was not a smooth enough process between people being told they could not stay here and then actually being removed. Are you satisfied that has been improved?

John Reid: Would you mind if I passed on that? That seems to me to be clearly an operational question. We are trying to develop a relationship, a so-called contract, which places the burden of responsibility where it ought to be. I know that much of this is a grey area, but that would seem to me to be an operational equation where I would take the advice from the Director General, if I might.

Ms Homer: Mr Clappison, I think one of the things we talked with you about before was our movement to what we call the new asylum model, essentially an approach which has a case owner and which looks to have some end to end responsibility for a case as it goes through the system. We were due to roll that out during the year, with it becoming operational in the new financial year next year, and we are on target to deliver that, but we have already been introducing that concept as we have gone forward, not just in asylum but throughout our business, and I think that is one of the ways we ensure that there is continuity, there is a focus on the outcome that we are looking for rather than the series of decisions on the way (and I think it is one of the major ways) in which we will continue to get an improvement.

Q67 Mr Clappison: Can I ask you about people who are given permission to stay in the country, the legal immigration in the system, which is something within your responsibility. You will know that concern has been expressed in many quarters about the level of net migration being experienced by the country today. Are you happy with that level of net migration?

John Reid: I think in the last few years the level of migration has been commensurate with the demands of the economy, and we have been able to absorb that migration. I think that most commentators would say that the work that was commissioned by the Home Office got the projections pretty wildly wrong, but, as it happened, the contribution that was made on the cost-benefit analysis appears to have been very beneficial to the country. However, you may say that is arguable, time may tell. What I am saying is that it seemed to me that, in the light of that experience, we ought to take an approach to Bulgaria and Romania, for instance, in a more managed fashion, and that is why I announced that we would attempt to limit the number of low-skilled workers from those countries. Simultaneously, we are introducing a points-based system, which means that we try to make sure that those who come to this country turn to the labour market, are needed here and bring badly needed skills. Simultaneously, I personally would like to see an independent Migration Advisory Committee, a committee independent of government, which indicates to government publicly advice on the most beneficial level of immigration, taking into account the needs of the labour market but wider issues. All three of those, I think, are a response to your question: should it be managed? As to the optimum level, that will change from time to time, but one of things I want to bring in is a body that would give us advice on that.

Q68 Mr Clappison: I will come to that in a moment. You have mentioned the optimum level. Your projection into the future - I hope you are aware of it - is 145,000 people coming to the country net, adding to the population every year for years to come. Are you telling the Committee you are happy with that and with the consequences which will flow from it?

John Reid: The level that actually will be required in any given year will depend on a huge number of factors, not least the birth rate, the death rate, the emigration level from this country, which is now not people leaving because they are in impoverished circumstances seeking a better life, as was the case some time ago, but people who are reasonably affluent and want to spend their last years of retirement abroad. It will depend on the growth of the economy, the specialism and skills, and so on. There is a huge number of factors. The idea that you just pick a number and say: are you a happy bunny or are you discontent with this arbitrary number---

Q69 Mr Clappison: Home Secretary, I am sorry for interrupting you but time is moving on. These are your government projections.

John Reid: I understand that.

Q70 Mr Clappison: It is within the capability of government to change that figure and to control immigration through the issue of work permits, which is something the Government did when it significantly increased work permits as soon as it came into power. I am not talking here about the Eastern European accession, I am talking about the net figure for work permits, which was more than doubled very shortly after the Government came to power, which more than doubled the rate of net migration. You can control that, so are you happy with the consequences which you see?

John Reid: The consequence of what we have done over the past ten years of which you are so critical, Mr Clappison, is that we have had the biggest period of sustained growth in our economy for 200 years, we have two and a half million people more in jobs, we no longer have 25% male unemployment as we had in my area under the last government, but around 5%, we are spending three times much in on our public services, we have reduced the national debt and altogether we have had a growth in living standards. Immigration has contributed towards that, and so to pluck a number and say the last ten years has had high immigration, therefore it has had awful consequences belies the historical facts. What I am saying for the future is I think we would benefit from independent advice on this matter. I think we would benefit from managed immigration more fairly and more effectively than we have done in the past, tackling illegal immigration, getting unfounded asylum seekers out of the country, making sure that those who come to the country bring qualifications which are those which are needed and making sure that the net cost to our society, not only in the labour market but elsewhere, is of benefit to us - that the benefits are greater than the cost.

Q71 Mr Clappison: Can I ask you about your Immigration Advisory Committee, because what it conspicuously does not do is set any sort of limit or give advice on the sorts of issues which you refer to. In your consultation you have not asked this. You have not asked them give to give advice about housing, which the Government does not seem to be taking into account; you have not asked them to take into account environmental consequences, infrastructure, cultural cohesion. There is no mention of a limit being set by the committee. It is giving you advice about the fine tuning of the points system. In your opinion, are you happy - can I come back to the original question - with this level of migration which your government foresees continuing into the future?

John Reid: I am sorry, but the whole premise to your question is wrong. The consultation is precisely about what it should consider other than pure labour market statistics. That is precisely what we are asking. If you feel, and you obviously do, that it should be considering wider aspects, then it is open to you or the committee to make representations on that point. If you do, you are pushing at an open door as far as I am concerned, because I think it should not just look at the narrow labour market, otherwise we would have stayed with the Skills Advisory Council (we could have done that), but what we said is, no, let us look a little wider than that and have a Migration Advisory Committee which can give advice to the Government and do it in public, and I would have thought that would have met some of the objections you appear to have about sailing blind in the past.

Chairman: Mr Clappison, we must move on to another topic before we close. Can we turn now to policing and related issues. Mr Browne.

Q72 Mr Browne: Home Secretary, I would like to ask you two questions about police force mergers. Earlier this year members of Parliament were told that there was a strategic imperative to change the 43 force structure in England and Wales, that it was inadequate for modern policing requirements. That was then shelved when you were the Home Secretary, and, in the speech you gave announcing this decision, you said, "I fully recognise the powerful arguments behind the strategic force approach and I have said already that the status quo is not acceptable." So, although it was shelved, you appear to imply there that there was not going to be a 43 force model but they may not go as low as 17. I am curious to know what you have in mind, particularly given today's headlines in the newspapers which appear to suggest that the terrible murders in and around Ipswich are potentially problematic for a force as small as Suffolk. So, if we are not going to have 43 forces, how many are we likely to have?

John Reid: I think this is based on a misapprehension. What I shelved was not either the views of the inspector of the constabulary or the benefits of bringing forces together. What I shelved was the process of getting to that destination by pushing it through Parliament against an opposition in Parliament that may well have defeated it, without the necessary fiscal arrangements from the Treasury to raise the precepts, without the money to do it, against the opposition of a great number of the forces themselves and with the likelihood, on the timescale or revision, of judicial review finding me legally at fault. So, when I looked at this, there were a number of reasons which suggested to me that the process on which we had embarked was not, in my judgment, a process that would ultimately beneficially lead us towards the destination to which we wanted to get. The destination to which we wanted to get, which is collaboration between forces, whether that is partnership, merger or whatever, we are attempting to get to through discussion and dialogue. Tony McNulty has been engaged in discussing with a lot of the forces throughout the country. We will continue to do that. If it takes a little longer than already envisaged, my judgment was that the problems we were going to run into under the other process of trying to do it would have caused us to take an awfully long time as well. So that is basically where we want to go.

Q73 Mr Browne: Home Secretary, with respect, I think you are blurring the distinction between collaboration and mergers. I know very few people who object to police forces collaborating with each other, but I know lots of people in the part of the country I represent, for example, who do not want to see a south-west strategic force that goes from Swindon to the Scilly Isles and thinks that is too big for the scale of policing that they envisage. I am interested if you could clarify that distinction between collaboration and mergers?

John Reid: I am not blurring it.

Q74 Mr Browne: What individual forces are we are looking at then?

John Reid: I am not blurring the distinction between partnership, or merger, or collaboration. Some people want partnership; some people want to collaborate. As it happened at least two forces wanted to merge; so that is available. What I am saying is it was not the destination of collaborative approach to fill that gap in our police services that we are opposed to, it was the process of getting there that was not likely to lead us to the destination we wanted. What we are trying to do now is to persuade people to fill that gap, which is particularly evidenced in small forces, by some means other than enforced merger. It could be mergers for those who wished to merge, it could be collaboration for those who do not wish to - as you pointed out some do not - it could be some form of joint partnership in certain areas, and it could be different aspects of that for different subjects, for instance counter terrorism or organised crime, and that is a process that is underway at the moment in discussion with ACPO and the individual forces. That is all I am saying.

Q75 Mr Browne: At the moment we have 43 forces in England and Wales with their own chief constables and their own distinctive badges and everything else. At the end of this process, how many do you envisage that being?

John Reid: That is what the discussions are about.

Q76 Mr Browne: You have no view on what that number ought to be?

John Reid: The important thing at the end of this is not how many people have egg on their shoulder or checks on their cap, it is how many forces have the capacity to deal with a range of major crimes without dragging people out of neighbourhood policing, and everything I do is centred around preserving neighbourhood policing and then making sure that the other aspects are filled as well.

Mr Browne: A very tiny supplementary to this, which is that forces, including my own, have some concerns about the amount of compensation that they have received from the Home Office for the money they spent on investigating and exploring merger options. It is very unfortunate that this has coincided with an announcement about reductions in envisaged additional police community support officers. This obviously does not apply to the area you represent, but do you understand the concern there is in areas like mine, when people see potential squeezes in police budgets, that compensation for money spent on mergers has not been adequately given?

Q77 Chairman: Can you restrict your answer to the compensation issue, because we want to come to CSOs in just a moment?

John Reid: I hope, in areas like yours, they have recognised there is a record number of police probably moving out to neighbourhood policing, and in compensation I hope they recognise that I think there was a total of six and a half million pounds asked for. It is rarely that any of us get everything that we ask for. Four million pounds was paid out, which in more than half of the cases was everything that was asked for. In some cases we paid for everything except what was budgeted for as "opportunity costs". We did not feel that that was a legitimate claim, but we paid out considerable amounts of money. The final thing I would say, paying out four million out of six and a half million pounds, I think, was reasonable. Not all of the work that was done was wasted. In some areas, for instance, the teams that were set up and the work that has been done is being continued, so I think we have made a reasonable compensation for what was spent.

Q78 Chairman: Are there explicit standards for the capacity to deal with level two crime that you want forces to achieve by collaboration? This whole thing was kicked off by concern about level two crime. There do not seem to be any set standards that you expect police forces to achieve?

John Reid: I think there are judgments that are made by HMIC, and those judgments identified that there was a deficit in some of these areas which would be filled by mergers. I think the previous Home Secretary took the view (and history may prove him right) that these mergers would never take place unless they were imposed from the top. I took the view, because different people make different judgments---

Q79 Chairman: Are there clear standards that must be met? We understand the process, but are you now clear that collaboration will be required to achieve a defined level of standards for dealing with level two crime? That is what kicked off this whole debate.

John Reid: Yes, they did, and the optimum level of response to that crime would only be achieved by people collaborating together - I think that is the case - but it need not be a template that is imposed on every area in the same format. Indeed, it may be that we have to disintegrate some of the services, like counter terrorism, and have different forms of collaboration for different areas, Chairman.

Chairman: If you could give us a couple more minutes, Mr Prosser has some questions on CSOs.

Q80 Gwyn Prosser: Home Secretary, you have made a number of references this morning to neighbourhood policing, which is very popular with the public but it does rely heavily on the treatment of community support officers. Why was the Home Office's target, and now manifesto promise, to recruit 24,000 CSOs by 2008 dropped?

John Reid: Mr Prosser, I, like you and the public, think that neighbourhood policing is one of the best things that has happened in recent years in the police, and I would not make any changes unless it was around a prediction that neighbourhood policing will be delivered. It has rolled out very well in the Met and it has rolled out throughout England and we will keep to our dates on that. What happened was that we have been told that neighbourhood policing can be delivered with a lower level of PCSOs than was originally envisaged when we made the promise. That coincided with a request from police services, from ACPO and police chiefs, to have more flexibility over how they used the resources rather than constant targets from the centre in terms of outcome. So, in response to that, we said, provided they could deliver neighbourhood policing, we would give them a degree of flexibility on PCSOs that was not initially there and, indeed, rather than retaining all of the money that would have been allocated for that, we left, I think, £35 million of that money still available to police services. So the central point was that PCSOs were a means to providing neighbourhood policing and policing it in the scale and timescale we originally envisaged. That is now being delivered on the timescale and in the reality we wanted, but the police say they can deliver that without the higher number of PCSOs and they want a degree of flexibility that was not, therefore, there in the beginning to use the extra resources the way they see fit.

Q81 Gwyn Prosser: We understand that the new target of 16,000 new PCSOs by the end of next year is also in danger of being missed. What do you say to the Police Constable of Kent, for instance, who tells me that the recent cut in community support officer recruitment is severely going to impede his ability to roll out neighbourhood policing across the county?

John Reid: On your first point I will write to you if I have got this wrong, but certainly we still have a target for 16,000. No one has alerted me that this is in significant danger of not being met in the timescale. As I say, I will write to you, Chairman, if that is wrong. The cost of the increase from 16,000 to 24,000, the monies provided for that were £105 million. When we have dropped the target, we have taken £70 million back but retained £35 million, which will be available to police over and above the money that was originally made available for the 16,000. We are still committed to that, we are still informed that neighbourhood policing will be rolled out as we expected by the dates that we expected it, and if there is any difference to that, I will certainly write to you, Mr Prosser, but that is not my understanding of it. We should be able to deliver neighbourhood policing teams in every area by April 2008. Over 7,000 PCSOs have already been recruited by September of this year and although, as I said, we reduced the anticipated funding, we have not reduced it completely above the grant for the 16,000, we have left £35 million in there, and basically of that 35 million, I think, from memory, more than half of it went to the Met because they have already rolled out effectively neighbourhood policing. Neighbourhood policing is a success story, and I do not think anyone should diminish that. We have retained the target 16,000 and, as far as I am aware, we are going to hit that.

Gwyn Prosser: I will take up the issue of Kent in particular perhaps privately in correspondence.

Q82 Chairman: Home Secretary, can I thank you and your team very much today. Apologies to members who had unanswered questions. Can I say, in extending now, at least to end of the meeting if not the beginning, a merry Christmas to yourself and your officials. I would also like to put on record the fact that, despite sometimes the way in which we inevitably raise questions about the Home Office in these and other sessions, in the course of year this Committee meets a huge number of people who are either directly employed by the Home Office or funded by them through different services. We are far more often impressed by the quality, dedication and commitment of those staff than we are worried by lack of ability and lack of commitment. At the end of the year I would like to put that on the record and thank you for appearing here today.

John Reid: That is very kind of you, Chairman. Thank you very much indeed on behalf of my colleagues and me.