CHARLES CLARKE failed to inform the Prime Minister for more than three weeks that foreign prisoners convicted of serious crimes such as murder and rape had been released without being considered for deportation.

Officials in the Home Office told the Home Secretary on March 30 that foreigners convicted of serious offences had been freed. But it was only on April 21 that Mr Clarke informed Tony Blair of the devastating news, which has left the Home Secretary fighting to save his career. Nor were the police informed.

The disclosure was greeted with incredulity by members of the opposition yesterday. David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: “Clearly it is outrageous that he did not tell the Prime Minister for three weeks. It is even more outrageous that he did not inform the police straight away.”

A Home Office spokeswoman said yesterday that on March 30 ministers received a submission that gave “fuller information” on foreign prisoners who had been released without being considered for deportation. She said that the submission “included the fact that, contrary to what officials had believed, serious criminals had been released”.

The spokeswoman said that the Home Secretary informed the Prime Minister on April 21 and the Public Accounts Committee on April 25. Police were not given a list of the total of 1,023 offenders, including the most serious 79, until the following day.

It was the second occasion on which the Prime Minister had been left in the dark about the scale of the fiasco. Even when Mr Clarke offered to resign last Tuesday after the revelation that 1,023 offenders had been released, the Prime Minister was not then told that 288 had been freed since July, when the Home Office became aware of the problem. He found out a day later.

Yesterday the Prime Minister appeared to give only lukewarm support to Mr Clarke. He told the News of the World that the future of the Home Secretary “depends on what happens” and added that there were “no excuses” for the mistaken release of the prisoners. But later Downing Street insisted that Mr Clarke’s position was secure.

The shambles worsened yesterday when the Home Office admitted that figures it published last week were inaccurate. It had said that three murderers had been released and on Friday that one had been returned to prison after breaking the terms of the release licence.

Yesterday a Home Office spokeswoman said that “further data cleansing” had disclosed that the murderer had never been released. She also said that instead of nine rapists released, it was only eight; the “ninth” was convicted of another sexual offence.

Despite knowing of serious problems over foreign prisoners, the Home Office has no idea how many currently in prison were recommended for deportation by their trial judge. In a written answer to the House of Lords on the day Mr Clarke admitted the fiasco, Baroness Scotland of Asthal, the Prisons and Probation Minister, said: “Information on the number of prisoners currently serving custodial sentences who have been recommended for deportation following their release is unavailable.”

She added that in 2004, 850 people were recommended for deportation at the end of their jail sentence.

Hundreds of police officers are trying to track down more than 70 of the most serious offenders but the Home Office would not give any figures. The spokeswoman said that since Friday more foreign prisoners had been detained. On Friday only 6 of the 79 most serious offenders had been detained.

If any prisoner released after Mr Clarke became aware of the problem is found to have been reconvicted of a serious offence Mr Clarke could find it impossible to remain in his job.

Yesterday a woman who was raped by a foreign citizen called on the Home Secretary to resign. She was attacked in her home in Sheffield by Abdulrahman Osman, 31, a Somali, a year after he had been released after serving a three-year sentence for robbery. The attack occurred when David Blunkett was Home Secretary.

The woman said: “This man should not even have been in the country. I only found out afterwards that he had committed other crimes and been in prison too.”

THE CONFESSIONS

“I do take responsibility for this. It is a shocking state of affairs. I take it extremely seriously in every aspect. The concern, possibly anger, that people will feel is entirely understandable. It was a basic administrative failure”
Charles Clarke disclosing the blunder, April 26

“I fully accept and regret that until recently the system for identifying and, where possible, deporting foreign nationals who have served sentences in United Kingdom jails has been seriously and fundamentally at fault”
Tony Blair at Prime Minister’s Questions, April 27

“I do apologise; I have apologised; and I continue to do so”
Charles Clarke, House of Commons, April 27

“A lot of changes that we had put in place had not taken. I cannot defend that. That is not acceptable. It was being gripped but it wasn’t yet reducing the figures to nought which is where we had to be”
Sir David Normington, Permanent Secretary to the Home Office, on measures to deal with foreign prisoners, April 26

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