Reid plans to split Home Office into two

LONDON, Jan 21 (Reuters) The crisis-stricken Home Office is to be split into two under plans drawn up by Home Secretary John Reid and presented to Prime Minister Tony Blair, a government source confirmed to Reuters today.

Blair is backing the proposals to divide the sprawling department into separate ministries controlling justice and security, the source said.

But it remained unclear whether the plans -- reported in two Sunday newspapers -- also commanded the support of Chancellor Gordon Brown, widely expected to succeed Blair as prime minister later this year.

The Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer told BBC television: ''It is a very, very serious proposal.'' ''I think it may well be that the split's time has come as we face, for example, much greater waves of immigration across the world, much greater threats of terrorism,'' he said.

The division of the department, which dates back to 1782, could happen quickly as it would require no legislation to be passed, Falconer said.

Splitting the Home Office would be the largest Whitehall reorganisation undertaken since Labour came to power in 1997.

The department, branded as ''not fit for purpose'' by Reid when he took over last year, employs 77,000 staff both directly and through a number of agencies including the prison and passport services.

Reid was appointed Home Secretary last year after the mistaken release of more than 1,000 foreign prisoners led to the downfall of his predecessor, Charles Clarke.

But since then the department has continued to be dogged by a series of blunders, including a failure to input 27,000 British criminals convicted abroad into the police national computer.

Reid, writing in the Sunday Telegraph, said there must be ''no sacred cows'' when it came to protecting security and administering justice.

''Whilst in the short-term my focus will be on putting right that which needs the most urgent attention ... in the longer term even more radical change may be unavoidable.

''Nothing must be ruled out if we are to properly protect the public and ensure that offenders are brought to justice and effectively punished for their crime,'' Reid said.

The News of the World said the new departments would have their own cabinet ministers, with a security ministry covering counter terrorism, immigration, ID cards, policing and border control.

Courts, prisons and probation would be the responsibility of a new justice ministry.

''The Home Secretary has put in place a plan for the reform and transformation of the Home Office, together with separate reviews into the immigration and nationality directorate and the criminal justice system,'' a Home Office spokesman said.

''He has also conducted a review of our security capabilities and the recommendations arising from this have been passed to the Prime Minister for his consideration.'' A spokeswoman for Blair's Downing Street office said the prime minister was ''strongly considering'' the recommendations.

Last week Blair publicly backed Reid, saying the Home Office was ''the toughest job in government, including mine''.

Conservative home affairs spokesman David Davis said previous home secretaries had managed to run the Home Office when it had even more responsibilities, including electoral reform and the BBC.

''It is often the case that when someone says a task is impossible it's because that someone cannot do it themselves.

This seems to be the case with Dr John Reid.'' Liberal Democrat spokesman Nick Clegg said his party had long argued for the ''over-sized'' department to be split up.

But he said it would be like ''rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic'' unless there was a dramatic change in the way home affairs were managed.

''The wholesale degeneration of our criminal justice system is largely due to a political culture of frenzied law-making, short-term target-setting and a day-to-day pursuit of headlines,'' he said.

REUTERS DKA VC1908