 The Guardian, 8 Nov 2010: The deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, faces fresh embarrassment after the Home Office again postponed the pledge to end detention of children in immigration removal centres.
Home Office officials confirmed the delay today to one of the first pledges made by the coalition, after the prime minister published business plans for every Whitehall department which reveal that the practice of detaining children will not now end before next March.
The government's promise to end the incarceration of children in removal centres was made directly after the election.
A total of 1,085 children were detained as a result of this policy last year. More than 100 were detained between April and June this year.
Damian Green, the immigration minister, said during the Conservative conference last month that the practice would be ended by December. But the Home Office's plan discloses that the twice-revised deadline has slipped again.
David Cameron published four-year plans for each department setting out the action they must take and the costs and data they will publish to allow the public to scrutinise them. People will be able to see crime statistics for their neighbourhood and NHS waiting times to ensure the coalition is living up to its aims. The scheme is designed as a replacement for Labour's system of driving reform by setting targets.
Another initiative will see parents given information about teachers at their children's schools, including sickness records, salary bands and the number of staff with degrees and postgraduate qualifications. The data will be about a school's staff in general rather than identifying individual teachers.
Cameron said it was a "power shift" from central government to communities. Progress reports will be published monthly and civil servants will be called before ministers or even the prime minister if they miss their milestones.
The publications immediately revealed that a number of promises have already slipped. At the Department for Education, pledges to allow more schools to become academies and a white paper to reform school funding have slipped by a month since they were put forward in the summer. The DfE said it would publish teachers' qualifications, pay and absence rates for each school to allow parents to hold schools to account. The Cabinet Office plan confirms ministers' intentions to review civil service pay and conditions by February next year. This will include revising sick pay, notice periods, bonuses and pay.
Plans to appoint non-executive directors from businesses to every Whitehall department board had been expected to be announced in October but now they are not due until January 2011.
The Home Office business plan also confirms that the pledge by the home secretary, Theresa May, to simplify and improve antisocial behaviour powers is overdue. It confirms that plans to ensure past convictions for consensual gay sex offences involving over-16s – which have been decriminalised – will not show up on criminal record checks by the end of December.
The Ministry of Justice plans confirm the intention of the justice secretary, Ken Clarke, to explore alternative forms of residential treatment for thousands of drug offenders and the mentally ill, who are currently being jailed. The business plan says that treatment-based accommodation should start to become available by December 2011, subject to the important proviso of Department of Health funding being available.
The Ministry of Justice plan also reveals that six pilots are being set up to test payment-by-results schemes involving contractors, including voluntary organisations rehabilitating drug offenders. Work has also started on a "drugs recovery prisons wing" to be running next June.
Liam Byrne, Labour's shadow Cabinet Office minister, said: "The power shift in public services was well under way under Labour. Opening up government and bringing in outside experts to help Whitehall is a good thing and we'll support the government in its efforts to make this work. But ripping up targets without putting in place strong rights for citizens to get the public services they deserve means the Tories are offering a gamble when the public wants a guarantee."
(Public Interest Lawyers is awaiting the judgment of Mr Justice Wyn Williams in its High Court judicial review challenge to the lawfulness of the Home Secretary's family detention policy. See the Claimants' skeleton argument in our Judgments & Pleadings section.)
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