MPs criticise Home Office targets

Realistic but stretching targets should be set, MPs said

The Home Office has been criticised by MPs for a "lack of transparency" in the way its targets for crime, drugs and asylum were set.

The Home Office has seven targets to be reached by 2008, including cutting crime by 15%, and reducing the harm caused by illegal drugs.

The Home Affairs Select Committee called for more details about its key aims to be made public.

The Home Office said it aimed for "substantial improvements" on targets.

The Home Affairs Committee welcomed the fact there are now fewer and simpler targets, but said ministers needed to make it "instantly clear" whether they were on course to meet them.

Asylum seekers

Too many aims set out a "desired direction of progress" but contained no specific figures, said the committee's report.

One target is to cut unfounded asylum claims.

But the cross-party group said the department had shifted too far away from setting firm intentions after dropping its failed aim of removing 30,000 failed asylum seekers a year, in 2003.

This had led the Home Office getting rid of virtually all quantifiable targets from its Public Service Agreements, they said.

Setting general targets does not mean we aim to deliver less Home Office spokesman

Ministers should set "realistic but stretching" targets when they were reviewed as part of the 2006 Spending Review, MPs said.

A Home Office spokesman emphasised the difference between "general" targets and "specific" ones.

"We have a general target for drug harm reduction because the data on which it is based - the 2004 Drug Harm Index - is too new to produce a reliable target at this stage.

"Long-established forms of measurement, like the British Crime Survey, which has been going since 1981, allow us to set specific targets for areas like burglary and vehicle crime reduction."

The Home Office would examine the MPs' recommendations ahead of the next review of targets in 2006.

"Setting general targets does not mean we aim to deliver less - our aim is to deliver substantial improvements against all our targets, specific or general," the spokesman added.