So the Home Office has suspended a "senior Civil Servant" in the quest to find out who is responsible for the chaos surrounding the 27,000 files waiting to be entered onto police computers. To my mind it is a politician who should be taking responsibility, rather than making a civil servant the scapegoat. And the Minister in question is Joan Ryan. You probably haven't heard of her.Her performance at the Home Office has been dire. She is regularly found to be out her depth at the Despatch Box. She was almost rendered speechless when trying to defend the Government's position on the Nat West Three, so much so that Tory MPs backed off as they felt sorry for her.
The truth is, she should never have been put in this position. One glance at her CV would have demonstrated that she should not be in charge of a whelk stall, let alone be a Minister at the Home Office. She has been almost criminally negligent in her management, or should I say non-management in this case. In two separate interviews on Sky News she denied ever having received a letter from ACPO and said that had she done so she would of course have alerted the Home Secretary. It emerged that she herself had indeed replied to the ACPO letter, although it seems that the most charitable interpretation is that she signed the letter without reading it, or the ACPO original letter, first. Lamentable.
In the Sunday Telegraph today Michael Howard has written a superb ARTICLE in which he says...
Acpo wrote to the Home Office months ago asking for the funding it needed to deal with the problem. The letter was sent to Tony McNulty, the minister responsible for the foreign prisoners fiasco, who had, astonishingly, kept his job when Charles Clarke lost his. Joan Ryan replied to Acpo's letter. Joan Ryan, you will remember, is the minister who went on Radio 4's Today programme to say she knew nothing whatever about the problem. Yet the letter from Acpo to which she replied not only identified that problem clearly, it also specifically suggested that "this is something which the Home Secretary might want to be briefed about". It is hardly rocket science to suggest that when the Association of Chief Police Officers writes to a minister, the minister concerned should read the letter; when a minister replies to the Association, she should read the letter above her signature; and when the Association suggest that the Home Secretary be briefed about something… he should, indeed, be briefed. Yet in this case, apparently, the Home Secretary was never even shown the letter. Ministers have no recollection of it and the request for funding was refused, so we are told, by officials alone. If all this is true, one has to ask the question: how could that possibly have happened? Was it because this famously "hands on" minister had given the impression to his junior ministers and his officials that matters of this kind were beneath him and not sufficiently important to justify his personal attention? To me, no other explanation makes sense. But if that is the explanation, then John Reid is every bit as responsible as he would be if he had seen the letter, refused the funding and himself decided to let the files gather dust. The whole sorry saga is perhaps the final nail in the coffin of any lingering Labour claim to competence on criminal justice issues.
have any of Blair's babes done anything useful?
ReplyDeleteEstelle Morris had the guts to admit that she wasn't up to the job.
Thinking about it, which of Blair's boys has been competent in office?
Iain,
ReplyDeleteI am glad ot see a civil servant suspended. it may even be better if they were to lose their job, pour encourager les autres.
However, suspended on full pay is something I would enjoy very much; especially with the liklihood of a transfer to a similar job elsewhere.
Of course, the MP should resign too; nut we must stop letting hte civil service off as well. it desperately needs reform and some small grasp of reality.
If both are to blame, both should go. The minister AND the civil servant.
ReplyDeleteToo right. Not enough former booksellers in parliament.
ReplyDeleteI think there will be an awful lot of 'whistleblowing' going on at 'Home Office' towers, as civil servants reach the end of their tolerance for 'mushroom management' from Tony McNumpty, John Reid and last but not least Joan 'Rabbit-in-the-headlights' Ryan.
ReplyDeleteThe two immigration judges are probably still being paid while the red hot chilli pepper cleaner serves her sentence.
ReplyDeleteSo on one hand they aren't going to release the correspondence between the Government and ACPO until an enquiry has been completed - I'm guessing a few months away. But on the other some faceless drone makes a handy scapegoat.
ReplyDeleteAnd they wonder why people don't trust politicians.
Dear Michael,
ReplyDeleteIt is good to hear that you now accept that the Home Secretary should be responsible. As I recall, you did not think so when you were Home Secretary and introduced the dichotomy between policy and operational responsibility for decision-making. It was the Derek Lewis affair, if you remember. And that awful swearword Jeremy Paxman and his parrot like asking you the same question 12 times and you did not answer.
I admire your oratory skills. However, Jack Straw although not as good did have you by the throat and let you go. It is a shame that Parliament has this silly rule stating that MPs cannot call each other a liar. As a consequence you lived to fight another day.
What is it about the job of Home Secretary that attracts madmen? Even Churchill was off his rocker, but he did succeed in being the only Home Secretary to reduce the prison population by half. Yes, John Reid is a few volumes short of a law library.
Having been there yourself, I would have thought that you would have sympathy when the lunatics take over the asylum?
Your disobedient servant
(I have not read this but I will sign it anyway)
Do you know, I almost feel sorry for Joan Ryan, Iain? Laying into her is liking kicking a puppy.
ReplyDeleteBut she is yet another New Labour robot, someone who blithely argues that the public are gagging for ID cards when all the evidence points to the exact opposite.
A lightweight, a bland under-achiever and I can't for the life of me fathom how on earth someone with such a limited outlook ever got into Parliament.
If I was her I'd check my bank account - with her attentive powers the Civil Servants will have been putting blank cheques under the her nose for fun...
Apart from the obvious stuff, this case shows that Parliament manifestly doesn't attract the "right" people desite its excellent pay and pensions. There may be some mileage in going back to a more voluntary system...?
ReplyDeleteI think it is time to allow a Prime Minister to appoint outsiders to be his Ministers who also have to stand up in the HoC and be answerable for their performance. Reducing the number of MPs who are also in the govt would make them more independent of the govt line.
ReplyDeleteMPs are not selected for their managerial competence, so why expect a party with 350 to find 70 wonderful managers? It is a process with a built in guarantee of failure.
"I can't for the life of me fathom how on earth someone with such a limited outlook ever got into Parliament."
ReplyDeleteSame as the rest of them - people voting for the monkey with the right coloured rosette. As for attracting a better calibre of candidate,simple,scrap payment of MPs.
I think the most striking aspect of this article is the utter lack of evidence for any of its assertions.
ReplyDeleteIt's about time that we recognise that being good at the despatch box does not make you a good minister.
As someone who works in the Home Office, let me tell you that Joan Ryan is a hardworking and extremely effective minister who deserves better than this pathetic bitching by a bunch of middle-aged sad cases.
As they say in politics - you can delegate power but not responsibility.
ReplyDeleteThank you for dropping by Mr McNulty...
ReplyDeleteSo how, precisely, is David Cameron supposedly qualified to do the job as PM? He's never led a government department - his management experience is limited to a job at Carlton (obtained more through his connections than ability) and his government time is restricted to working as an advisor for Lamont - probably the worst post-war chancellor.
ReplyDeleteThen there's Gideon Osborne and his total lack of ability or qualification to be chancellor.
Hardly a mark of quality, either of 'em.
Don't start this kind of fight, Iain - it will only prove embarrassing to the Tory front bench.
Nice pages here. Great information. Will visit again and recommend.
ReplyDeleteSo perhaps POLITICALHACK would like to let us know the qualifications Prescott,Clarke,Harman,Kelly,Blunkett, etc. etc. have which resulted in them being given appointments that they subsequently made total cock-ups of? And less of the threats please you NuLab cretin.
ReplyDeletejailhouselawyer said...
ReplyDeleteSo what sort of Home Secretary would you like JHL? Presumably not one that supports the re-introduction of capital punishment for murderers eh?
anon 1102. res ipsa loquitur. by the tone of your defence of this incompetent woman, you and Ms ryan seem to be quite close - you haven't discussed uganda or wilberforce with her by any chance. i think we should be told, you prat.
ReplyDeleteanonymous (aka McNulty) [11.02 p.m.]
ReplyDeleteBeing good at the despatch box is a necessary, if not a sufficient, qualification. Ministers who perform poorly at the despatch box are the despair of the civil service and the government whips. They never last long.
I hope I am not being sexist when I say that some of our very worst performers at the despatch box are women. Patricia Hewitt, Tessa Jowell, Joan Ryan, Lady Scotland, etc., etc. They seem particularly prone to a robotic adherence to their Departmental brief, which undermines everything they are trying to get across.
Listen carefully to the definition of the files and data which did not make it onto the PNC in a timely fashion. Data from European countries is now received according to an agreement which applied last year. Data has not been received from all countries in a timely manner, Spain is said not to be sending data. What about criminal convictions in non EU countries is that being received by the Home Office? Some data is received through Interpol. It was reported last week that Paul Gadd (Gary Glitter) will be released early by Vietnam. Do details of his conviction get passed to the HO officially. I believe there is a lot more lurking behind the curtain of "data on European convictions" and Reid's review of all criminal databases.
ReplyDeleteNot up to the job Ministers, who deny receiving reports and warnings reminds me of Blunkett's sidekick - Beverley Hughes.
ReplyDeleteShe denied having seen or received a report on migrants.
Blunkett expressed total confidence in her.
She lasted a couple of days longer.History repeating itself?
I'm not making threats, merely pointing out that people living in blue-tinted glass houses should not be heaving boulders around the place.
ReplyDeleteMe, New Labour? Get a life.
Down with the concept of ministerial responsibility and up with the concept of civil servant responsibility is what I say.
ReplyDeleteIt is about time we started sacking incompetent civil servants rather than expecting ministers to take the rap for their officials' gross inadequacies.
When they balls up, civil servants should go - not be moved to another post but moved out of the door. (That said, so should ministers.)
Civil servants have done more damage to this country than any enemy within or without and the sooner we start sacking the imcompetent ones the sooner we shall have a much reduced State.