http://www.cipfa.org.uk/publicfinance/features_details.cfm?news_id=27998
Philip Johnston
"The Home Office is in trouble but are its problems due to poor tactics or trying to defend two areas at the same time – justice and law and order? There was a time, just a year or so ago, when the Home Office had three permanent secretaries. It was the most heavily managed department in Whitehall. Other departments, such as the Treasury, sometimes have a second permanent secretary. But three? This surfeit of senior officials was less a reflection of the wide range of the Home Office’s responsibilities than of apparent ministerial unhappiness with the leadership the civil service was providing. It is tempting to argue that a department that requires three people of equal rank to run it is too big and should be broken up. When the home secretary calls it ‘dysfunctional’, as Charles Clarke did before he quit the Cabinet, or part of it is described as ‘not fit for purpose’, which was John Reid’s assessment of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate after just a few days in the post, you wonder why it has been left intact for so long."
