Sketch: Smith faces the home affairs committee
Home secretary Jacqui Smith
Saturday, 15, Nov 2008 08:00
Despite the sharp-toothed prompts by her inquisitors, home secretary Jacqui Smith came out all right at the end of a home office scrutiny session.
Certainly an event she always looks forward to, it gives Ms Smith the opportunity to 'be held accountable'. Yet, how much the committee was really able to call her out in the session is unclear. But they did manage to waste some time.
Ultimately, moments of imbalance in yesterday's session overshadowed its merits.
Of course there were relevant enquiries and fervent appeals meant to address matters of genuine and grave concern. Human trafficking. Violent extremism. Knife crime. But blink and you miss them.
The journalist to my left asked me: "I'm sorry, but did you happen to get that bit when she talked about the date and roll out of ID cards?"
No, unfortunately not. I was still stuck on the lengthy Tory complaint regarding what he thought to be a surprisingly low number of deportations in the past three years.
Indeed, some topics had substantial coverage, but the logic of it was often tempered with a series of tedious probes. Beginning ostensibly as sensible investigations, they morphed ungracefully into rants and vendettas.
When addressing the government's claim that they would not let the population of the UK reach 70 million people, the home secretary covered the government's revised points-based system meant to considerably curb immigration.
This Office of National Statistics (ONS) figure of 70 million is a predication which doesn't take into account government intervention, apparently. But her questioner didn't seem to care about that point. He continued to ask what the specific number is, and she continued to de-legitimise the number because it did not consider government involvement. This repetitive prodding ensued until Ms Smith finally revealed the date for the projection.
The goal of the exchange was apparently to expose Ms Smith's aversion to announcing the date – which happens to be 2031 – though her reason behind doing so was clearly that she found it inaccurate.
Finally she conceded the date in what seemed to be an uninterested and brusk surrender. Cue smug nods – she did have the year right in front of her.
But so did most newspapers – at the end of 2007. Well, there's another ten minutes gone.
If she became slightly bored one might not be able to blame her, considering some of the tiresome examinations. Another pointed attack brought up the controversial 42-days question. It was meant to expose any plans to ever reintroduce the legislation, presumably to take advantage of any remaining residue that could be used to make her look worse than it already did.
Unfortunately for the verbal assailant, this overstretched controversy left Ms Smith un-phased.
She would not submit an apology, and candidly admitted she did indeed want the law to go through. The flopped scheme did little more than create a few moments of awkward pause.
It is a wonder how weapon control, counterterrorism, data protection, and Ghurkha rights received any attention at all. Luckily they did, and some progress, or at least the promise of progress, seemed to be made. But a less constipated session without the haughty finger-pointing would have yielded more. And it might even have proffered some relief to those MPs concerned more with national security than party politics.
Kristin Weiland