In 1995, the Home Secretary, Michael Howard, dismissed Derek Lewis, director general of the Prison Service, after high-profile escapes by IRA prisoners. Howard held that escapes were operational matters for the agency, and that he was responsible only for policy. Lewis later called the distinction “no more than a political figleaf.”
In 1997, in a BBC Newsnight interview, Jeremy Paxman asked Howard at least twelve times whether he had threatened to overrule Lewis.