The Home Office has shame-facedly admitted that figures recording this crucial statistic are not kept, they have never been requested by the firms which operate the scheme, it was not a requirement of their contract. I find this astounding, it is surely essential in monitoring the success of this scheme, which is meant to be a deterrent to prison and protect the public.

The Home Office has admitted that figures it gave to one of East Anglia’s leading papers, the Eastern Daily Press, were inaccurate. This information was requested by the EDP under the Freedom of Information Act. It seems contractors Serco, which has a five year contract to operate the tagging scheme, gave the Home Office a totally wrong answer.

I am concerned about the effectiveness of tagging and wrote about it at the time. I hope this gross mismanagement is making John Reid’s blood boil too. Has he included plans for the monitoring of tagging to be reviewed in his department’s radical shake up?

There is no weblink for the story in today’s EDP, but it says:

“Red-faced Home Office officials last night admitted that figures on how many criminals cut off their electronic tags were not recorded separately by the private enforcement firms which operate the schemes…

“The admission that incorrect information has again been released by the Home Office will heap further embarrassment on beleagured home secretary John Reid – who reacted furiously after he was forced to apologise to MPs for giving them wrong figures on foreign prisoners earlier this year…

“Inaccurate figures had been provided because the Home Office had been given the information in ‘good faith’ by the contractors.”

Serco confusingly says that statistics on the removal of tags are not recorded separately, but they record those which have been tampered with. In the year between April 2005-2006, there were 81 cases of malicious damage to tags in Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk – considerably fewer than the 1,510 mentioned two months ago.

How can we have confidence in a system run like this which is meant to protect the public? Why aren’t accurate figures kept on criminals who cut off their tags? Why aren’t tags made that are foolproof and cannot be removed by offenders? How accurate were the figures given to the Scotsman which has reported that more than half of Scotland’s electronically-tagged offenders breached their orders, according to official figures? Can the Home Office tell us how many criminals are roaming the streets today having removed their electronic tag? Do they know where they are?