Most troubling is that of the foreign criminals released into the community pending deportation, one in six disappeared.

These are criminals staying in the UK illegally and free to commit more crimes.

It is surely obvious that these people are likely to abscond yet the problem has simply not been tackled.

There must be more concern for public safety.

There are more than 1,000 murderers and rapists among the 11,000 foreign criminals in prison or walking the streets here.

Not sending these people back home as soon as their custodial sentence is over means many are still here and posing a threat to law-abiding Britons.

To add insult to injury these assorted failures cost us millions.

The Home Office has enjoyed a 10-fold increase in resources for dealing with this problem but such largesse has yielded no noticeable results.

And we are even handing out bribes of up to £1,500 to encourage these criminals to go home.

Foreign criminals should be sent home as a matter of course.

That so many are not is, as the committee said, a “complete failure” on the part of Home Secretary Theresa May. 

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EU refuses to negotiate 

President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker has made his boldest admission yet that Britain could be on its way to leaving the EU.

He likened our relationship with Brussels to a doomed romance heading for a split.

That even such an arch-proponent of integration is reconciling himself to the thought of a British exit is greatly encouraging.

He also said that under no circumstances would there be any change in the EU’s policy on freedom of movement.

This refusal to make any concessions on such an important issue does not bode well for the Prime Minister’s attempt to renegotiate the terms of our membership.

The only way to meaningfully change our relationship with Brussels is to leave the EU. 

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Party is over for one boy 

When five-year-old Alex Nash did not attend his friend’s birthday party at a dry ski slope because he wanted to spend the day with his grandparents things started to go downhill.

The host’s mother sent Alex’s parents an invoice for the cost of the unfilled space and that was just the start of a slippery slope – she has now threatened them with court action.

Whether she was right or wrong it is safe to say things would have been a lot less acrimonious if the birthday boy’s mum had just let it slide.