Crisis exposes serious holes in Home Office - Clegg

6.34.56pm GMT Mon 15th Jan 2007

The Liberal Democrats are calling on John Reid to answer the concerns of the public over the Home Office ignoring files on Britons who committed crimes overseas.

Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary Nick Clegg MP said:

"This crisis has now exposed a series of gaping holes in the Government's ability to track serious offenders.

"When I asked John Reid directly in the House of Commons whether he could assure us that there were no other forgotten files on offences committed outside Europe, he chose to ignore the question altogether.

"We now hear from the Foreign Office that they deal with thousands of offences a year. Once again this raises more questions than answers.

"What, for instance, is the role of the Home Office? It is the Home Office's responsibility to refer violent and sexual offenders to supervision by Multi Agency Protection Panels - can they assure us that this is done?

"As always the suspicion grows that one hand of government doesn't know what the other hand is doing, and public safety suffers as a result.

"John Reid needs a lot more than a closed enquiry run by his own civil servants to assure the public that he is capable of getting to the bottom of this mess."

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