Clarke sets the record straight
Former home secretary Charles Clarke has attacked comments by his successor that the Home Office is “not fit for purpose”.
Mr Clarke said John Reid’s comments to a parliamentary committee just days after taking up the role were “fundamentally wrong”.
He also told Newsnight that he felt the prime minister made the “wrong decision” in sacking him as home secretary, and that the situation left him feeling angry and frustrated.
In a separate interview with The Times, the Norwich South MP accused Mr Blair of losing “his sense of purpose and direction”.
He told the paper that Mr Blair needed to return to the “the reforming leadership and style” seen in the first eight years of his premiership.
Last night’s interview with Newsnight was the first in which the former home secretary has spoken out since his sacking in May, following the revelation that more than 1,000 foreign prisoners had been released at the end of their sentences without being considered for deportation.
He said Mr Reid was entitled to his opinion about the Home Office, but that in his opinion it was a department “which had a very clear reform strategy in each of its key areas”.
“The overall picture of a department not fit for purpose, I think is and was fundamentally wrong. I think John was wrong to use those descriptions as I told him before he gave evidence to the select committee,” he told Newsnight.
Mr Clarke also criticised his successor’s plans to look at a British version of Megan’s law, saying the home secretary of the day “should not simply be running on the bandwagon of some particular campaign”.
Of his sacking, Mr Clarke said he believed he was the right person to continue to reform the Home Office.
“I was angry and frustrated because I felt this massive, enormous task needed to be carried through over a three or four-year period.”
In his interview with The Times, Mr Clarke said he would like to see Mr Blair carrying on as prime minister until 2008, but criticised the current lack of direction in the government.
“I do think there is a sense of Tony having lost his sense of purpose and direction, so my advice to him is to recover that sense of purpose and direction and that remains the best option.”
And Mr Clarke does not intend to slip quietly into the background. “I intend between now and the party conference to say things about the future of the party, which would be about what I think that sense of purpose and direction should be.”
