LONDON, April 26: British Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted on Wednesday a ‘systemic failure’ at one of his key ministries had allowed more than 1,000 foreign prisoners to walk free without proper checks on their status.
Responding to one of the biggest embarrassments of his nine years in office, a chastened Blair told parliament the system for considering the deportation of such prisoners had been ‘seriously and fundamentally at fault’ for years.
The debacle comes the week before Blair’s Labour Party contests local elections — the prime minister’s first test at the ballot box since he won a third term in office last May.
It is the latest in a string of embarrassing revelations for Labour which, according to one poll published this week, is less popular now than at any point in the past 19 years.
Blair was speaking a day after Home Secretary Charles Clarke revealed that, over the past seven years, his office had released 1,023 convicted foreign nationals from British jails without considering them for deportation.
“There has been systemic failure, that is entirely accepted, and systemic failure over a very long period of time,” said the prime minister, who for years has sought to portray his government as tough on both crime and illegal immigration.
While all prisoners were entitled to release having served their terms, they should, under prison regulations, have had their cases evaluated before they were freed.
Around 160 of them were subject to court orders specifically recommending their removal from Britain.
Blair has also been criticised over party funding and the state of the national health service. And on Wednesday, news broke that Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott had admitted having an extramarital affair with a secretary.
The Home Office’s failure over foreign prisoners is expected to play into the hands of the opposition Conservative Party and the fringe far-right British National Party (BNP) in the May 4 ballot. The BNP is campaigning on an anti-immigration ticket.
The convicted criminals included murderers, rapists and paedophiles, and the Home Office has admitted it has no idea where most of them now are.
It has also said it does not know how many, if any, have reoffended since their release.
“Isn’t this part of a wider story?” Conservative leader David Cameron asked Blair in parliament.
“When a prime minister can’t even deport dangerous foreign criminals in our jails, aren’t the public entitled to ask enough is enough?”
Clarke, a close ally of Blair, offered to resign over the bungle, but Blair asked him to stay on.
“I told him (Blair) I was prepared to resign if he thought it was right, and he said he didn’t think it was right,” Clarke told BBC Radio, before appearing in parliament to try to explain the failure.—Reuters
