Clarke begins political comeback
Charles Clarke has today given his version of the events surrounding the failure of the Home Office to deport foreign prisoners at the end of their jail terms, which ultimately led to his sacking.
Mr Clarke insisted that ministers were not made aware that foreign prisoners convicted of serious offences had been released without being considered for deportation until March this year, contrary to suggestions that he had known as early as the summer of 2005.
Details of the events are contained in a letter sent by Mr Clarke to the chairman of the home affairs select committee, John Denham, into the foreign prisoners debacle.
For the Norwich South MP it marks the first stage in a political comeback, which will be kick started this week by a series of print and broadcast interviews.
Tonight Mr Clarke will be seen giving an interview to Newsnight, while he has also been interviewed by John Humphrys for Radio 4’s On the Ropes programme.
In his letter, published today, Mr Clarke says that ministers were not made aware of the “specific problem”, concerning more than 1,000 foreign prisoners released without being considered for deportation, until March 17th 2006.
It was not until March 31st 2006 – the day after parliament went into recess for Easter – that Mr Clarke and other ministers were handed a submission setting out “the situation and its scale” in more detail, he says.
The former home secretary reveals that he asked officials to check the accuracy of the material before parliament returned from the Easter recess on April 18th 2006.
The prime minister was informed on April 21st before a written statement was made to the House on April 25th, whereupon the issue was made public.
“The suggestion that from July 2005 I had personally known about the failure to consider deportation and done nothing about it was wrong,” Mr Clarke writes.
“As others have already made clear to the committee, it was only in late March 2006 that ministers, including myself, were made aware of the failure to consider for deportation some foreign national prisoners at the end of their sentence, and when we were aware of this, action was then taken.”
Mr Clarke was sacked as home secretary in May and replaced by John Reid following Labour’s disastrous showing in the local elections.
