Cleverly accused of disrespect by hiding bad news behind report on murder of Sarah
JAMES Cleverly was last night accused of ‘ hiding behind the murder of Sarah Everard’ by burying details of a series of Home Office fiascos.
The Home Secretary published 13 damning reports into border and immigration failures on the same day as the findings of an inquiry into Ms Everard’s murder by police officer Wayne Couzens.
Describing it as an ‘act of utter disrespect’, a former home secretary said a senior Home Office figure must ‘carry the can’. The Mail told yesterday how the reports exposed equipment failures and revealed that border controls had been left ‘unmanned’ and asylum schemes for people fleeing the Taliban had been open to ‘individuals who had never been to Afghanistan’.
Two of the documents – issued by the former chief inspector of borders and immigration David Neal – concluded that ‘protection of the border is neither effective nor efficient’.
Their release was also timed to coincide with new Home Office data showing a 46
‘A complete lack of compassion’
‘Act of surprising cowardice’
per cent surge in work visas last year and the highest number of successful asylum claims since records began in 1984.
In a derided statement, issued on Thursday, the Home Office claimed the simultaneous publication of Mr Neal’s reports was a ‘demonstration of transparency’.
One former home secretary said last night: ‘Someone senior should carry the can for putting those 13 immigration reports out on the same day as the Sarah Everard inquiry.
‘It showed a complete lack of compassion on a highly emotional day. It was an act of utter disrespect to Sarah’s family.’
They added: ‘This was clearly planned by James Cleverly. It was extraordinary for all those reports to be published in a huge batch on a day like that – and I know for sure that he would have signed it off.’
One ally of Suella Braverman, another former home secretary, said: ‘ This looks pretty cynical – using the case of a murdered woman in a cack-handed attempt at media management.’ Former Labour home secretary David Blunkett said: ‘The best policy when dealing with serious bad news is to get it out there, and convince the public that you’ve got a grip.
‘That is what James Cleverly should concentrate his attention on achieving.’ But Lord Blunkett pinned part of the blame on Mr Cleverly’s predecessor Mrs Braverman for ‘ a failure of policy and implementation, and of refusing to publish the damning papers’ in her time at the Home Office.
A senior Tory backbencher said: ‘The tragedy that befell Sarah Everard will live with me for ever.
But by doing what he did, Cleverly chose to hide behind her murder.
‘For a man who likes to mention his service as an Army reservist at every given opportunity, this was an act of surprising cowardice.’
Mr Neal was sacked on the orders of Mr Cleverly after he exposed yet another borders farce in the Mail last week. He said Border Force failed to inspect hundreds of ‘ high-risk’ private jets which landed at London City Airport last year.
Mr Neal had repeatedly expressed his exasperation at the Home Office’s refusal to publish his reports in a timely manner. One of the reports finally issued on Thursday had been gathering dust for 11 months. Alp Mehmet of Migration Watch UK, which campaigns for tougher border controls, said the Home Office had attempted to ‘hide’ its mistakes.
A source close to Mr Cleverly said: ‘The reports we inherited were published, as David Neal was promised by the Home Secretary in January they would be, at the earliest opportunity.
‘We did so hours after the Angiolini [Sarah Everard] report had come out in full, not before, precisely not to distract attention from that important report and quite rightly it was covered by most media extensively as a result.
‘This included a statement from the Home Secretary in the House of Commons where he expressed his condolences to the family of Sarah Everard and paid tribute to their dignity and his thanks for the important findings in the report. He also wrote about it in this newspaper.
‘It is absurd to claim any lack of transparency or accountability in publishing the reports, given all 13 contain scrutiny, criticism and recommendations for the Home Office and will remain on the Government’s website for anyone to view from now on.
‘David Neal’s final two reports will also be published within the eight-week time period, even following his sacking for leaking sensitive and inaccurate data to the Daily Mail, which he and the paper were told prior to publication was sensitive and inaccurate.’
The source said Mr Neal’s reports were not published earlier ‘so as not to distract’ from his evidence to the Commons home affairs committee on Tuesday.
NEARLY two decades have passed since Labour’s John Reid memorably described the Home Office as ‘not fit for purpose’.
In the years since, it is depressingly difficult to see what has changed.
By almost every yardstick, the shambolic, bungling ministry – run by Home Secretary James Cleverly – is failing dismally.
Take immigration. In every election since 2010, the Tories have promised voters they would restore sanity and restraint to Britain’s borders. Yet the latest official statistics show that promise has not just been broken. It’s been positively shattered.
Last year, a record 1.4million migrant visas were handed out. It is simply too many, adding to the already crippling strain on our public services.
The Home Office has seemingly given up the ghost on other fronts. The asylum system is in chaos, small boats keep coming, police stand idly by as pro-Palestine protesters spurt racist bile and feral thugs shoplift with virtual impunity.
One might think Mr Cleverly would want to spend every waking second tackling these problems. But on Thursday, he was conspiring to try to ‘bury bad news’.
How shabbily cynical of him to release 13 excoriating reviews into Britain’s broken border system on the day a report into police blunders that left officer Wayne Couzens free to murder was published.
True, the Home Secretary has been in post only since November. But he has so far been less than impressive.
He stands accused of gaffes, including using foul language to describe the Rwanda scheme and the town of Stockton-on-Tees, and sacking the border watchdog for flagging up national security concerns.
Some say Mr Cleverly seems to have little appetite for robust action. He must raise his game. Anything less would be a grotesque betrayal of the public who rely on his department for safety and security.