Now let me get this straight. According to a “leaked” dossier, the credit crunch is going to result in an increase in crime, extremism, racism, violence and illegal working. Is there any area of responsibility that the Home Office has not covered?  Talk about trying to cover their backsides. They have covered virtually every area of responsibility they have, up to and including, terrorism.

Now, whilst I accept that this document is supposed to have been leaked and therefore is not supposed to have been endorsed by Jacqui Smith. Precisely what does Jacqui Smith and the Home Office intend to do about it? With a budget of nearly £14bn, surely we can expect a little more from these prophets of doom? If this was a private or for that matter a public company, it is a racing certainty that Smith would have been fired.

So, according to the Home Office, a rise in crime, extremism, racism, violence, illegal working and terrorism has nothing to do with the Home Office, nothing to do with the government, but instead can be blamed in its entirety on the state of the economy or the credit crunch, depending on your take of the situation.

Well now the cat is out of the bag Jacqui, we demand to know precisely what you are going to do about it. If you are simply going to accept it, then you should resign now. If your department is suggesting a 19% increase, based on the 1992 figures, then we would like to know why, in spite of the significant investment in your department, and 11 years in government, you expect to fair no better than the conservative government of 1992? Your government has presided over a significant erosion of our civil rights, your government has introduced draconian laws which allow the police and scores of other government departments to snoop on the private affairs of virtually every individual in the UK, and your government has increased significantly the spending, in real terms on policing and counter-terrorism in this country.  This is the quid pro quo, speak now.

A dossier produced by your department has been leaked. You must now tell us which parts you agree with and which parts you don’t. Then based on this information, you must then tell us what you are going to do to reduce the doomsday scenario of your own department. If this is simply your departments’ way of having something placed into the public domain, so they can later claim that they told us so when these scenarios are allowed to become fact, then that is totally unacceptable.

We should not need to remind you that you and your government are public servants, you are employed and rewarded for doing a job, and failure should not be an option. Simply telling us that you are going to fail in advance is no excuse.