At the Labour Party conference in Liverpool exactly four weeks ago, Shabana Mahmood was asked about the current state of the Home Office.
Her reply echoed remarks made in 2006 by John Reid, the then Labour home secretary, when he said the department was ‘not fit for purpose’.
She told the fringe event: ‘I don’t think it’s fully fit for purpose yet.’
Ms Mahmood vowed she would ‘fight’ the Home Office to achieve her aims.
And last week after an internal review highlighted how obstinacy and dysfunction ran through the department, she pledged to ‘transform the Home Office so that it delivers for this country’.
Now, in light of today’s devastating report into asylum accommodation, it is very difficult to share her optimism that the Home Office can be rehabilitated.
It seems, frankly, to be beyond redemption.
In all likelihood, it is now time to break up the Home Office – for a second time.
When asked a question about the current state of the Home Office at a Labour Party conference fringe event four weeks ago, Shabana Mahmood said: ‘I don’t think it’s fully fit for purpose yet’
The silo mentality of this £23billion-a-year behemoth – with its 51,000 staff – can only be shaken up by major structural reform, which should probably involve creating two separate ministries.
One would take over border control, immigration and asylum policy, while the other would deal with policing, crime and counter-terrorism.
No real change would be achieved by changing the signs on the door and moving desks around, of course.
It would have to be accompanied by a root-and-branch staff reorganisation, getting rid of recalcitrant civil servants of the type who were in open revolt against the Conservative administration.
One anonymous worker said they were ’embarrassed and ashamed’ of the measures, while another whinged they were struggling to balance ‘my own personal ethical convictions’ with the objectives of the Government at the time.
With a Civil Service workforce of such politicised mediocrity, it is hardly a surprise that huge mistakes are made and nothing ever really gets done.
Today’s select committee report is probably the most jaw-dropping account of Home Office delinquency and fecklessness I have read in more than 20 years of covering the department.
From the very highest levels of the Civil Service, there was a lack of rigour in drawing up crucial contracts for asylum accommodation. Pictured: Some of the more than 300 asylum seekers at Napier Barracks in Folkestone, Kent
From the very highest levels of the Civil Service, there was a lack of rigour in drawing up crucial contracts for asylum accommodation.
Basic matters such as the ability to impose penalties for under-performance were overlooked, it has now emerged.
Then when the small-boats crisis began to ramp up – eventually becoming the issue that infuriates voters more than any other – the Home Office failed to take essential action.
Most infuriatingly of all, the Civil Service mandarin in charge of it all was rewarded with a knighthood and a £455,000 pay package for his final year there.
So, Home Secretary, this must surely be the beginning of the end for the Home Office.
Be as bold as Dr Reid was 20 years ago, when the department was cleaved in two.
We cannot be left in a position where this cycle is repeated after future mess-ups, with yet more inquiries concluding yet more billions have been squandered due to Civil Service ineptitude.
Nearly 244 years after its birth, this exhausted, terminally sick Home Office is begging to be put out of its misery.
