Will action plan man Reid deliver?

Analysis
By Nick Assinder
Political correspondent, BBC News website

John Reid entered the failing Home Office less than 100 days ago pledging to, in effect, rebuild it from the ground up within that period of time.

Reid gave himself a 100 day target

And if his progress in achieving that can be measured by the number of Commons statements and policy initiatives he has made since that day, then he is a raging success.

That, however, also goes to the heart of the questions from his critics - whether any of this activity will actually lead to real changes on the ground or simply succeed in what they suspect is the main objective of winning positive headlines.

Shadow home secretary David Davis says he has heard it all before, from Mr Reid's predecessors.

"I've listened time after time to talk of crackdowns, consultations, initiatives, action plans on areas from bogus language schools to sham marriages and still we're faced with the current shambles.

"The government cannot cope with its own past. The serious problems faced by the IND aren't going to be solved by yet another re-shuffling of the deck."

In the past two weeks Mr Reid has made no fewer than three major statements to parliament - on reforming the Home Office, "rebalancing" the criminal justice system in favour of victims and proposals to get a grip on immigration and failed asylum seekers.

Among many others ideas, there have been proposals to increase the minimum terms served by dangerous offenders sentenced to life, create 8,000 prison places, hive off the "unfit for purpose" Immigration and Nationality Directorate, re-introduce embarkation controls and introduce uniformed border patrols.

Asylum system

Some of this is genuinely new - making the IND a separate, "arms-length" agency, for example.

Others - re-introducing embarkation controls, for example - are a repackaging or development of existing proposals dating from his predecessor Charles Clarke's five year action plan announced in 2005.

At the same time, Mr Reid's headline-grabbing announcements have overshadowed a flurry of select committee and government reports exposing Home Office shortcomings - bad financial management, failure to get a grip of foreign nationals in prison, for example - and a rise in street crime.

Reid has promised tougher border controls

Mr Reid's approach has been to pre-empt all these criticisms by accepting things are in a mess, but showing that he is the man to sort it out and drag the department into the post-cold war, 21st century.

The latest announcement deals specifically with the immigration and asylum system, with proposals to check whether illegal immigrants and failed asylum seekers have left the country.

The issue helped bring down Charles Clarke, and was further thrown into the spotlight earlier in the year when Dave Roberts, director of enforcement and removals at the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, told MPs he did not have "the faintest idea" how many illegal immigrants were in Britain.

And now, the Countess of Mar, who recently resigned from the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal has described the system as "little more than a pantomime". She is worried Mr Reid's proposals may be all talk.

Soft sentences

In what is becoming a familiar refrain, Mr Reid has accepted the system is a shambles and claims his latest proposals will start the process of putting it right and finally getting a grip on this thorniest of problems.

But although many of his measures have been welcomed by opposition parties, the accusations of headline-chasing persist.

Nick Clegg, for the Liberal Democrats, said: "We need a comprehensive approach to reform, not merely cosmetic changes"

And Lady Mar saying she feared Mr Reid is "all talk and no do".

Others point to supposed u-turns on the human rights act and tackling judges accused, by Mr Reid himself, of handing down soft sentences.

On the first, the government has decided - instead of scrapping or amending the human rights act - to ensure a more "common sense" application of it.

On the latter, it emerged judges accused of being "soft" were only implementing the government's own sentencing guidelines.

There is, in fact, support for many of Mr Reid's proposals - and his general direction of travel - from all sides of the Commons.

But, while he may have beaten his 100 day target for announcing reforms, it will take considerably longer before the effects of them can be properly judged.

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