it make look like government by fiasco, but is New Labour playing a long game with all these Home Office leaks to the media?
The latest is that records of British criminals convicted abroad are ‘sitting on a desk’ at the Home office and the police don’t know if there are murderers loose.
LONDON (Reuters) – Home Secretary John Reid faced mounting pressure on Sunday over his department’s failure to log overseas offenders’ details after it emerged that a convicted armed robber committed murder on his return to Britain.
Political opponents accused Reid’s department of incompetence and called for an independent inquiry into the latest Home Office controversy.
Career criminal Dale Miller, 43, killed a man in Newcastle in 2000 after being released from prison for armed robberies in Germany and Switzerland, The Observer newspaper said on Sunday.
How many leaked scandals is this now?
Once is accident, twice is suspicious, three or more times is looking decidedly conspiratorious.
For the non-UKian, the Home Office is a huge historical portmanteau of a government department, one whose remit includes criminal justice, policing and terrorism, prisons, immigration and citizenship and last but not least, race relations. It’s overseen by a Cabinet member, the Home Secretary, who’s third in seniority and influence to the PM and Chancellor.
Labour’s most recent Home Secretary is alleged Scots hardman ( Nu-Lab speak for office bully) John Reid, who’s been very vocal in running his department down, saying it’s ‘not fit for purpose’, the idea being he’s the new broom who’ll sweep it clean and it’s all the civil servants’ fault. A little background on the man to give you a taste of his style:
I Really Like John Reid, I Really Do, Honest
John Reid, the newly appointed Home Secretary, has my deep and unalloyed admiration, he really does. Not only has he gone into the Home Office, his 27th Cabinet job in as many years or something, and told them they are all a bunch of cunts, which is palpably true, but he is an old Stalinist tankie of the first order. “Red” Reid does not mess about, and is just the comrade to supply the sort of smack of firm Government that this country needs. Thank heavens he does not drink, and is no longer the man who once consumed possibly 10 whisky and lemonades at lunch. And no food. The lemonade, I think, was a very stylish touch. And his deep admiration for the Bosnian Serb freedom fighter Radovan Karadzic (whereabouts, I believe, still unknown – I’d suggest starting at John’s house – if they can find a sliver of cannbis, they can find a large former pyschiatrist, surely?) is something that can only affirm one’s awe for the man’s judgement. If only he would rename the Home Office the Ministry of the Interior (MiniTer) then we could all certainly sleep safer in our beds.
If you add up all the stories about Home Office leaks and incompetence that have appeared in he tabloids over the last year an overwhelming preponderance are about lax information management, with the blame placed firmly on the shoulders of the staff and not the ministers for their endless barrage of management consultants and badly-drafted kneejerk legislation.
If anything Reid seems almost to relish the scandal. I wonder why?
The civil servants are represented by a left-wing union, the PCS, who new Labour hate like poison precisely because it is left-wing and its leader has led the fight to decouple his and other unions from funding Labour – so it’s not just about modernising a creaky department, it’s about purging the left, who oppose plans for a privately run but publicly funded massive and inclusive cradle to grave database and biometric ID system that will erase any personal privacy, make individuals the property of the state, make billions for private consultants, privatise the civil service, and be buggy and useless too.
In the light if disastrous current and previous government IT projects, this seems a reasonable position to take.
This leads me to think that the leaks are not in the least bit accidental, no matter how it looks on the face of it. For instance we even had a tethered goat set out in the form of a junior Home Office minister on Friday’s BBC Any Questions, this from a government whose invariable press relations motto during this type of fiasco is “No-one is available for comment’.
My theory is also propped up by two worrying stories from this morning’s UK papers; first from the Independent:
Blair calls for data to be shared
By Marie Woolf, Political Editor
Published: 14 January 2007
Tony Blair will propose this week to change the law to allow government departments to share personal data, including people’s medical records and tax details.
The plan to allow Whitehall departments to share information that is currently protected by strict confidentiality rules will prove highly controversial.
The Prime Minister is likely to argue that allowing personal files to be shared will speed up and simplify Whitehall decision-making.
But the move is expected to be criticised by civil liberties groups, which will say that sensitive information could fall into the wrong hands.
Then there’s this from The Observer:
Police across Europe to share DNA database
David Rose
Sunday January 14, 2007
Police and security services in the European Union will share access to an unprecedented range of individuals’ personal data under a radical package of measures to be discussed by EU justice ministers this week.
It allows agencies in different countries to search one another’s databases – DNA records, fingerprints, vehicle details – and other personal information. Even if someone has no criminal record and their DNA is not on a database, police can ask their foreign colleagues to collect a sample.
The measures, known as the Prum Treaty, after the German town where it was signed, are being championed by Germany, which holds the EU presidency. Documents obtained by The Observer show that the Germans are also holding secret talks with top US officials in an attempt to conclude a data-sharing agreement with America – first for Germany alone, then for the EU.
Last week The Observer revealed that all British visitors to the US will have their fingerprints stored alongside criminals’ on a database linked to the FBI. ‘Prum has several dangers,’ Peter Hustinx, the EU’s Data Protection Commissioner, said. ‘Some of its definitions are very sloppy and it creates an infrastructure that may well not be necessary. The Council of Ministers has not been involved, the European Parliament has not been involved. It bypasses Europe’s normal processes of accountability and decision-making.’
It threatens to ‘trump’ a separate initiative to create an EU data-sharing system – with much stronger safeguards – which has been working its way through the Council of Ministers, in consultation with the European Parliament. ‘The framework as it stands has flaws,’ said Tony Bunyan, of the civil liberties monitoring group Statewatch. ‘But if Prum, which is much worse, becomes European law, it will be left high and dry.’
Sarah Ludford, the Liberal Democrat MEP for London and a leading member of the European Parliament’s justice and civil liberties committee, said that while she accepted the need for security agencies to share information it was ‘vital that the provisions should be transparent and decided democratically’. She said that the move to adopt Prum amounted to a ‘parliamentary bypass’. Plum began as a private treaty in 2005 between Germany, France, Austria and four other countries. Now member states can only choose to ratify or reject it as a whole.
Add this to the Universal Child Database this government is also proposing :
While the proposals for the database grew out of concern for children at risk of child abuse or neglect, reinforced by the death of Victoria Climbi?, all 11 million children in the UK are to be registered on the database. The data entries for each child are to consist of:
- – name, address, gender and date of birth;
- – a unique identifying number;
- – the name and contact details of any person with parental responsibility or who has care of him at any time;
- – details of any education being received by him, including details of any educational institution attended;
- – the name and contact details of any person providing primary medical and other services specified by the Secretary of State;
- – information as to the existence of any cause for concern in relation to him;
– other information, not including medical records or other personal records, specified by the Secretary of State. [1]
Margaret Hodge, Minister of State for Children, has also stated that drug or alcohol use by parents, relatives and neighbours, together with other aspects of their behaviour, may be recorded. [2].
and it all starts to look like a plan, with the leaks an integral part of the strategy to discredit an independent civil service.
A universal database plus every other personal record available in other government databases is to be available to overseas governments with no permission whatsover from those most intimately concerned. tell me what’s wriong with this picture…. This is as repressive a measure as anything Stalin himsell thought up and totally unsurprising from Uncle Joe’s (supposedly reconstructed) supporters in New Labour.
Of course none of this, though it was at least reported, made the actual front pages; the fading glories of David Beckham took precedence. Sometimes I think we deserve all we get.
Read more: UK Government, Home Office, Scandals, Civil Service, Data Protection, Government IT, Unions, EU, John Reid.
