Phew - She's Gone

I had that woman's card marked ever since an interview she did on the Today Programme three years back. As this website says :

"Junior minister Beverley Hughes, now thankfully moved, put up a display on the Radio 4 'Today' programme which boded ill for the future. Interviewed on 17th August 2001 with Frances Crook of the Howard League on the subject of the prison population, she seemed not to have been briefed. Jack Straw - who, if he couldn't 'walk the walk' could certainly 'talk the talk', would have made mincemeat of Ms Crook's arguments. Earlier in the year, when the usual 'highest imprisonment rate in Europe' question came up, Mr Straw fired straight back that he was more concerned about the highest CRIME RATE in Europe that was a direct cause of the imprisonment. Ms Hughes, faced with the same question, floundered hopelessly."

The mighty Littlejohn says it all :

"The truth is quite simple. Labour's policy is to allow in anyone who wants to come here while talking tough and pretending to enforce strict immigration controls.

When rumbled, they tell lies, fiddle the figures and smear their critics. "

Painted with a broad brush, but not unreasonable.

PS - don't expect too much of Ken Sutton's proposed report, if his first one is anything to go by.

"in none of the periods I have examined have I found evidence of the practice amounting, literally, to one of granting every case. Sheffield staff continued to refuse cases even during the period covered by the most recent guidance."

That's a bit like saying the good news is Harold Shipman didn't kill all his patients.