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Once upon a time, in the early 1980s, David Blunkett, the home secretary, was leader of Sheffield City Council. He demonstrated an impressive ability to think laterally. For instance, as I recall, he imposed a flat two pence bus fare in the city. Why? To ease the consequences of chronic unemployment.

Cheap fares meant people could escape the prison of home; visit friends and family; reach job interviews - all of which helped to reduce the price that joblessness often exacts in depression, isolation and loss of confidence. What has happened to the man?


His policies at times appear cruel, harsh, ineffectual and ridiculously costly. They seem to be informed by panic and bigotry.

The Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill has just scraped through parliament. The Home Office now has the right to confine asylum seekers, like 21st century lepers, to four special centres in which families will be denied access to the NHS and mainstream schooling. Britain received 71,700 applications for asylum last year. The centres will house fewer than 4,000 at any one time.

Many of the Home Office's initiatives receive maximum publicity but deliver little except encouragement to xenophobes to aim more racist abuse at "foreigners". Dispersal? A disaster. Vouchers? Shameful and abandoned.

Regulation of immigration, illegal entrants and asylum seekers is a mess. Instead of addressing each of the three strands efficiently and properly, the easy option for politicians is to penalise those coming into the UK who do go by the rules. This distracts from the extent of official incompetence and placates some of the xenophobes.


Last year, more than 30,000 people who had sought asylum were allowed to remain permanently. Think laterally, Mr Blunkett. If you send individuals, many of whom will one day become British citizens, into internal exile in centres, they are immediately marked as a burden and a drain. It makes sense to allow asylum seekers to work from their arrival, pay tax, enter mainstream schooling, establish roots even if only for a period while government provides extra support to teachers, GPs and local authorities. All of which cannot amount to the £565 it costs weekly to keep a person in a detention centre (£1,620 in a closed reception centre).

Mr Blunkett treats immigration as if tells only one tale: the scrounger's charter. What he needs is to reread his socialist tracts, and have more faith in the human condition.