The people and organisations within our society that have recognisable high levels of power and authority should act in a highly responsible manner. If they do not, then the risk of society as a whole being severely impacted and even threatened with collapse is significant. The challenge of course is how to hold such people and organisations to account when they step beyond the boundaries that are attached to the power they possess. A classic example of the difficulties of this is illustrated by a very powerful man who owns lots of massive retail businesses and was knighted by the Queen in 2006 following a recommendation by Tony Blair. In the last few years however he has been accused of several criminal acts. In 2016 MPs called for him to be de-knighted as a result of his actions with BHS and in the last few days he was named within Parliament as a person involved in sexual harassment and bullying cases after the person used his wealth and influence to take out an injunction to gag newspapers from naming him in the pages of their publications. Because he was named in Parliament, Peter Hain cannot be prosecuted which demonstrates yet another layer of authority that has the potential to be abused.

Tragically there are many examples of how our Government and some of its departments have used their power and influence to place individuals and whole communities, indeed whole nations under threat and there seems to be little evidence of how this abuse will be resolved. A recent example of this has been the apology issued by the current Home Secretary for the way in which the Government as a whole and the Home Office in particular treated the Windrush generation. Then in the last few days he has once again apologised for how his Department demanded that certain people took part in DNA tests which he admitted was an illegal demand.  On the same day as Sajid Javid was apologising for the demands of DNA testing, the Home Affairs Committee which exists to hold the Home Secretary to account published a report which raises all sorts of concerns about the funding of policing and a failure of leadership within the Home Office.

The overall issue that needs to be considered in the light of these matters is how long can the Home Office continue to operate in its current form and how many problems can emerge from the recent history of its actions before the relevant Home Secretaries are personally held to account? Clearly their names are not unknown or unpublished, but the nation needs to know when they are willing to accept responsibility for what has gone wrong during their time in office. An apology or two from Sajid Javid who has only been in post since April is little more than a temporary and wafer thin sticking plaster although his real role is surely to come up with a plan to bring the Home Office to an end. However Theresa May and Amber Rudd need to be held to account along with the senior civil servants who have been managing a department that they directed along with their team of Ministers. The top person in the Home Office from 2013 to 2017 has just become the top Civil Servant across the whole of our Government. His boss in both settings is the current Prime Minister who must take responsibility for the issues such as the Windrush and DNA demands along with Amber Rudd. However the impact on the nation as a whole is clearly something which also brings into account the Treasury who may not be responsible for the poor leadership in the Home Office, but who are clearly partly responsible for the inadequate funding of all of the Police services across our nation. The “Policing for the Future” report by the Home Affairs Committee states that “forces are struggling to cope in the face of changing and rising crimes, as a result of falling staff numbers, outdated technology, capabilities, structures, fragmentation and a failure of Home Office leadership. It recommends major changes to the police response to new and growing crimes and warns that the Home Office cannot continue to stand back while police forces struggle” It may not be in the remit of the Home Affairs Committee to call for an end to the Home Office, but it is clear that when Police Officers are having to respond to situations where mental health needs rather than crime is the issue and when they are asked to deal with failures by Ambulance Services and limitations from Local Authorities that a silo based Government needs to be reformed.