Q71 Mr Mitchell: And you assumed that it was more convenient for the Home Office to pop them in a field somewhere-somewhere a little bit out of sight, out of mind-rather than drag them screaming from houses in dawn raids to send them back home again?
Sir David Normington: It is not convenient to have them here at all, really, and while they are here-
Q72 Mr Mitchell: Yes, but you said that it was still preferable to put them in these accommodation centres, and that is as an alternative to dispersal. Dispersal leads to people being dragged from their beds, kids crying, the neighbours upset, with dawn raids all over the country.
Sir David Normington: In fact those are quite rare instances.
Q73 Mr Mitchell: It is absolutely fair, and what has happened in Grimsby.
Sir David Normington: They do happen but we try not to make it like that, particularly when children are involved. What we were trying to get to was a situation where we knew where people were, because they were on a single site.
Q74 Mr Mitchell: I have one final question, which is slightly off the beam. Asylum seekers are still coming in. I read in the Daily Mail last week-so it must be true-that the French have decided that your officers, in Calais presumably, cannot detect asylum seekers by X-raying vehicles unless they have the written permission of the people inside the vehicle who are being X-rayed. Is that correct?
Ms Homer: No, it is not correct. There is a misunderstanding by the Daily Mail about the technology that is used. I will do my best to explain it to them, but the searching that we do at Calais does not contravene any of the rules of the French. They have not stopped it. We have regular meetings with them. Indeed, I met them on Monday of this week and we have just agreed to install a further three machines at Calais to do some further searching; so, on the contrary: we are increasing the searching.
Q75 Mr Touhig: Sir David, do you hold a driving licence?
Sir David Normington: I do.
Q76 Mr Touhig: You have passed your driving test and you study the Highway Code.
Sir David Normington: Yes.
Q77 Mr Touhig: So you know that when you drive through a red light you are likely to have an accident?
Sir David Normington: Yes.
Q78 Mr Touhig: Perhaps it is a shame that you were not in the driving seat in December 2003, when the Gateway 3 Review said that this project was classified as "red".
Sir David Normington: A "red" review is a warning; it is not a "Don't proceed". It is "Make sure that you have a proper case for proceeding".
Q79 Mr Touhig: The "red" review status, the actual words, says "To achieve success, the project should take remedial action immediately"-but it did not.
Sir David Normington: It did, actually. I have spent the last few days going back over what happened from that "red" review, because it is a very critical moment. I have looked at the work that was done to revisit the business case. I have looked at the minutes of the meetings that were held to consider that business case. I have looked at the benefits case that was drawn up, and I have looked at the submission that went to the Home Secretary and the Accounting Officer, recommending that the project should go ahead. I believe that in that process they were trying to do what the "red" Gateway Review had said. They then took a decision to go ahead and they took it, I guess, because they were people who were looking at all the evidence and the facts. They had it all before them; they took the decision to go ahead.
Q80 Mr Touhig: £28 million, you will agree, Sir David, is a lot of taxpayers' money to waste on a project that never got off the ground. It is waste.
Sir David Normington: Yes.