Joined-up misgovernment

The scandal of foreign national prisoners freed from jail without being considered for deportation might have been devised by some malign genius actively seeking to damage the social fabric of this country. So much has been undermined by this devastating disclosure: public confidence in the criminal justice system, the fight against racist bigots such as the BNP, and what little respect remains for politicians and their capacity to govern us competently.

Charles Clarke has been right about one thing: there is much more at issue in this case than his own political fate. The fact that more than 1,000 convicted foreign criminals including killers, rapists and paedophiles have been let loose in this way reflects more than personal incompetence, gross as that has been. This awful statistic is also a symptom of a fundamental failure of governance: a yawning gulf between reasonable public expectations and the capacity of the state to respond to those expectations.

All systems break down from time to time. In this case, however, the alarm bells were shamefully ignored. Last July the National Audit Office warned ministers that the procedures to remove foreign prisoners from these shores should begin much earlier and not be left until the end of their jail sentences. In October the Commons public accounts committee expressed its own anxieties. The Prime Minister was informed of the problem by Mr Clarke before Christmas. Why has it taken six months for the full extent of the scandal to become public? Why were 288 prisoners released even after the problem came to light? Tony Blair failed conspicuously to answer these questions and others posed by David Cameron at Prime Minister’s Questions.