”And the money kept rolling in out…”

Money coming in falls:

Tax receipts flowing into the Treasury fell by £32 billion last year as the recession hit Government finances, official figures showed yesterday.

The perilous state of the national finances was made public as it was disclosed that the National Audit Office (NAO) has refused to sign off part of the Treasury’s accounts.

Money going out increases:

Human rights compensation claims by murderers, paedophiles and other dangerous criminals demanding release from jail have reached 'new heights', the Parole Board warned yesterday.

In its annual report, officials warned resources were being 'stretched to the limit' by convicts claiming they had been kept in jail for too long.

And the reason for this? Why, it’s totally a Labour/Human Rights Act cock-up of massive proportions:

The so- called Indeterminate Public Protection prisoners are claiming compensation when hearings to decide whether they are safe to release do not take place within an agreed time frame.

Under Labour's Human Rights Act and the European Convention on Human Rights, the convicts are successfully arguing they are being unfairly detained.

And who introduced a policy of IPPs that would, inevitably, lead to delays if you did not also increase the numbers of people looking at them:

IPPs have proved controversial since they were introduced by Labour six years ago.

They allow the country's worst criminals to be held indefinitely, but - upon sentence - they are given a minimum 'tariff' and a date is fixed at which they must first be considered for release by the Parole Board.

Once again, ministers have nodded through legislation that is now coming back to bite them in the backside:

Ministers underestimated the number of IPP sentences that would be handed down and some have been given to inmates given only short tariffs. In total, there are 5,237 IPP inmates - of whom 1,838 have gone beyond their tariff.

That’s a lot of potential compensation…