Downing Street Says » Home Office

Asked if, given his previous experience as Home Secretary, he was surprised that two Ministers appeared to have seen a letter which had raised a potential problem involving convicts from abroad, the Leader said that, firstly, he had not seen the text of the letters. He did not wish to comment.

Mr Straw pointed out that he had said during Business Questions: "It is impossible for a Home Secretary to be fully aware, until they are aware, of everything that is going on in that wonderful Department of State. As an American said in a different context, there are known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns, and whoever is Home Secretary wakes up every day wondering which unknown unknown will turn into a known unknown and undermine their career." Mr Straw recounted how he used to wake up every morning and listen to the Today programme when six items had been reported, of which three related to the Home Office – and realise just before he was due to be interviewed that he only knew about one of the issues.

Mr Straw said that he did not make light of it, but it was the nature of the business. As he had said on a previous occasion, the reality was that every other government department, roughly speaking, dealt with people who had a similar agenda. The Leader said that, looking at the fundamentals, the Government’s record was good – crime had fallen, victimisation had come down, control of anti-social behaviour had improved and police numbers had risen.

In response to a further question, he said that he gave full support to and had full confidence in John Reid, who was doing very well. Mr Straw rejected a suggestion that he was implying that the Home Office was too big and should be broken up. He had never been convinced by the Opposition idea that the department should have two Cabinet ministers.

One of the strengths of the British system was that it was much more co-ordinated than many other countries, he added. The recent problems, including the issue of foreign prisoners, would have existed regardless of whether there had been one or two Cabinet ministers at the Home Office.

1 Comment »

This sounds like something Sir Humphrey would say in ‘Yes Minister’.
Comment by Martin Rosen — 12 Jan 2007 on 11:42 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.

» Thursday, January 11, 2007

Home Office

1 Comment »

Post a public comment

Search

Supported by

Recent Briefings

Archives

Links

Syndicate (RSS/XML)

Credits

Enquiries