Sir William Alexander Jeffrey, KCB (born 28 February 1948) is a former senior British civil servant, who retired in the autumn of 2010. Jeffrey was educated at

Allan Glen's School Allan Glen's School was, for most of its existence, a State school, local authority, selective Secondary education, secondary school for boys in Glasgow, Scotland, charging nominal fees for tuition. It was founded by the Allan Glen's Endowment ...

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

, and the

Glasgow University The University of Glasgow (abbreviated as ''Glas.'' in post-nominals; ) is a public research university in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded by papal bull in , it is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ...

. He joined the

Home Office The Home Office (HO), also known (especially in official papers and when referred to in Parliament) as the Home Department, is the United Kingdom's interior ministry. It is responsible for public safety and policing, border security, immigr ...

in 1971. From 1998 until 2002 he was Political Director of the Northern Ireland Office, supporting the Prime Minister and successive Secretaries of State on the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. He was subsequently Britain's most senior immigration official – director-general of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate – from 2002 to 2005. In April 2005 he joined the

Cabinet Office The Cabinet Office is a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for supporting the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, prime minister and Cabinet ...

as Security and Intelligence Coordinator, where he was the Prime Minister's principal adviser on security, intelligence, and counter-terrorism strategy. In September 2005 he was announced as

Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence The Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Defence, also called the Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Defence, is the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence. The office holder is the government's principal civilian adviser on Defence ...

. Already a Companion of the

Order of the Bath The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by King George I of Great Britain, George I on 18 May 1725. Recipients of the Order are usually senior British Armed Forces, military officers or senior Civil Service ...

(CB), he was made Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in the 2007 New Year Honours List. Bill Jeffrey is now Chair of the UK's independent policing think tank the Police Foundation.

Criticism

Jeffrey has been criticised by the

Public Accounts Committee A public accounts committee (PAC) is a committee within a legislature whose role is to study public audits, invite ministers, permanent secretaries or other ministry officials to the committee for questioning, and report on their findings subseque ...

chairman

Edward Leigh Sir Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (born 20 July 1950) is a British Conservative Party politician who has been serving as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Gainsborough, previously Gainsborough and Horncastle, since 1983. Parliament's longes ...

for prioritizing the renovating of leisure facilities over the "unacceptable housing" conditions for troops and their families. The paper said 19,000 service homes were in disrepair, half of all single accommodation was "below par" and that some servicemen would have to wait 20 years for improvements.

said: "...you (Bill Jeffrey) have cut £13.5 million of essential work out of regional prime contracts, but you have obliged the same contractors to do £45 million on other projects, including resurfacing

tennis courts A tennis court is the venue where the sport of tennis is played. It is a firm rectangular surface with a low net stretched across the centre. The same surface can be used to play both doubles and singles matches. A variety of surfaces can be u ...

and building all-weather pitches. As director-general of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate Jeffrey formulated a concerted policy of risk-taking by immigration staff who were asked when processing non-European Union migrants applying to work, study or marry to attempt, where possible, to make positive (permissive) judgments where it was not certain that applications could be denied.Home Office covered up immigration risk. The Times, 8 November 2009
/ref> He communicated this policy, applying to hundreds of thousands of cases, in a note to

Beverley Hughes Beverley June Hughes, Baroness Hughes of Stretford (born 30 March 1950) is a British politician who most recently served as Deputy Mayor of Greater Manchester for Policing and Crime between 2017 and 2023. A member of the Labour Party, Hughes ...

, minister of state for citizenship and immigration. Hughes was later forced to resign for misleading MPs about whether she had been warned of the likely threat of Romanian and Bulgarian crime gangs taking advantage of the UK opening its borders to those seeking work from eastern Europe. This Whitehall correspondence, which was illegally withheld by the Home Office for four years, reveals an official policy to grant applications rather than to refuse them, thus fast-tracking over 300,000 applications with minimal checks. According to Times reporters, a number of serious criminals were admitted, including members of the Taliban.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jeffrey, Bill 1948 births Living people People educated at Allan Glen's School Alumni of the University of Glasgow Civil servants in the Home Office Civil servants in the Cabinet Office Knights Commander of the Order of the Bath Permanent Under-Secretaries of State for Defence Civil servants in the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom)