John Vine report delayed

Hat tip: Anonymous

Home Office Publications:

Report by the independent chief inspector of the UK Border Agency - WMS This written ministerial stement (sic) was laid in the House of Commons on 31 January 2012 by Theresa May, and in the House of Lords by Lord Henley. Secretary of State for the Home Department (Theresa May): Following the resignation of Brodie Clark, a senior UK Border Agency official, last November, I asked John Vine, the independent chief inspector of the UK Border Agency, to carry out an independent investigation into border checks conducted by the UK Border Agency. Mr Vine has asked for more time to complete his investigation. Once I have received his final report I will update the House after constituency recess on both the findings of the report and on the action the government will take. Tuesday, 31 January 2012

John Vine report delayed

Hat tip: Anonymous

Home Office Publications:

Report by the independent chief inspector of the UK Border Agency - WMS This written ministerial stement (sic) was laid in the House of Commons on 31 January 2012 by Theresa May, and in the House of Lords by Lord Henley. Secretary of State for the Home Department (Theresa May): Following the resignation of Brodie Clark, a senior UK Border Agency official, last November, I asked John Vine, the independent chief inspector of the UK Border Agency, to carry out an independent investigation into border checks conducted by the UK Border Agency. Mr Vine has asked for more time to complete his investigation. Once I have received his final report I will update the House after constituency recess on both the findings of the report and on the action the government will take. Tuesday, 31 January 2012

John Vine, Brodie Clark, Keith Vaz, Theresa May, Damian Green and Helen Ghosh

Today's the day. The deadline for John Vine, Independent Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency, to submit his report on the Brodie Clark affair to the Home Office.

Will the public be allowed to see it? This matter concerns our border security and it concerns the safety of the 2012 Olympics. It's a matter of public interest.

But don't get your hopes up. Look what happened to the Home Affairs Committee.

Along with the three investigations into the Brodie Clark affair launched by the Home Office, the Home Affairs Committee looked into it and published their report a couple of weeks ago, Inquiry into the provision of UK Border Controls:

2. The precise facts of the case are disputed and the Home Office has denied us access to original documents that would have helped us to clarify the sequence of events ... 9. The Home Office has refused to provide us with a copy of the HOWI Guidance, a document we believe to be of importance as it has been discussed extensively in oral evidence to this Committee, as well as in the House itself ... 18. ... We have requested a copy of the slide presentation from the Home Office, which again has been refused. Without access to the slide, we are unable to comment on ... 27. Despite agreeing to make both the Home Office Warnings Index Guidelines and the periodic updates available to us when she came before us on 8 November, the Home Secretary has since refused to provide us with these documents ... notwithstanding any internal departmental investigations, these documents would have assisted our inquiry in confirming witness accounts and we would normally expect a Government of any party to acquiesce to such a request from a Select Committee. We recommend that the Home Secretary deposit copies of all the documents that have been made available to the three internal investigations in the Library of this House. This will allow this Committee to reach an informed conclusion of our own and would be consistent with the Government's commitment to transparency and accountability ...

The House of Commons, in the form of the Home Affairs Committee, can go hang. Parliament may call itself "supreme", but the Executive is unmoved. They will spend our money on useless technology – £491,304,533.51 and counting – and (constructively) dismiss anyone who dares to tell us that it is useless and there is nothing that Parliament can do about it.

John Vine, Brodie Clark, Keith Vaz, Theresa May, Damian Green and Helen Ghosh

Today's the day. The deadline for John Vine, Independent Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency, to submit his report on the Brodie Clark affair to the Home Office.

Will the public be allowed to see it? This matter concerns our border security and it concerns the safety of the 2012 Olympics. It's a matter of public interest.

But don't get your hopes up. Look what happened to the Home Affairs Committee.

Theresa May, Damian Green, Keith Vaz, Roger Gale, Yvette Cooper, Alan Johnson, Jacqui Smith, John Reid, Charles Clarke, David Blunkett, Helen Ghosh, John Vine, Brodie Clark, Gus O'Donnell, David Normington, James Hall, Jackie Keane and IBM

John Vine's job becomes more interesting by the day.

In the Sunday Times* of 8 January 2012, Isabel Oakeshott and Mark Hookham wrote:

Border staff give up fingerprinting of Eurotunnel stowaways Border staff have stopped fingerprinting illegal immigrants caught trying to enter Britain through the Channel Tunnel. Documents seen by The Sunday Times reveal how stowaways discovered in cars, lorries and coaches inside the Eurotunnel compound at Coquelles, north of Calais, no longer have their fingerprints routinely taken. The revelation will renew pressure on Theresa May, the home secretary, who was last year embroiled in controversy over the secret relaxation of British border controls. That scandal led to the resignation of the UK Border Agency (UKBA) chief, Brodie Clark. Damian Green, the immigration minister, has defended the abandonment of the “lengthy” process of taking fingerprints, saying UKBA staff were better served searching vehicles instead ... Roger Gale, the Conservative MP for North Thanet who wrote to the Home Office to demand an explanation ... In a letter to Gale, Green confirmed that ... Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, described Green’s letter as “astonishing” and said: “By not even bothering to fingerprint anyone, the government is sending a signal that this is not a serious offence and people should feel free to keep trying.”

"No, Ms Cooper", Mr Vine may say, "by not even bothering to fingerprint anyone, the government is sending a signal that this technology doesn't work, it's a waste of time and the Border Force has better things to do than play charades.

"You say you're astonished. But why?

"Do you realise, Ms Cooper, that the fingerprint technology used at the border isn't the traditional police technology in which the world has grown confident over the past century and more? It's flat print fingerprinting. It's quick, it's clean, there's no expert required and it doesn't work. Why do you insist on defending a technology you know nothing about?

"Please don't give me that look, Ms Cooper. It's not just you. Alan Johnson fell for it. So did Jacqui Smith. And John Reid and Charles Clarke and David Blunkett. Not to mention Theresa May. Why did she go in to bat for a technology that doesn't work?

"How many degrees of freedom, would you say, does a biometric need, to be able to identify every member of a population of 60 million? What's the minimum false positive identification rate we need, in your experience, to keep the border safe, what's the correspondingly high false negative identification rate and how many extra Border Force staff do you need every day, to conduct the hundreds of thousands of redundant secondary inspections? In your opinion, would you say that biometrics is currently under statistical control? What precisely is your take on the admissibility of flat print fingerprint evidence in a court of law?

"You don't know, do you, and neither does Ms May, but the thing is, Ms Cooper, no-one actually expects you politicians to understand the technicalities.

"That's what officials are for.

"The real question is, why have all those officials at the Home Office stood by for years and watched as you politicians have committed yourselves more and more irrevocably to biometrics?

"Well not Brodie Clark, he hasn't, he's told Keith Vaz that flat print fingerprinting is a waste of time.

"But the rest of them. O'Donnell's getting a peerage. Normington's become First Civil Service Commissioner. James Hall's retired. They've all got away, and meanwhile some of the more vindictive types want to strip Brodie Clark of his pension.

"It's a monumental mess of a legacy for Helen Ghosh to sort out. Telling Jackie Keane she's been wasting her time won't be easy. Neither will telling IBM their services are no longer required. Still. Icy calm under fire. That's what they're bred for, these permanent secretaries.

"Think of me this afternoon with the cold towel round my head, Ms Cooper, I've got to write a report about Brodie Clark being suspended for doing what UKBA are now doing as a matter of policy. Piece of cake for you politicians, I imagine, but for an ex-copper ...".

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* If you don't have a subscription to the Times, you can read the same article in the Telegraph, where it's attributed to someone called "Daily Telegraph Reporter".

Theresa May, Damian Green, Keith Vaz, Roger Gale, Yvette Cooper, Alan Johnson, Jacqui Smith, John Reid, Charles Clarke, David Blunkett, Helen Ghosh, John Vine, Brodie Clark, Gus O'Donnell, David Normington, James Hall, Jackie Keane and IBM

John Vine's job becomes more interesting by the day.

In the Sunday Times* of 8 January 2012, Isabel Oakeshott and Mark Hookham wrote:

Border staff give up fingerprinting of Eurotunnel stowaways Border staff have stopped fingerprinting illegal immigrants caught trying to enter Britain through the Channel Tunnel. Documents seen by The Sunday Times reveal how stowaways discovered in cars, lorries and coaches inside the Eurotunnel compound at Coquelles, north of Calais, no longer have their fingerprints routinely taken. The revelation will renew pressure on Theresa May, the home secretary, who was last year embroiled in controversy over the secret relaxation of British border controls. That scandal led to the resignation of the UK Border Agency (UKBA) chief, Brodie Clark. Damian Green, the immigration minister, has defended the abandonment of the “lengthy” process of taking fingerprints, saying UKBA staff were better served searching vehicles instead ... Roger Gale, the Conservative MP for North Thanet who wrote to the Home Office to demand an explanation ... In a letter to Gale, Green confirmed that ... Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, described Green’s letter as “astonishing” and said: “By not even bothering to fingerprint anyone, the government is sending a signal that this is not a serious offence and people should feel free to keep trying.”

"No, Ms Cooper", Mr Vine may say, "by not even bothering to fingerprint anyone, the government is sending a signal that this technology doesn't work, it's a waste of time and the Border Force has better things to do than play charades.

"You say you're astonished. But why?

"Do you realise, Ms Cooper, that the fingerprint technology used at the border isn't the traditional police technology in which the world has grown confident over the past century and more? It's flat print fingerprinting. It's quick, it's clean, there's no expert required and it doesn't work. Why do you insist on defending a technology you know nothing about?

"Please don't give me that look, Ms Cooper. It's not just you. Alan Johnson fell for it. So did Jacqui Smith. And John Reid and Charles Clarke and David Blunkett. Not to mention Theresa May. Why did she go in to bat for a technology that doesn't work?

"How many degrees of freedom, would you say, does a biometric need, to be able to identify every member of a population of 60 million? What's the minimum false positive identification rate we need, in your experience, to keep the border safe, what's the correspondingly high false negative identification rate and how many extra Border Force staff do you need every day, to conduct the hundreds of thousands of redundant secondary inspections? In your opinion, would you say that biometrics is currently under statistical control? What precisely is your take on the admissibility of flat print fingerprint evidence in a court of law?

"You don't know, do you, and neither does Ms May, but the thing is, Ms Cooper, no-one actually expects you politicians to understand the technicalities.

"That's what officials are for.

"The real question is, why have all those officials at the Home Office stood by for years and watched as you politicians have committed yourselves more and more irrevocably to biometrics?

"Well not Brodie Clark, he hasn't, he's told Keith Vaz that flat print fingerprinting is a waste of time.

"But the rest of them. O'Donnell's getting a peerage. Normington's become First Civil Service Commissioner. James Hall's retired. They've all got away, and meanwhile some of the more vindictive types want to strip Brodie Clark of his pension.

"It's a monumental mess of a legacy for Helen Ghosh to sort out. Telling Jackie Keane she's been wasting her time won't be easy. Neither will telling IBM their services are no longer required. Still. Icy calm under fire. That's what they're bred for, these permanent secretaries.

"Think of me this afternoon with the cold towel round my head, Ms Cooper, I've got to write a report about Brodie Clark being suspended for doing what UKBA are now doing as a matter of policy. Piece of cake for you politicians, I imagine, but for an ex-copper ...".

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* If you don't have a subscription to the Times, you can read the same article in the Telegraph, where it's attributed to someone called "Daily Telegraph Reporter".