Home secretary David Blunkett's admission that he is unaware of how many illegal immigrants there are in the UK hit the headlines in style this week.

In fact, he predicted it.

When asked how many illegal immigrants were in the UK on the BBC's 'Breakfast with Frost' programme, Mr Blunkett said: 'I haven't got a clue, is the answer.

I supposed that's a lovely headline that my advisors will be horrified with, but I haven't and nor has any other government.'

The Home Office has never made an estimate of how many people are living illegally in Britain on the grounds that it is impossible to know.

The home secretary was certainly right about the headlines.

Mr Blunkett then went on to explain that his ignorance over illegal immigrants was the perfect reason to issue everyone with identity cards, as reported in The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, and The Daily Star (22 September).

Tory shadow home secretary Oliver Letwin accused Mr Blunkett of deliberately avoiding the truth over illegal immigrant figures and called for the introduction of quotas.

While Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy kicked off his party's conference by condemning the idea of identity cards as 'illiberal'.

The Guardian was unsure about identity cards, The Daily Star thought they 'are needed to turn the tide against illegal immigration'.

Elsewhere, The Times shone yet another light on immigration lawyers (16 September).

There are three types, it said: 'sober ascetics, bleeding hearts and fly-by-nighters, whose training appears to revolve around watching episodes of Perry Mason.' The writer, a former HM Immigration Service worker, argued that the culture of attrition between immigration lawyers and officials needed to change, with better training on the government side.

And Britain's top judge, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, was 'appalled' by Mr Blunkett's Criminal Justice Bill, according to The Sunday Times (21 September).

Quoting the New Law Journal, it said Lord Woolf had accused the home secretary of 'a totally erroneous assessment' of the consequences of the Bill's proposals for tougher sentences.

Lord Woolf also said judges, and not government ministers, should decide whether a trial should be held without a jury, and that proposals to come down harder on juvenile killers would see them 'destroyed by exposure to the adult prison system'.

Support for the silk system among both leading and junior counsel is currently running at four to one in favour, The Daily Telegraph reported (18 September).

Both the former and current Lord Chancellors - Lords Irvine and Falconer respectively - have criticised the system where selected barristers are promoted to the rank of Queen's Counsel.

Lord Falconer has warned that he needs to be 'persuaded' that this process is still necessary.

But The Telegraph quotes Bar Council vice-chairman Stephen Irwin as saying that 80% of barristers believe some form of senior counsel is necessary.

Admittedly, that 80% does not care whether that senior counsel was appointed by the government, the judiciary or the Bar itself.

'The favoured option would be for a state system of appointing silk, using the judges as the arm of the state,' Mr Irwin told the broadsheet.

'The Bar is not so keen on a government minister, who is a politician, having an active say.'

Finally, here's something you won't hear often in Fleet Street.

The Observer columnist Christina Odone cries: 'Three cheers for the lawyers' (21 September).

The Hutton inquiry showed the shabby behaviour of both journalists and government, while 'lawyers have maintained a solid front of silken prose and unimpeachable integrity,' she explained.

As Ms Odone herself alludes, it's all a far cry from the days of Watergate.

Chris Baker