Divide and rule better

2 Feb 07
NICK COMFORT | As fresh horror stories well up daily from the Home Office, John Reid’s plan for his sprawling department to be split into two looks increasingly likely to go ahead.

As fresh horror stories well up daily from the Home Office, John Reid’s plan for his sprawling department to be split into two looks increasingly likely to go ahead.

For, in the fortnight since he floated the idea, no show-stopping arguments have been produced against it.

David Blunkett has suggested the split would weaken the home secretary and create an unhealthily powerful axis between the Treasury and Number 10. In terms of traditional Cabinet dynamics this is true, but after a decade in which prime minister and chancellor have dominated as never before, no home secretary – even Reid – can be on a par with them.

There have been bleats from the legal fraternity that creating a Ministry of Justice would compromise the independence of the judiciary. How taking powers away from the home secretary can threaten the judges is something only a lawyer can argue.

Maybe the concern is that if justice is administered more effectively, the more archaic parts of the system will come under challenge to deliver.

A third argument has greater merit: that splitting a non-performing department in two will achieve nothing without a wholesale change in culture and organisation. There would be no benefit in an upheaval that simply replaced one organisation incapable of delivery with two.

Under Reid’s plan, the Home Office’s responsibilities for justice would go to the Department for Constitutional Affairs, and those for public protection to what could be a Department for Homeland Security, were it not for the title’s resonances with the Bush administration in the US.

Responsibilities for community matters and race relations might move to Ruth Kelly’s Communities and Local Government department.

But the still-large Department for Public Protection would pose the greatest challenges and risks. It must not simply be a successor to a department whose culture makes it great at thinking Olympian thoughts, but mediocre at doing anything.

Several organs of the present Home Office do not appear to realise what they are supposed to be doing; if this continues under a new structure, the reputation of government itself will come into disrepute.

The courts, the police and local authorities can allow themselves a wry chuckle that a department whose ministers deluged them with new duties under New Labour has now been laid low by its own inability to keep up.

The failure to transfer Britons convicted overseas on to the police computer, the inability to say how many prisoners are on the run, the failure first to deport foreign prisoners deserving of that fate and now to impose travel restrictions on drug smugglers, the loss of contact with 300 sex offenders allowed to give non-existent addresses — all reflect a sclerosis unprecedented in Whitehall.

The Home Office’s increasing unfitness for its mission was identified by some civil servants as early as the 1960s, and the first serious efforts to address it were taken under Margaret Thatcher. Leon Brittan, shrewder as an administrator than a politician, was the first home secretary to perceive the need for change, but was moved before he could bring it about.

Instead, in common with the rest of Whitehall, many of its functions were devolved to arm’s-length agencies. These were intended to be better managed and focused on delivery, and ministers were attracted by the idea that they personally would be less accountable.

When Michael Howard fired the head of the Prison Service after a series of mishaps instead of resigning himself, this approach seemed vindicated.

Twenty years on, there is abundant evidence that some agencies sponsored by the Home Office are no better run than the directorates within it, which is saying something.

Moreover, recent events have brought home painfully to Reid that if one of these agencies fouls up, the home secretary is just as responsible as he always was.

All the indications are that the coming split will transfer existing directorates and agencies to successor departments without major change to their status. Ministers’ observations that it can be achieved without legislation bear this out. But there can, and must, still be a change of culture.

Unless splitting the Home Office is accompanied by a review of the ethos of each of its worst-performing agencies and directorates, Reid’s bold reform will have all the relevance of transferring the Titanic from the White Star Line to P&O.

And, as my fellow columnist Philip Johnston remarked the other day, no change at the Home Office will amount to anything unless those involved start doing their jobs.

Did you enjoy this article?

AddToAny

Top