Mounting pressure on Clarke to resign

27 April 2006 08:00

Home Secretary Charles Clarke was clinging on to office last night despite mounting pressure for him to resign or be sacked over the foreign prisoner scandal.

Having offered his resignation - which the prime minister rejected - he is expected to survive the immediate clamour for his departure unless there are fresh and damaging disclosures. But the mistaken release of 1023 overseas criminals without consideration of deportation carries long-term dangers which could prove fatal to his ministerial career.

His fellow Norwich Labour MP Ian Gibson referred to this in describing his position as "very precarious". He should not resign, he said, but things could look very different if there were serious reoffending by people who had been released. "All that work and toughness might be destroyed by events in his department that are not entirely his responsibility", he added.

As more than 50pc of released criminals reoffend, there is a high chance of further offences by the people at the centre of the controversy - who include murderers, rapists and paedophiles.

Mr Clarke was boosted by the fact Richard Bacon, the Norfolk Tory MP who triggered this crisis with questions at the Commons Public Accounts Committee, is not calling for his head.

"I'm mainly interested in seeing the problem solved rather than calling for a head on a platter", he said. "To his (Mr Clarke's) credit, he has stood up and said the Home Office has got it wrong and taken responsibility for it."

The South Norfolk MP added he couldn't think of a Labour politician who would do better than Mr Clarke as home secretary.

"There are fundamental, systemic problems in the home office, and you need someone to kick backside and put the fear of God into them. I would be very surprised if that is not what Mr Clarke is doing".

The maintenance of good relations between the two MPs was evident yesterday when the home secretary congratulated Mr Bacon in the Commons on the line of questions that led to the crisis for him and his department.

In contrast to Mr Bacon, both his party leader, David Cameron, and Tory shadow home secretary David Davis did demand Mr Clarke's scalp. Mr Cameron said he could not give the home office "the leadership that it so badly needs" and that he has misled people in saying that only "a very, very few people" had been released since he had become fully aware of the problem.

After the initial public disclosures about the prisoner releases, Mr Clarke has been further damaged by the revelation that since he was alerted - last autumn - 288 foreign prisoners had been freed without consideration being given to deporting them.

It further emerged yesterday that Mr Blair was unaware of that fact when he refused Mr Clarke's offer of resignation. But although the prime minister left the Commons before the home secretary made a statement on the debacle, there was no sign that he had come to regret his decision.

With the news about the foreign criminals being quickly followed by the disclosure that deputy prime minister John Prescott had an affair with his diary secretary, Mr Blair and his government were looking increasingly beleaguered in the approach to next week's council polls. Bad results in them for Labour could result in an acceleration of the replacement of the prime minister by Gordon Brown.

The Association of Chief Police Officers revealed it had began processing names provided by the home office yesterday in a bid to track down 916 outstanding offenders.

Initial results have already been returned to the department after checks on the Police National Computer, it was confirmed. However, a home office spokeswoman said no further details were being revealed at this stage.

Efforts will be concentrated on locating the most serious offenders, but the authorities seemed to have few clues to their whereabouts.

Ministers and government aides also struggled all-day yesterday to explain how the prisoner blunder, which could have been prevented by sticking to basic procedures and records, had been allowed to occur.

The prime minister stressed that an investment of £2.7 million in the Immigration and Nationality Directorate meant that all foreign prisoners' cases were being considered for deportation before release for the first time "in decades".

But Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell questioned Mr Clarke's suitability for office, asking: "How can the prime minister not ask for his resignation?" And Mr Davis rebuked the home secretary for saying he didn't know when asked "where the murderers, the rapists, the kidnappers and the drug dealers were today".

He also said that Chief Inspector of Prisons Anne Owers had expressed concerns about foreign prisoners in 2002-03 and repeated them the following year, and the National Audit Office had also voiced fears about the situation.

The home office has admitted that it did not know the full details of the offences committed by more than 100 of the prisoners.

It has also refused to name the criminals, even though it could aid its attempts to track them down.

Mr Clarke said: "I can confirm that consideration of the most serious cases has commenced and I will report further on progress by the end of this week."

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