OFF THE HOOK
Daily Mail
Daily Mail
Saturday March 3, 2007
by Matthew Hickley and James Slack
The official inquiry into the foreign convictions scandal was dismissed as a 'cru
de whitewash' last night after it cleared ministers of blame and the officials said to be responsible also avoided discipline.
de whitewash' last night after it cleared ministers of blame and the officials said to be responsible also avoided discipline.The internal Home Office investigation reveals that police chiefs bluntly warned junior minister Joan Ryan of the problem in a letter last October.
She was told the UK authorities were 'completely unaware' that dozens of British rapists, paedophiles and killers with convictions for horrifying crimes abroad were now at large, with their details missing from police databases and the Sex Offender Register.
The alarming letter explicitly recommended briefing the Home Secretary -yet despite the glaring risks to the public Miss Ryan took two months to send a vague response, failed to mention the issue to John Reid and took no further action.
The scandal erupted on January 9 when police chiefs went public - revealing that more than ten years of astonishing official blunders had left 27,000 files detailing convictions of UK citizens abroad to gather dust in the Home Office. Ministers insisted they had known nothing about the fiasco until that day, even when the existance of the ACPO letter emerged.
The official inquiry into the debacle - carried out by the Home Office's head of human resources Dusty Amroliwala - manages to avoid criticising any minister and instead blames failings by unnamed junior officials spread over many years.
Nobody will be disciplined following yesterday's findings, Whitehall sources confirmed last night, even though scores of criminals returned from abroad and committed more crimes while the police and courts had no knowledge of their past records.
Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said the inquiry was a charade and accused Miss Ryan of 'staggering complacency, bordering on recklessness', He said: "The public will be astounded at her complacent approach to such a vital issue of public safety."
He said Mr Amroliwala, who works for the ministers at the centre of the scandal, lacked independence and authority.
Mr Davis added: "ACPO made ministers aware of the seriousness of the problem and warned that this was something the Home Secretary should address but they continued to ignore the serious risk to public safety."
Shadow immigration minister Damian Green said: "The way ministers have tried to evade responsibility for the whole shambles reveals a cancer at the heart of the government. Ministers take the salaries. They get driven around in the cars. They have to take the responsibility when things go wrong."
The official report fails to address the question of why ministers ignored the warnings from police chiefs that large numbers of dangerous murderers, rapists and paedophile abuse were at large in the UK, with nothing to stop them getting jobs working with children because their details were missing from the databases.
The problems were set out in a letter from Adrian McAllister of the Association of Chief Police Officers, dated October 3, 2006. It was sent to Police Minister Tony McNulty, but passed on to his junior colleague Miss Ryan without even being read.
It highlighted 27 rapists convicted in Germany alone, some for paedophillic abuse, adding: 'I recognise you may feel this is something the Home Secretary would wish to be briefed about given the obvious links to foreign national prisoners.'
But, incredibly the letter appears not to have rung any alarm bells with Joan Ryan or her officials. She admitted to the inquiry that she had 'intended to mention the issue to the Home Secretary' but decided to wait until more details were available.
The report paints a sorry picture of years of poor management and incompetence within the Home Office but fails to single out any named individual.
The risk is enormous, warned police
The release of Home Office e-mails shows how the Association of Chief Police Officers bluntly warned civil servants about the 'enormous risk' posed by the criminal records scandal.
They also reveal the shocking list of crimes committed by those involved.
They include 11 killers, eight convicted of attempted murder, 27 rapists, 48 sex attackers - mainly paedophiles - and even three terrorists. One criminal was involved in the arms trade. By October last year, Home Office officials were also aware that at least a fifth of the 525 most serious convicts had re-offended back in Britain.
Asked to assess the 'level of risk' presented by the failure to update the Police National Computer, an unnamed ACPO official writes: "The potential risk is enormous. We have indentified to date 27 rapes and 47 serious sex abuse cases - 50 per cent on children - committed by UK nationals over the past seven years.
"Most offenders are not on the Police National Computer and therefore not on the Sex Offender Register."
The e-mail makes it plain that ACPO is struggling with the mountain of 27,500 cases and needs more resources - at the time, there were only three staff involved.
But, incredibly, this request for extra cash was not even passed on to ministers. Instead, it was turned down flat. At the time the scandal became public, in January this year, there were still only three staff trying to wade through the backlog.
DAILY MAIL COMMENT
So politicians are in the clear. It wasn't their fault. Blame lies with lowly junior officials (though despite John Reid's promise that heads would roll, nobody has been sacked).
Yet again, New Labour shows its utter contempt for the public's intelligence. This shoddy charade of a report isn't simply a whitewash. It is a travesty.
Ministers were warned in explicit terms that dozens of British rapists, paedophiles and killers convicted abroad were returning to this country without the details of their crimes being registered here.
So what did they do? Precisely nothing. Home Office Minister Joan Ryan just sat on the letter from police chiefs, didn't bother to tell her boss, John Reid, took no action to protect public safety and then led the pretence that Ministers didn't know what was going on.
Whether or not she actually lied may be open to debate. But of her complacency and gross incompetence there is no doubt at all. The Home Office isn't fit for purpose - and neither are its ministers.
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