I am writing to ask for your help in the work of this Committee in scrutinising draft EU legislation for which your department is responsible, and in carrying out inquiries into matters within your departmental responsibility.

  In conducting this work the Select Committee, and in particular its Sub-Committee F which deals with home affairs, relies very much on the cooperation of your ministers and officials in replying to correspondence and responding to reports fully and without delay. Usually we receive that cooperation, and for this we are very grateful. Sometimes however we do not.

  As you will know, Cabinet Office guidance, re-issued most recently on 22 June 2007, repeats the Government's commitment to respond to reports "within two months if possible." The Select Committee's report After Heiligendamm: doors ajar at Stratford-upon-Avon (5th report, session 2006-07, HL Paper 32) was published on 21 February 2007. It is a short report, yet Ms Hillier's response was dated 16 October, nearly eight months later. It was considered by Sub-Committee F at a meeting on 14 November. I have replied today to Ms Hillier, and I enclose a copy of that letter (not printed).[117]

  Our report was critical of your predecessor's failure to give oral evidence to the Sub-Committee, despite an express undertaking to do so—an undertaking repeated by Joan Ryan MP, then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State. The response gives no explanation for this. Neither you nor Ms Hillier can be held responsible for that failure, but we still deserve an explanation for it. If the response had been sent within two months of the report's publication, both Dr Reid and Ms Ryan would have been able to explain this themselves.

  I think you should be aware of a much wider discontent with your Department's attitude to the House of Lords which is partly centred on the record of the Home Office in replying to Written Questions long after the two week target period has expired. In this your Department's record is worse than any other.

  I have also written today to Ms Hillier about the delay in implementing in the United Kingdom the second generation Schengen Information System (SIS II). I attach a copy of that letter too.[118] In March this year we published our report Schengen Information System II (SIS II) (9th report, session 2006-07, HL Paper 49). The start-up date for SIS II is December 2008, yet the UK will not be connected to the system until April 2010. SIS II will be an important law enforcement tool for the police and others, yet we will be one of the last countries to join.

  During the course of our inquiry, subsequently in correspondence, and latterly in a debate on 12 October, we have been seeking the reason for this. Ms Hillier has told us that the need to link all UK law enforcement agencies to SIS II makes this a far more complicated programme for the UK than for some other Member States. We hope we can rely on your support in seeking an answer to this question: if other large Member States can be connected to SIS II as soon as it goes live, precisely what is it about the UK which requires a further 16 months before we can be connected?

16 November 2007

  Thank you for your letters of 16 November to Meg Hillier and myself on the above topics. I am pleased to hear that you are generally content with the cooperation the Select Committee and in particular Sub-Committee F receives from Home Office Ministers and officials. However, you raise questions about the Home Office's responses to Select Committee reports, replies to Written Questions and your continued dissatisfaction with the timescales for implementation of the second generation Schengen Information System (SIS II). I have asked Meg Hillier to address your points about SIS II and she will be writing to you separately.

RESPONSES TO REPORTS

  I apologise for the time it took for this department to respond to the Select Committee's report After Heiligendamm: doors ajar at Stratford upon Avon, published in February. I am of course aware of the undertaking to respond to such reports within two months and have sought to ensure that we have met this deadline for subsequent reports from the Committee on Pru­m and on SIS II.

  I cannot give an explanation for my predecessor's decision not to give oral evidence to the Committee beyond that which was set out in the letter from Meg Hillier dated 16 October. I understand that although he had given an undertaking, he subsequently considered that the evidence given by Joan Ryan on 28 June 2006 and his letter to you of 20 December 2006 provided sufficient detail.

  As your letter to Meg Hillier of 16 November 2007 indicates, we have since changed our working practices with respect to the reporting of meetings of the G6 and have accepted the Committee's recommendation that these should be the subject of Ministerial statements. That letter acknowledges that this was undertaken for the G6 meeting which I attended in Poland last month and you have my assurance that it will continue for future meetings.

  On that subject, you may wish to be aware that on 30 November—1 December I attended a symposium in Berlin organised by my German counterpart. The symposium had been arranged to take forward one of the G6 workstreams on international legal frameworks relating to counter-terrorist action, but provided an opportunity for me to meet with the Interior Ministers from the G6 countries, as well as the US Secretary of State for Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff in advance of the next meeting of the G6 Ministers, which will be in Spain in the first half of next year. I will formally report this meeting to Parliament shortly.

WRITTEN QUESTIONS

  In response to the point you have raised about my department's performance on answering Written Questions in the House of Lords, I would like to assure you that Ministers give serious attention to this matter and make every effort to answer all questions within the targets set by the House. Unfortunately this is not always possible but the Home Office regularly reviews its performance and processes in respect of answering Parliamentary Questions. We make improvements where necessary and I am pleased to say that our latest internal performance management information, for the period 6 November to 27 November, shows that 97 % of all Lords Written Questions were answered within the timescales set by the House.

12 December 2007

  Thank you for your letter of 12 December 2007 in reply to mine of 16 November. Sub-Committee F of the Select Committee on the European Union considered this at meetings on 9 and 16 January 2008. The Sub-Committee considered on 9 January the letter from Ms Hillier of 7 December, and I have replied to her separately.

RESPONSES TO SELECT COMMITTEE REPORTS

  We are glad to have your apology for the delay in replying to the Committee's report on the G6 meeting at Stratford-upon-Avon in October 2006. The responses to the reports on SIS II and on Pru­m were received within the two month period, and for this we are grateful—as indeed I said at the time.

  We remain disappointed that you cannot explain why your predecessor was unable to give evidence to us about the Stratford-upon-Avon meeting. As you know, Dr Reid was unwilling to comment on the meeting of the G6 in Heiligendamm in March 2006 because it had been attended by his predecessor, Charles Clarke. If the response to the report on the Stratford-upon-Avon meeting had been received in time, or even within four months, it would have been agreed by Dr Reid, who could have explained for himself why he had declined to give evidence to us.

  We are grateful to you for having informed us of the further meeting of the G6 in Berlin on 30 November and 1 December 2007, of which we were previously unaware. This, like the meeting in Venice in May 2007, was attended by the US Secretary for Homeland Security. In your letter, dated 12 December, you wrote that you would "formally report on this meeting to Parliament shortly". In fact we see that you had already made a written statement on 10 December, although you did not enclose a copy of it. We are glad to know that you share our view about the importance of publicising these meetings.

  We note from your statement that Germany intends to convene further such meetings. We would be glad to be kept informed of them.

WRITTEN QUESTIONS

  We are glad to have your assurance that Home Office Ministers are making every effort to answer questions within the targets set by the House—14 days. However we think that to choose to assess your Department's performance over the first 14 sitting days of the new Session gives a misleading impression. We are sorry to see that today the Home Office heads the list of Departments with questions unanswered after 14 days. Two of the unanswered questions are from members of Sub-Committee F.

17 January 2008

118   See Schengen Information System (SIS II): Communication Infrastructure. Back