Daily Mail Comment: A Home Secretary not fit for purpose

Three days of gimmickry, a dawning realisation of egg on the face, panic in Whitehall and a humiliating U-turn . . . so Jacqui Smith's ludicrous scheme to make knife thugs visit victims bites the dust.

The Home Secretary insists that she never meant to parade platoons of dangerous tearaways through hospitals.

'We are not, and I have never said are, proposing to bring young people into the wards to see patients,' she says.

Oh, really? This sorry little cameo only confirms that this Home Secretary is so hopelessly out of her depth that she makes a predecessor such as Charles Clarke seem like a Colossus.

Surely, amid rising violence and mayhem in the streets, the public deserves better.

Instead, we are saddled with a party hack who is good at defending MPs' outrageously bloated expenses and her boss's shortcomings, but quite incapable of the clarity of thought that the knife crisis demands.

Take her assertion that it would be 'simplistic' to send all knife-carriers to jail, tamely echoing the Sentencing Guidelines Council, which feebly recommended that fines are sufficient.

Retribution? Deterrence? The words seem to have gone out of fashion in the Home Office.

She seems uncritically to accept the Left-wing claim that 'uncivilised' Britain jails more people than any other EU country and must change its ways.

Does she have any idea how ignorant and wrong-headed that is?

Yes, we jail a higher percentage of our population than other EU countries.

So what? That reflects our higher crime rate.

If we compare our prisoners with the number of crimes committed  -  the only sensible measurement  -  we find that this country actually has a low imprisonment rate.

According to the Council of Europe and the think-tank Civitas, we have 12.4 prisoners per 1,000 crimes, compared with an EU average of 17.5.

Indeed, if we sent offenders to jail at the same rate as Spain (57 prisoners per 1,000 crimes), our prison population would be a staggering 369,000, instead of 80,000.

Contrary to what so many politicians and judges claim, our penal policy is, by European standards, actually rather soft.

Isn't it time this issue was treated with more honesty? And more respect for the public's intelligence?

How sad in these deeply worrying times that we are saddled instead with the vapidity of Home Secretary Smith.

On another planet

From the Equality and Human Rights Commission comes the unsurprising discovery that employers are increasingly wary of hiring women who are likely to become mothers, with an entitlement to paid maternity leave of up to a year.

With the best will in the world, firms  -  particularly small ones  -  find it difficult to cope with the disruption.

The Government may pay the cost of maternity leave, but firms have to juggle staff rotas, find temporary replacements and somehow make long-term plans. It can be a nightmare.

No wonder so many prefer to hire men, an unintended consequence of the drive for ever more equality.

But fear not. The Commission has a solution: pay fathers to stay at home on paternity leave.

Hey, presto! When firms can be plunged into turmoil by employees of both sexes, women will no longer be at a disadvantage.

Oh, and don't worry about the cost.

'This is about more than pounds and pence,' says the Commission's Dr Nicola Brewer.

There speaks an official who has never had to meet a payroll.

In the real world, of course, it's somewhat different.

But since when did such concerns matter a jot in this brave new quangocracy of ours?