Ancillary Material - Post-Reshuffle Note for the Home Secretary [2001-06-08]

Ancillary Material - Post-Reshuffle Note for the Home Secretary [2001-06-08]

Ministerial Appointments

Note for David Blunkett on his responsibilities as Home Secretary after the June 2001 reshuffle.

Richard Wilson (?) (Secretary to the Cabinet)

PREM 49/2706/05

2001-06-08

Jason Loch

Page 1

CONFIDENTIAL & PERSONAL

For the Minister: Home Office note

CHANGES TO THE HOME OFFICE

The Home Office is being reorganised with two main aims: to establish a single department with end-to-end responsibility for the criminal justice system, and to streamline its business so as to enable its Ministers to focus on the reduction of crime. This is being achieved by the transfer to the Home Office of the Court Service and associated functions from the Lord Chancellor’s Department and the transfer elsewhere of a number of non-core traditional Home Office functions. The Department will have the lead in implementing the Auld Review and the Halliday report on sentencing policy.

Ministers

A Ministerial team of six Ministers [or seven?]

Home Secretary
Three Ministers of State
Two Parliamentary Secretaries, (one in the Lords)

Responsibilities

The Home Office will retain its present responsibilities for criminal justice policy, crime reduction, prisons, police, asylum, immigration, nationality and passports (approximately 9,500 staff plus a further 44,000 staff in the Prison Service and other agencies).

In addition it will take on:

i. Court Service from the LCD (c10,000 staff);

ii. Magistrate’s Courts from the LCD (c8000 full-time and 2500 part-time staff)

iii. LCD’s Directorate of Criminal Justice Courts and Criminal Policy comprising a Magistrates’ Courts Division, Magistrates’ Courts IT division, Criminal Justice Division and a Criminal Planning and Resources Division;

iv. UK Anti-Drugs Co-ordination Unit from the Cabinet Office (23 staff plus two expert special advisers, Keith Hellawell and Mike Trace).

v. Work Permits UK (administration of the Work Permits arrangements for the UK; representing employment policy interests in wider immigration policy and free movement of workers) from the DfEE.

CONFIDENTIAL & PERSONAL

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CONFIDENTIAL & PERSONAL

At the same time it will lose a number of miscellaneous, mostly small-scale, responsibilities with their associated non-departmental public bodies:

i. freedom of information openness and data protection (13 staff) to the LCD;

ii. electoral law (7 staff) and the Electoral Commission to the DETR;

iii. human rights (6 staff) to the LCD;

iv. Channel Islands and the Isle of Man (8 staff) to the LCD;

v. Royal, Church of England and hereditary matters (7 staff) to the LCD;

vi. Fire Service (124 staff) to the DETR;

vii. burial and cremation law, war memorials to DETR;

viii. byelaws (3.5 staff) to DETR and DCMS;

ix. gambling, liquor licensing and horseracing (33 staff) plus the Gaming Board, Horserace Betting Levy Board, Horserace Betting Levy Appeal Tribunal, National Stud and the Tote to DCMS;

x. censorship and video classification (up to 3 staff) to DCMS but policy on obscenity stays;

xi. Active Community Unit to Cabinet Office;

xii. planning for the Golden Jubilee (11 staff) to the DCMS;

xiii. animal welfare including the Hunting Bill (8.5 staff) to the DRA (nb. but vivisection remains with the Home Office);

xiv. Sunday trading, Summertime and fixed Easter (1 staff) to DTI.

8 June 2001

CONFIDENTIAL & PERSONAL

The reference to "fixed Easter" is probably a reference to section 1 of the Easter Act 1928 which sought to fix Easter as the first Sunday after the second Saturday of April. However, it has never been brought into force.