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Home Office

My Lords, I suppose I have to declare an interest in this subject, because for five and a half years I worked in the Home Office as a Crown official. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, on obtaining this debate on a subject of great importance, and that is not just repaying the kind words which he used about my work. When I went into the old Home Office, I was always amused that it had been subdivided into areas that were divided by colours. I worked in what was called the ““grey area””, but Ministers also worked in the grey area, so I felt something in common. It is very sad when one sees one of the great offices of state not just held up to criticism in the media, but held up to a form of ridicule that I have never experienced being applied to any office of state, anywhere. It must be a matter of great concern when a new Secretary of State describes one the parts of his office as not being ““fit for purpose””. ““Fit for purpose”” is not a term that I recognise, because, in the Army, when we inspected people, we inspected to see whether they were ““fit for role””. However, I am sure that is the same thing, so I was delighted to see that the title of this debate mentions the role of the Home Office. It is the role of the Home Office as a whole, rather than any of its individual parts, on which I would like to concentrate for a moment or two. I am pleased to be able to do so from the Cross Benches, which were described by a friend of mine as being the place where radicals of the extreme centre are allowed to lash out in every direction without being involved in party-political claim and counterclaim. I must start by disagreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, in his contention that the Home Office should not be split. From observation inside it, I believe that one of the major problems, particularly for the Home Secretary, is that the job is too big for any one man or woman to encompass at this moment. There are two separate functions. One is the administration of justice. Most of the failures and problems that we see highlighted in the media to do with the Prison Service, the probation service and so on are to do with the fact that there has not been adequate supervision of the administration of justice. When looking at the attempts to join up justice, I am concerned by how many bits of the justice system are now separated from the Home Office and are under separate ministerial direction. For example, social services used to be in the Home Office, as did youth justice, but the Minister for Children, who one would expect to be in charge of children, is sitting in the Department for Education and Skills. We see a White Paper about the rehabilitation of offenders coming from the Department for Education and Skills, the Home Office and the Minister for Work and Pensions. Only the other day in this House, I quoted concern over the voluntary sector in prisons, which is now apparently being directed by the defunct Office of the Deputy Prime Minister rather than any of the ministries which one might expect. Concern about the administration of justice in this country is now so strong that it merits the formation of one ministry responsible for justice and for nothing else. When one takes responsibility for justice out of the Home Office, an enormous amount of what might be termed the responsibilities of the Minister for home affairs are still left. In this House, we have dealt with many of them recently: terrorism, homeland security, identity cards and immigration and asylum. If we are to believe, as we are told, that there is a war on terrorism and that homeland security is so important, those things also seem to merit the attention of one person because they are a full-time occupation. I sympathise hugely with Mr Charles Clarke, who had to switch suddenly all the attention that he was paying to the criminal justice system to the demands of what happened on 7 July, and then return it, and then go on to other things. It must have made life pretty well impossible for him. If one accepts that premise—and I am fully aware that many people do not—one is in a position to start thinking about the better management of how these things should happen. When I look at what is happening in the Home Office at the moment, I suspect that it essentially boils down to the fact that three overstretched organisations—prisons, probation and the immigration directorate, quite apart from the police—are subjected to the day-to-day demands of having far too many customers—if that is the right word—and not enough resources to be able to deal with them. That is coupled with endless pressure to introduce untried theories, of which the practical details and problems have not been evaluated. I have always felt that a great deal of the problem is avoidable if new initiatives are not put in place until it is certain that the organisations that have to implement them are in a position to do so. The problem of imposing all the current initiatives—all of which we agree with—such as end-to-end offender management and so on, on organisations that are themselves not working properly is that they are incapable of implementing either the day-to-day demands, which are the things we read about in the press, or the things that we would all like to happen. Nobody can accuse the Home Office of being idle. Fifty-two laws, hundreds of new crimes, countless inquiries and Green Papers, numerous paper consultations and thousands of initiatives and other directions have come pouring forth, ending up—dare I say it—in confusion on the part of the people on the receiving end. I believe that a lot of that stems—this is not critical of the Government as such—from a mistaken belief that centralisation of control is the answer to everything. It is not, and certainly not when one is dealing with organisations containing people. It is not necessarily right or wrong, but the other way is to delegate powers to people who are responsible and accountable for their delivery. What happens with centralised control is that the people at the top, who are increasingly isolated from what is happening down below, demand information about what is happening. It becomes an increasing demand which results in increasing bureaucracy to cope with this demand. That is precisely what has happened, for example, in the case of the National Offender Management Service, which, in two and a half years, has gathered, as the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, told me in a Written Answer, 1,647 civil servants already and has achieved precious little more than a rise in the re-offending rate of 5 per cent. I am not trying to be cynical, but I believe that centralised control of something as hands-on as dealing with offenders must be very carefully planned and implemented before it is introduced. I do not think that the Home Office, as presently constructed and staffed, is in a position to do this; nor do I believe that it makes sense to introduce such central control until you have got the parts that matter working. I question whether increasing bureaucracy in serving central control is the best way to manage some of the functions for which the Home Office is responsible. What is the answer? Personally, I believe that the reformation of the Home Office is an essential consideration. Obviously it will mean, if it happens, that it does not just consist of suggesting that the Home Office should be split. Urgent consideration should be given to the formation of a ministry of justice which takes into one place the administration of justice as a whole, leaving another department to manage home affairs. If you separate the two into manageable proportions we would not be reading the criticisms that we find so disturbing—because they refer, after all, to one great department of state which affects the lives of every person in this land.