Downing Street Says » Home Office

Asked if the Prime Minister had full confidence in Joan Ryan, the PMOS said: yes.

Asked if the Prime Minister had full confidence in Tony McNulty, the PMOS said: yes.

Asked why, the PMOS replied that with regards to the letters issue, what the Home Office had said was that there was no evidence that Ministers knew of the backlog, or the scale of it. That remained the case.

Asked why the letters were not released, if someone was leaking them selectively, the PMOS replied that there was an enquiry that was being set up by the Permanent Secretary in the department. We believed that that was the proper way to address these issues.

Put that the PMOS’s answer was very specific regarding the backlog and the scale of it, and ACPO were saying that they had made out that there was a serious problem but they didn’t have the detail, the PMOS replied that what we had said all along was that we were aware that there was an issue about the quality of information coming from other countries. That, after all, was why we were part of the JHA agreement to rationalise and improve the service, and that was also why we agreed that ACPO should be the lead authority. That was different from being aware of either the scale of the problem or that there was a backlog.

Asked further about Ministers awareness of the backlog, the PMOS replied that in terms of whether Ministers were aware there was a policy issue, of course there was a policy issue, as that was precisely why we had participated in the decision to transfer the lead role to ACPO. In terms of whether anyone had said to Ministers that there were 27,000 cases, the Home Office had produced their answer.

Asked if the Home Office knew there was a problem, but ACPO didn’t say how big it was, they didn’t proceed, the PMOS replied that those were exactly the questions that the enquiry would address.

Asked if the Home Secretary had appointed the person who would be leading the enquiry yet, the PMOS said that as people could imagine, it always took some time to set these things up.

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» Thursday, January 11, 2007

Home Office

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