Bill Jeffrey

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

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.

[3] Jeffrey has been criticised by the Public Accounts Committee chairman Edward Leigh for prioritizing the renovating of leisure facilities over the "unacceptable housing" conditions for troops and their families.

[6] He communicated this policy, applying to hundreds of thousands of cases, in a note to Beverley 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.