Downing Street Says » Foreign Prisoners

Asked to explain exactly what the Prime Minister knew and at what time concerning the issue of foreign prisoners released without being considered for deportation, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) said that there had been a discussion between the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary in December about the general issue of foreign prisoners and why there had been an increase in foreign prisoners in the system. Last week he was made aware of the specific problem of 1023 foreign prisoners not being considered for deportation. The figure of 288 prisoners released since the problem had come to the Home Secretary’s attention was part of that 1023. The Prime Minister had known about the 1023 last week and the 288 last night. Put to him that the Prime Minister had not been aware of the 288 prisoners until after the Home Secretary had spoken to him about resignation, the PMOS said that whilst he didn’t disagree with that point, he would point out that the Prime Minister had explained at PMQs his understanding of how we arrived at 288 and why it wasn’t until February and March this year that ministers became aware that there were still people being released without being considered for deportation.

Asked if the Prime Minister might have cause to reconsider the Home Secretary’s offer of resignation in the light of what he said at PMQs, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister retained full confidence in the Home Secretary. Asked why he hadn’t changed his mind, the PMOS said that as the Prime Minister had said at PMQs, you couldn’t turn a system like this around overnight. When you put in £2.7million extra in the summer/autumn period and committed to double the staff that didn’t automatically lead to an instant change in the system. The important thing was that as of the 1 April no prisoner had been released without being considered for deportation.

Asked about suggestions that Charles Clarke had offered to resign on a prior occasion, the PMOS asked if he might be so bold as to suggest that PA were initially misleading in one of their reports, and noted that report had since been corrected. The report had suggested that Charles Clarke had offered to resign twice. He hadn’t. He had briefly made the offer to resign yesterday afternoon at a meeting which happened to coincide with the lobby yesterday where he had been saying that no one had offered resign.

Asked if the Prime Minister and Charles Clarke had discussed deportation last Autumn, the PMOS said no. That wasn’t what they had been talking about. They had discussions in December which had focussed on two particular points to do with foreign prisoners. Firstly the overall prison population had been rising therefore it was perhaps not surprising that the number of foreign prisoners rose in line with that. Secondly that with additional police and home office resources being targeted on issues such as Drug trafficking, that inevitably involved more foreign participants, as was the nature of certain crimes. Therefore the Prime Minister, through developing measures such as memorandas of understanding with other nations had been very keen to increase the number of people in the immigration area who were going back to their countries of origin.

Asked why the Prime Minister couldn’t stay to hear the Home Secretary’s statement, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister generally didn’t disrupt his diary, which was pre-set, to stay by ministers when they made their statements. For instance during the Ruth Kelly statement on sex offenders had been a similar occasion. The Prime Minister had a very packed programme today. Asked who he had been meeting at the time, the PMOS said that he believed the Prime Minister had been meeting with Scottish business representatives.

Put to him that when invited at PMQs to issue some words of support for the Home Secretary, the Prime Minister had been relatively brief and asked whether the Prime Minister had been deliberately reserved on this or was simply being remiss, the PMOS declined that Hobson’s choice of alternatives. If the Prime Minister’s words at PMQs were analysed in a slightly more objective way, it was clear that what the Prime Minister was doing was explaining in detail why the situation had arisen and in particular why the 288 newer cases had come about. Therefore his support had been given in more of a practical way, by making an argument for why ministers had acted in the way they had.

Asked if it was not remarkable that the Home Secretary had admitted that the Home Office was "dysfunctional", the PMOS said that the Home Office was, to make perhaps the understatement of the day, a very complex department dealing with very complex issues. Any Home Secretary from whatever party would agree with that assessment. The important thing was that the Government had freely admitted the problems that the IND had suffered and that it was now going in the right direction. There were often particular problems, such as this one. When those problems arose, you didn’t try to hide them, you admitted them and dealt with them. That was what we were doing.

Asked if Downing Street agreed with the description of the Home Office as dysfunctional, the PMOS said that what we agreed was, as Charles Clarke had said and as the Prime Minister had said, was that what had happened was clearly wrong and there was a systemic failure. Put to him that he had now failed twice to use the phrase dysfunctional, the PMOS said that he chose his words to reflect what the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary were saying. Put to him that it was the Home Secretary who had used that description, the PMOS said that what he had said was that there had been a systematic failure. We should not play word games on this, the important thing was to look at what gave rise to that systemic failure and what should be done about it. What the Government had done was invest an extra £2.7million and double the number of staff in that area.

Asked if the Prime Minister wasn’t annoyed that he had only been made aware of this fact by the end of April, the PMOS said that this was a complex area and it took time to collect all the information, as we had discovered not least in the last 24 hours. Therefore it did take time. The important thing was that there was work underway to correct the problem and the pieces had been put in place to resolve the issue as far back as last autumn.

Put to him that many of those prisoners released would have been on license and therefore their addresses would be available, the PMOS said that was right. Like any other prisoner the normal rules applied. Some of them however were on license for quite a considerable period and therefore the license might have expired. These were all matters which were part of the investigation which Charles Clarke had promised to report back to the House on.

1 Comment »

Deportation Island: New Reality TV Show in the United Kingdom

Prime Minister Tony Blair announced today his cabinet would be launching a new reality television show. The reality TV show entitled \x93Deportation Island\x94 will mark the Prime Minister\x92s directorial debut and represents a direct public relations offensive to combat sliding approval ratings. A poll conducted by The Telegraph places the Prime Minister\x92s personal approval rating at just 36%.

Executive producers of \x93Deportation Island\x94 include Home Secretary Charles Clarke and Lord Levy.\x93Deportation Island\x94 will be an unscripted quest series that will feature teams of foreign and British convicted criminals who will be provided with a series tasks, aimed at getting them deported from the United Kingdom.

For more on "Deportation Island" click on the link provided above or visit http://www.darkmatterpoilitics.com
Comment by The Dark One — 27 Apr 2006 on 1:33 pm | Link

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.

» Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Foreign Prisoners

1 Comment »

Post a public comment

Search

Supported by

Recent Briefings

Archives

Links

Syndicate (RSS/XML)

Credits

Enquiries