Labour's immigration tough talking just hot air - Nick Clegg

5.33.14pm UTC (GMT +0000) Tue 6th Jun 2006

missing prisoners is just one of the Home Office's recent failures

It will take "years not months" to get the immigration service working the way it should, its boss has told MPs. Lin Homer, Immigration and Nationality Directorate chief, spoke as the Home Office was given six weeks to draw up a plan to make it "fit for purpose". She told the Commons home affairs committee it would take "at least a couple of years" to get the service "into the shape I would like".

Responding to her evidence to the Committee, Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Nick Clegg MP, said: "Ms Homer's evidence shows that Labour's tough talk on fixing the immigration service is nothing but hot air. John Reid's pledge to turn around the Home Office in six weeks and Tony Blair's vow to deport all foreign prisoners have been exposed as unworkable. Every new revelation shows what a desperate mess the Home Office has been reduced to by a Labour government obsessed with headlines and legislation instead of getting things done."

Ms Homer also revealed several hundred of the foreign criminals facing potential deportation have been allowed to stay in Britain and confirmed eight serious sex offenders released without being considered for deportation were still at large. Ms Homer told MPs there had not been a deliberate plan to let the foreign prisoners go - busy staff had simply filed the cases away when there were not enough workers to take them on.

Two weeks ago the new Home Secretary, John Reid, had to apologise to the committee after he discovered that a foreign murder he had claimed was in jail had in fact been released on bail. Two senior officials were removed from their duties after it emerged the home secretary had not been told that bail hearings were taking place. The committee's Labour chairman John Denham asked Ms Homer why nobody had thought to tell her about the hearings. She said she was carrying out an investigation into this but admitted she had "a lot of work to do".