Home Office should take blame, says police chief

The Home Office should take more of the blame for the failings identified by the Bichard Inquiry into the handling of Soham murderer Ian Huntley, a senior police officer said today.

The Chief Constable of North Wales, Richard Brunstrom, said that the inquiry report directed much of its criticism at successive home secretaries for their “lack of leadership” over the past decade.

He declined to comment on the legal stand-off developing at Humberside, where the police authority is refusing to comply with Home Secretary David Blunkett’s order to suspend Chief Constable David Westwood.

Mr Westwood’s position was thrown into doubt after Sir Michael Bichard highlighted the failure of Humberside Police to keep records of allegations of sexual assault against Huntley before he moved to Soham.

But Mr Brunstrom today said that responsibility for intelligence failings was not the Chief Constable’s alone.

“I have read the Bichard Report,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “It is a fact that a significant number of the 31 recommendations in the Bichard Report apply to the Home Office and Home Secretary, not to the police service.

“Bichard points out quite categorically that there has been 10 years of a lack of leadership from the Home Office in resolving these issues.

“I rather wish that some more people from the Home Office were standing up and taking responsibility for this.”

Legal action may be launched as early as Monday to force Humberside Police Authority to comply with Mr Blunkett’s order to suspend its beleaguered chief constable.

Mr Blunkett yesterday said he would begin the legal action “at the earliest opportunity” after the police authority voted by 12 to five to ask him to reconsider his demand.

But the authority’s chairman, Labour councillor Colin Inglis, responded with increased defiance of the Home Secretary.

He told BBC Look North last night: “The Home Secretary is not David Westwood’s line manager. David Westwood works for the police authority.

“If the Home Secretary expected a rubber stamp then that, I’m afraid, is not what he’s got in the Humberside Police Authority.”

Mr Inglis added: “If the Home Secretary goes immediately to court without having considered the reasons why we have made the decision we have, and why we have asked him to think again, then in my view he will be acting unreasonably and not taking into consideration the police authority’s view.”

However, another member of the police authority, Cllr John Neal, said their actions flew in the face of legal advice.

“We are in the wrong, as I see it,” he said.