Is the Home Office fit for purpose?
Coffee House Shots
The Spectator
4.4 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 October 2025
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With the news that the Home Office has spent billions of taxpayers' money on asylum hotels – and following the accidental release of the Epping sex offender – Tim Shipman and James Heale discuss this most shambolic of government departments. Is it fit for purpose? Can Shabana Mahmood fix the cursed department? And, if not, who will voters turn to instead?
Produced by Megan McElroy and Patrick Gibbons.
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Transcript
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| 0:40.9 | Hello. to claim this offer now. Terms apply. Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots. I'm James Heald. I'm joined today by Tim Shippman, |
| 0:45.1 | who's the political clerk of The Spectator. Now, Tim, I think today that it kicked off with the |
| 0:49.8 | news that the Home Office has spent a lot of money on the asylum costs for those who are staying |
| 0:56.4 | in hotels here, which is 15 billion. It was three times higher than previously expected. |
| 0:59.6 | Billions and billions and billions. You know, is it the Reagan line? A billion here, billion there. |
| 1:03.5 | Soon that adds up to real money. Is this a great surprise? The Home Office is out of control? |
| 1:08.5 | No. I remember I had a brief exchange over the weekend with someone who is in the home office |
| 1:15.0 | who had previously been in the Department of Justice saying, |
| 1:18.5 | wasn't last week a good week not to be in the Ministry of Justice as one of the most notorious |
| 1:25.6 | sex criminals in the land was let loose from prison. And I think |
| 1:29.0 | there were people in the home office who had previously been in the Ministry of Justice. He were |
| 1:32.9 | quite relieved that they weren't in the Ministry of Justice on Friday. You know, one of them |
| 1:36.8 | said to me, well, makes change that it's not the Home Office screwing up. Well, here we are |
| 1:42.7 | back at the start of another week. And it's the Home Office.ing up. Well, here we are back at the start of another week, |
| 1:45.0 | and it's the Home Office. I mean, John Reed said the Department was not fit for purpose. |
... |
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