He tried, at the beginning, to stay calm. This puzzled me until I realised that this was the false tranquillity of a man exhausted from spending the night in metaphorical boxing gloves, hitting a punchbag and screaming abuse into his pillow. I am not sure of the name for this type of rage (Whitehall rage? Backlog rage?) but Mr Reid is in the grip of its fury.

He tried to confuse us with the few facts at his disposal. Apparently all the problems with records of Britons being convicted abroad date to 1959 when the Council of Europe Convention on Mutual Legal Assistance was established and countries began to share information. He then said solemnly: “This system had a number of weaknesses.” Yes, well, that may be true. But I’m not sure that 1959 has much to do with the recent Home Office backlog of 27,500 records of Britons convicted abroad. Try as he might, Mr Reid could not explain this or why he didn’t know about it.

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, was in a jaunty mood. Actually, his overly cavalier demeanour of late makes me think he watched Pirates of the Caribbean one too many times over the holiday period. “He assures us he is in charge of his department,” cried DD. “Is he? If he is, when is he going to start shouldering the responsibility for it?”

At this Mr Reid’s shoulders began to twitch uncontrollably. “My statement today was not an attempt to lay blame,” he said, each word a missile. “It was an attempt to explain. That is what the public wants.”

Do we? I thought we also wanted to know who to blame. But Mr Reid wasn’t going to tell us. It seems that he knows nothing about this except, oh yes, it’s not him.

Nick Clegg is a Lib Dem. I know it’s hard not to laugh, but he was rather good as he demanded to know who was responsible. “If a minister, we are now told, is not aware of something then she or he cannot be held responsible for it. Let us be clear! Ignorance is no excuse for incompetence.”

The Labour front bench looked puzzled at this. Joan Ryan, the junior (nay nursery) Minister in charge of this area, was doing her usual impersonation of a stunned rabbit. Ignorant or incompetent? Most observers may plump for both in her case.

Mr Reid explained, as if Mr Clegg were very stupid, that the reason he wasn’t responsible is that he hadn’t been in charge since 1959. “I will accept responsibility for sorting out the problem, but it has developed over many years. Even now, with the new system, when I ask how many notifications we have received from Spain, for instance, the answer is none!”

He elaborated. I have to say the Spanish system sounds appalling. If we can’t blame Mr Reid, can we blame Spain? Or 1959? By all accounts, it sounds like chaos.