Misplaced Priorities

Why on earth did the Today programme give Alistair Campbell a full half-hour to promote his book and spin for Tony Blair this morning, when we have the head of Interpol criticising our immigration procedures and claiming "The UK's anti-terrorist effort is in the wrong century"? The day's top story was tomorrow's security, not yesterday's spin!

Noting that The UK currently makes only 50 checks a month on the Interpol database, compared with 700,000 by France and 300,000 by Switzerland, the head of the 186-nation international police agency accused the UK of failing to share information on terrorism investigations and not carrying out adequate checks on people crossing its borders. He also told the BBC that "We have received not one name, not one fingerprint, not one telephone number, not one address, nothing from the UK about the recent thwarted terrorist attacks."

With the new security minister, former navy chief Admiral Sir Alan West, suggesting the battle to deal with radicalisation in the fight against terrorism could take at least 15 years, the Government has some serious explaining to do. Two years after the so-called 7/7 attacks and nearly six years after the Al-Qaeda threat first struck so successfully against the West, why are we so far behind where we should be with securing our borders and international cooperation? I fully expect John Humphrys to take Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to task tomorrow — it is inexcusable that he did not do so today.