Home Office ‘facing major challenges’
Running the Home Office is one of the hardest jobs in government because of the public’s expectations of what needs to be done, Tony Blair said today.
The prime minister said the challenges posed by mass migration and a breakdown in traditional social structures has changed the nature of crime and immigration beyond recognition – and the Home Office is struggling to keep up.
He was speaking after a difficult first month for his new home secretary, John Reid, who has not only had to deal with his predecessor’s problems of foreign prisoners, but also tackle a series of revelations about immigration and prison blunders.
Illegal immigrants were found working at the Home Office, it was revealed that thousands with suspect visas were being given national insurance numbers and Mr Reid accidentally misled MPs about the number of foreign prisoners released on bail.
But during his monthly news conference today, Mr Blair defended Mr Reid against Conservative claims that the whole system is in crisis – and warned that it was the Tories who had failed to understand what was needed to deal with the new challenges.
“You’ve got a system where there is a big gap between what people need to do and what the system is, which is basically a 19th or 20th century Home Office which has been there for a long period of time,” he said.
“We are changing this.but I believe you can only tackle it if you are prepared to take what are really tough measures.”
He insisted that introducing a national identity cards system was vital to tackling illegal immigration, police summary powers were necessary to tackle anti-social behaviour and organised crime could only be dealt with through new legislation.
“This is a whole set of things which are contrary to the normal way in which we’ve operated. The idea that you are going to get the ordinary criminal justice system to tackle these things.I don’t believe it,” the prime minister told reporters.
“If you look where the public is on this issue, the gap between what they expect and what they get is bigger in this service than any other and we’ve got to bridge it.
“But we won’t bridge it just by talking about tough measures on law and order, we have to take action – we can’t deal with things in the way we’ve always dealt with them.”
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