Home Office To Be Split Into Two

[TriWooOx]

Quote:The Home Office will be split into two separate departments for security and justice, Tony Blair is expected to say.

The Department for Constitutional Affairs will take control of probation, prisons and prevention of re-offending and be renamed the Ministry of Justice.

The slimmed down Home Office will then be left to concentrate on dealing with terrorism, security and immigration.

Ministers say the change will allow a better focus, but Conservatives say a split will "compound" problems.

The Ministry of Justice could be set up within the next two months. The department is currently run by Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer.

Meanwhile, Mr Reid's slimmed-down Home Office will absorb counter-terrorism strategy from the Cabinet Office.

The government is also expected to form a new national security body that will bring all key figures together once a month.

The Home Office has already lost responsibility for community building and faith issues, including the preventing extremism strategy, which were passed to a new Whitehall department in 2006.

And last year, Mr Reid said parts of the Home Office were "not fit for purpose".

But in an interview last month, his predecessor, Charles Clarke, said the problem with the department was "a lack of co-ordination between its various elements".

He added: "I think dividing the Home Office would make those problems far worse."

Dogged by crises

The Home Office has been dogged by a series of problems.

Earlier this year it emerged that more than 27,000 case files on Britons who had committed crimes abroad, including rape and murder, had not been entered on the police computer.

It also emerged that a third terror suspect on a control order had absconded.

And before that there was a row when it emerged that the head of the Prison Service did not know how many inmates were on the run from open jails in England.

A series of civil service "capability reviews" found the Home Office to be the worst performing of the 12 Whitehall departments thus far examined.

The Conservatives have called the plan an "admission of failure".

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said there was an argument for an extra Cabinet minister within the Home Office with specific responsibility for security.

But he said a departmental split could create "a whole new set of problems" and lead to "more scandals rather than less" and "two departments who are not fit for purpose rather than one".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6505025.stm