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Dividing the Home Office
The Ministry of Justice is born
May 10th 2007
From The Economist print edition
RESIGNING from a department before it exists is quite a feat. But on May 6th John Reid, the home secretary, managed something pretty close to it when he announced his intention to leave the Home Office as soon as the prime minister steps down at the end of June. Mr Reid's declaration came three days before the launch of the new-look, slimmed-down department that he had spent months lobbying for. He will have just a couple of months at its helm while serving out his notice.
The carve-up, much the biggest of Labour's many changes to the Whitehall bureaucracy, lopped prisons, probation and sentencing off the Home Office beat and gave them to a new Ministry of Justice. This body also absorbed the Department for Constitutional Affairs, which ran the courts and the judiciary. Like the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice will initially be led by a lame duck. Lord Falconer, a close friend of Tony Blair, is expected to leave office when the prime minister does.
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