Hello members...
Diversity:
Greater London Branch NAPO have recently had view of the Diversity Data regarding the staff sifting process which was created and managed by the Ministry of Injustice.
To be fair to ........ and her department, they conducted a thorough analysis of the split in relation to protected characteristics and London Probation Trust are the only Trust in England and Wales to have done this and to have shared this with NAPO.
But I am afraid it does make concerning reading. We have seen an over representation of BAME (Black Asian Minority Ethnic) staff in the CRC and an under representation of BAME staff in the NPS. This includes ACO, SPO, PO and PSO grade. We are awaiting data on CA’s and SCA’s. We have also seen that mature (and experienced) staff and female staff disproportionately represented in the CRC and NPS.
So what is this Branch doing?
Called a meeting with our sister union (Unison) and ABPO (Association of Black Probation Officers) to devise working together locally to challenge this further injustice. If TR (privatisation wasn’t vile enough).
Currently we have several viable routes to use this information and challenge the TR (privatisation process) but at this time we do not want to tip the enemy the wink.
It is our assessment that the sifting process was not only unfair and detrimental to all but it has posed a higher risk of harm to BAME staff, mature staff and female staff.
It is also of grave concern that recently in LPT there were 5 ACO vacancies for the CRC. Despite 16 highly qualified, experienced and capable BAME SPO’s applying for these roles, 4 were filled by white candidates and the 5th was re-advertised as unfilled externally.
Please attend the next Branch meeting (16th May 2014) for an update/report back and we will keep you posted.
Morale in the field is becoming increasing thwart with work loads, anxiety and constant change. This coalition Government are hell bent on pushing through their TR (privatisation) agenda at all costs and the only people who can stop this is us.
Resist working over your hours, resist in assisting in TR (privatisation) projects and work. If you are required to do any additional work in relation to case transfer request this in writing and ask for a SRA (Stress Risk Assessment) most people are in the red in the WMT (and if you are a CA you won’t have a WMT tool but you will know what your day to day tasks are) if there are any additional tasks or work to be done request a reduction in other work loads/areas.
You cannot manage your day job and complete additional TR (privatisation) tasks on top of this. Something will have to give and trust me, I am seeing colleagues make mistakes they would never have made under normal circumstances and fall foul of LPTs disciplinary policies as a result.
If you are anxious or this is aggravating/causing depression PLEASE see your GP immediately and inform your line manager of this. Look out for one another because Chris Grayling and the MOJ wont. Now is the time (if needed) to call...(your local Trust nominated counselling service - ed)
CAMPAIGN:
Not a good day for SERCO, their shares have fallen by 17%. Also Nott’s NAPO did us proud today. As they walked out of work today when potential bidders attended their office (lets replicate this in London). BIDDERS WALK IN WE WALK OUT.
Thursday 8th May will be Serco’s AGM (Clifford Chance LLP 10 Upper Bank Street London E14 5JJ) let us attend not only to demonstrate against Serco’s profiteering. But also until we get the names and head quarters of the bidders lets use Serco like they used Community Payback to highlight to the other bidders we are not happy with this. (this is being organised by 38 Degrees and is aimed at all privatisation of the public sector). Once we know the bidders whom are bidding for OUR service NAPO will be organising a campaign against them.
Apply for toil or leave and pop down lets show the privateers PROBATION IS NOT FOR SALE.
Stay safe and look after yourselves.
Thank you
Brilliant stuff Ms Waterman. Someone's been hard at work.
ReplyDeleteI think Pat would be the first to give credit to members of her team where it is due. In this instance this crucial piece of work was led by Vice Chair David Masterson with input from other Branch Officers. Other work is underway so more to come....
DeleteA re-post of anon 7.50-ish from earlier this morning. It seems to sit well with a 1 May post by Jim and Pat's email above. I liked it, hope no-one minds -
ReplyDelete"Happy May Day to all. We've been well & truly shafted, but many of us still have our integrity and humanitarian values intact. Those who have done the shafting will be variously unashamed, uncomfortable or unrepentant. They know who they are. Some will feel triumphant, some will be defensive, others avoidant. Leave them to stew in their own conscience. TR (the concept) is wrong and dangerous. TR the Chair has, I believe, made a poor call. But the conditions have been right for these things to happen - an unrestrained right wing government following the most right wing, self congratulatory Labour government ever known; and a dysfunctional napo structure that has mirrored that destructive self-centredness.
Don't be drawn into being abusive or losing integrity. Challenge, highlight the flaws, use this any any other outlet to expose and criticise, but please don't undermine your valid arguments with cheap shots. Once starved of the oxygen of publicity Chair TR's email will probably see him hoist by his own petard, and it may well haunt him for years to come.
We have a difficult and critical campaign we need to win - for our own sanity, for our professional integrity, for the work we do with our clients and for the safety and well-being of the public in England and Wales. Grayling's TR is a travesty of justice. Its a dangerous, myopic and deluded project forged out of ideology and greed. Focus, people, and kick TR into touch."
Thanks for the re-post.
DeleteIf Graylings success with reforms to the prison service are replicated in his reforms to the probation service, then the public should be very concerned indeed.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/05/01/360810/uk-inmate-suicide-rate-rises-by-71/
Last week the MoJ announced it was to change the mechanics of payment for their much shouted about Peterboro' PbR piolot. They said it was because it didn't suit their payment model for TR.
ReplyDeleteThey failed to explain how or why.
At the same time a Think Tank report was published urging the charity and voluntry sector to think twice before getting involved with Graylings TR reforms. They called it a game of Russian Roulette.
This issue interests me greatly as I sense a government shift from PbR towards a fixed rate management fee with any payment for result taking on the form of a 'bonus' rather then being totally 'outcome' based.
If that is indeed the case, then using the idea that companies will only be paid for results to push through probation reforms has been a smokescreen for privatisation of the service.
I really do think its worth keeping an eye on how this develops, as any major changes to the PbR model changes the whole ethos of how TR was voted on by Parliament.
http://www.theguardian.com/voluntary-sector-network/2014/may/01/social-impact-bonds-funding-model-sibs-future
Not crowing here but i have said this all along. Understanding the corporate bullshit mind is easy once you get the basics.
DeletePlease, please take this to your MPs, make them responsible for what is happening in their communities now, don't let them off the hook for the future by saying they did not know. Either write or book into their surgery and tell them what is happening NOW and what the risks are. Please.....
ReplyDeleteGraylings chickens I feel are now not far away from the roost!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/01/prisons-cuts-governors-strangeways-riot
http://www.channel4.com/news/legal-aid-fraud-trial-alex-cameron-chris-grayling-stayed
DeleteA direct consequence of Grayling's policies. He should resign absolutely.
DeleteNo he bloody shouldn't!! He should not be allowed to weasel his way out of the mess he's created. Far better to keep him in post and het him to sort the whole mess out.
DeleteThere is a cabinet reshuffle only a few weeks away. Apart from the obvious problems surfacing with prisons and legal aid as the true consequences of Graylings bungling becomes apparent, theres also a united call in parliament for the seperation of Graylings joint roll as justice minister and lord chief justice, as its becoming very clear he's using his legal possition for political reasons.
DeleteI'm a betting person and don't think I'd get very long odds on Grayling still being at the MoJ this time next month. He's just become to contraversial for Cameron to leave in that particular office.
Sorry! Senior moment. Lord Chancellor not Lord Chief Justice.
DeleteEven the LibDems are twisting Graylings arm.
Deletehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2618245/Clegg-bid-block-knife-crackdown-Days-shocking-classroom-murder-Ann-Maguire-Deputy-PM-senior-Lib-Dems-refuse-support-tightening-laws.html
A crackdown to prevent knife-wielding thugs escaping jail is being opposed by Nick Clegg and other senior Liberal Democrats, extraordinary leaked Cabinet papers reveal.
DeleteDespite heightened public concern over knife crime following the classroom stabbing of teacher Ann Maguire, the Deputy Prime Minister and senior colleagues flatly refused to support a tightening of the law in private Whitehall talks this week.
In one letter to Mr Clegg, sent on Tuesday and marked 'restricted' but leaked to the Daily Mail, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander insists jailing more offenders caught with blades would cost too much money.
‘It is very hard to see how it could be afforded. The Treasury does not support this amendment and I am not willing to clear it,’ the Lib Dem minister writes.
In another letter to the Deputy Prime Minister, Lib Dem schools minister David Laws says mandatory minimum sentences are ‘too blunt an instrument’ and he is also ‘unwilling’ to support the proposed change in the law.
Justice Secretary Chris Grayling has drawn up plans to legislate so that offenders caught more than once with a blade are automatically jailed, according to senior sources.
The review is understood to have been prompted by alarming evidence that thugs are escaping jail despite repeatedly flouting the law by carrying knives.
Currently, around four out of five of those convicted of a knife crime do not go to prison. Incredibly, forty per cent of criminals with at least three previous convictions are given soft sentences, such as fines, cautions, community punishments or suspended jail terms.
April next year will mark the 25th anniversary of the Strangeways riots, an orgy of violence and destruction at the Manchester prison that lasted for 25 days, spread to two dozen other prisons, led to the deaths of one prisoner and one prison officer and cost an estimated £350m to the taxpayer.
DeleteThe report into the 1990 riots by Lord Woolf blamed the failure of successive governments to provide resources so that the prison service could provide for an increased prison population "in a humane manner". If the recent heavy-handed prison regime changes ordered by Chris Grayling, the justice secretary, are anything to go by it would seem that the hard-learned lessons of Strangeways have been forgotten.
And now, less than one year before that ignominious anniversary, it has been announced that the National Offender Management Service has ordered governors to cut budgets by £149m a year, £2,200 per prison place. Budgets have already been cut so much that prisons are now struggling to provide the basics, such as toilet rolls, soap, clean bedding, towels and clothing. Grayling's ban on prisoners receiving parcels containing not only books and stamps but also underwear, socks and other clothing from their families is adding to the problem. It also doesn't help that he has decided to put prisoners back into uniform (a practice dropped in the 1990s to save money). In addition, food budgets have been cut to the bone, leaving most governors with just over £1 per day, per prisoner, to provide the stipulated three meals.
Such measures have led to dozens of letters being sent to Inside Time, the national prisoner's newspaper, complaining of a starvation diet being imposed and reports of prisoners resorting to eating cockroaches, mice, pigeons and even the feral cats that infest some prisons, in order to get protein. It is worth bearing in mind that a persistent complaint in the testimonies of the prisoners involved in the 1990 riots was about the poor quality and meagre portions of the food.
Since the coalition came to power in 2010, it has closed – or plans to close – 16 prisons. Some of them, including Latchmere House, in Surrey, Kingston in Portsmouth, and a female prison, Morton Hall, in Lincolnshire, were high performing with excellent reports. Several of them, including Blundestone in Suffolk, had hundreds of thousands of pounds spent on repairs and improvements just before being closed down. Their former inmates have been scattered all over the country wherever spaces were available, and many of the staff have been offered redundancy or suffered the same fate as the prisoners.
British prisons have been overcrowded for almost a decade now, with two or three prisoners crammed into cells designed for single occupancy. Prison closures have exacerbated this problem and turned some prisons into veritable powder kegs. The announced cuts of £149m could provide an unwanted spark. In 1990 there were just over 40,000 prisoners in the UK; the prison population of 2014 is more than double that and prisoners are being held in fewer jails.
There have already been several "disturbances" (Ministry of Justice speak for riots) this year, including one at Oakwood, near Birmingham, a private sector prison run by G4S and lauded by Grayling as "an excellent model for the future of the prison service". Oakwood, the shining star in Grayling's universe of incarceration, has had a short but chequered history since it opened in April 2012, including several "disturbances". It now holds the distinction of being, along with another G4S jail (Altcourse, in Merseyside), the worst jail for incidents of self-harm among its prisoners: 611 last year. You do not have to be a genius to see that cutting the budget of an already failing and beleaguered institution cannot be good news. And when that institution is an overcrowded, underfunded, directionless behemoth such as the British prison system, you can bet that the results are bound to be ugly.
Whether Grayling, the media or the public like it, it is widely accepted that a prison system cannot be run without the co-operation of its prisoners. It seems as though Grayling is determined to test the validity of this. In the aftermath of the Strangeways riots, a new 10-year sentence was introduced for prison mutiny, which is largely why there have been very few riots since. Having 10 years added to a sentence is a great deterrent for most prisoners, and so they do not indulge in such behaviour without great provocation and much thought.
DeleteUntil Grayling took the reins, the "carrot and stick" ratio in our prisons was pretty even, but the latest tinkering and the imposition of yet more cuts will, I fear, leave only the stick. When this happens, Grayling may well no longer be in power, but the rest of us will be reaping the whirlwind of his creation. God help us.
If you are feeling stressed at work, please please please seek advice immediately. Your (and your family's) wellbeing are significantly more important then your job. If HR does not address your concerns then feel free to turn to companies similar to this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.injurylawyers4u.co.uk/what-to-claim-for/accidents-at-work/stress-at-work-and-your-right-to-claim/
People like Grayling are only concerned at the bottom line; money. I cannot see bidders being too pleased at being sued either.
Remember, you are duty bound to tell your manager ( and of course they are duty bound to tell their managers and so, up the line) about the impact this is having on you. It is the ultimate defence for an employer to say the employee did not tell me, where is the proof?
ReplyDeleteGood advice. Make sure you email your manager and if possible CC your NAPO rep. We need this kind if evidence if we are to demonstrate the negative impact of TR.
DeleteTomorrow Graylings legal aid reforms are going to attract a lot of media coverage due to the collapse of a massive fraud trial. Most will be critical I predict.
DeleteIsn't it a good time for NAPO to give a statement or engage with the press to bring some attention or focus to TR?
After all, if the media is reporting great failings in all other parts of the CJS, then lets take time to sort some of those problems out before taking another great leap into the unknown by handing rehabilitation of offenders over to private companies that have no experience in the field?
The oppertunity should be taken now to say that the next justice train crash will be TR, but that won't be a trial breaking down, it will probably be murder! Grayling should be prossecuted, because his TR shambles certainly pose a risk to life and limb.
Another excellent idea, however, it appears that NAPO are about as much on the ball as a dead seal! I'm not holding my breath and imagine that I will be proved right come the 6pm news :(
Deletewelcome back jim-sorely missed
ReplyDeletehttp://news.sky.com/story/1253176/pms-brother-wins-trial-halt-on-legal-aid-cuts
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27238201
"Time and again ministers have been warned their changes to legal aid could lead to miscarriages of justice and trials collapsing. Today, these warnings have come true."
David Cameron's barrister brother has had a serious fraud trial stopped because of the cuts the Government has made to legal aid.
DeleteThe significant ruling could pave the way for others accused of crimes to get their cases thrown out, it has been warned.
Alexander Cameron, QC, representing five of those accused for free, argued the fees cut meant not enough competent barristers could be found to represent the defendants.
He blamed it squarely on the cuts and said there was no way the men could get a fair trial.
Judge Anthony Leonard QC agreed and stopped the trial, which would have been the first case brought to court by the new Financial Conduct Authority.
He said simply adjourning the matter would just clog up the courts and he did not think the defendants would be able to find representation.
Following the ruling when asked if he was embarrassed about the case, the Prime Minister said: "My brother has made arguments on behalf of his clients in court and the judge has made a decision.
"That's the process, that's the way it should be."
Barristers had cautioned the legal aid cuts, the state funding which covers barristers' fees, would bring about the collapse of the British justice system.
Philip Smith, a partner at the solicitor firm Tuckers which represents one of the defendants, Dale Walker, said the ruling paved the way for other people facing criminal trial to have their case thrown out if they are not properly represented.
Speaking outside court, he said: "I have been a solicitor for 21 years and this is unprecedented.
"It is a very brave decision by the judge, but it is a just decision."
He said he knew of eight other complex cases where defendants had failed to find barristers.
Lee Adams, a partner at Hughmans solicitors who represents another defendant, said: "This is an unprecedented decision, it is enormous.
"This is absolutely the right decision because it is preventing a situation where innocent men may have been convicted for lack of proper representation.
"I think justice secretary Chris Grayling needs to think about his position very carefully, otherwise he risks the effective collapse of the most serious cases."
The Government has said barristers refused to work on the high-profile case to make their point on the cuts to legal aid.
Off topic but an interesting read.
ReplyDeletehttp://libcom.org/blog/public-sector-outsourcing-class-warfare-01052014
An investigation into the ways in which outsourcing and the threat of outsourcing is used as a weapon of class warfare and labour discipline in the public sector, as well as possible tactics for fighting back.
DeleteThe outsourcing of public services has become major news in recent years. The UK is now the second largest market for outsourced public services in the world and with the combination of ongoing budget cuts and the neoliberal demands for ‘efficiency’ and private provision outsourcing is a major consideration across the public sector. However a focus simply on numbers and statistics can overlook the impact of the threat of outsourcing as a weapon of class warfare and labour discipline.
My own experience of this comes from being an admin worker in an NHS department that went through a lengthy outsourcing review before being given a last minute reprieve a couple of months ago. Whilst not wanting to generalise too much from one experience, I thought it would be worthwhile sharing some of my conclusions about the effects of this process, it’s effectiveness as a form of class warfare and possible ways in which we may be able to fight back.
Knock knock?
ReplyDeleteWhose there?
Nap
Nap who?
Nap o a day helps you work, rest and play!
When is too far too far?
ReplyDeletehttp://m.thirdsector.co.uk/article/1292673/tory-backbencher-floats-concept-charity-run-prisons
http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/Fenton-man-walks-betting-shop-knife-wanted-locked/story-21045782-detail/story.html
DeleteA Conservative backbencher has told MPs that the "next step for public sector reform of the prison system" should involve charities taking over prisons.
DeleteGuy Opperman, MP for Hexham, was speaking in a Westminster Hall debate on Wednesday, called by fellow Tory MP Mark Pritchard on prison education and welfare services.
Opperman asked Pritchard if he agreed that "we should be looking into the idea of an academy prison, whereby the whole prison is run by a charity or altruistic institution?"
Opperman said: "The current model is either state or private, whereas in schools we have transformed education by the provision of academies that are outwith the state or private institutions.
"Surely, the next step for public sector reform of prisons should be the charity not just providing the education within a small segment of a prison, but taking over the whole prison itself."
Opperman later asked Jeremy Wright, the parliamentary under-secretary of state for justice: "Does the minister accept the potential for alternative providers for an individual prison?"
Wright did not rule out the possibility. "It is not so much who provides the prison accommodation that matters, but what they provide and the support that goes with it," Wright said.
"It is important that we look at every potential provider of prisons to ensure that they can provide for us not just a secure environment, but one in which rehabilitation can be achieved."
MPs taking part in the debate praised charities including the Henry Smith Charity, the Prisoners’ Education Trust, Samaritans and the Shannon Trust for their work within prisons.
Charity involvement in the running of prisons has been controversial. In 2011, Kevin Curley, Third Sector columnist and then chief executive of local infrastructure body Navca, said that working with the private sector to operate prisons "doesn’t fit with our values".
In 2012, Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said that charities that were involved in running prisons should have their charitable status revoked.
DESPERATE James Wallbank has been jailed after he walked into a betting shop with a knife in a bid to be 'locked up'.
DeleteThe 36-year-old put a blade on the counter of Coral Racing Ltd bookmakers in Fenton before asking staff to call police.
No-one was injured during the stand-off which ended when officers arrived five minutes later.
Now Wallbank, of City Road, Fenton, has been given a four-month prison sentence after he pleaded guilty to having a knife in a public place when he appeared at North Staffordshire Justice Centre yesterday.
The court heard Wallbank approached the counter at 3.45pm on Wednesday and told worker Ian Bailey to call police.
Prosecutor Sabrina Naz said: "He doesn't recognise the male and asks 'why?'. He said, 'I need you to call the police, I need to be locked up'."
She added: "He said, 'if I call the police you will get into trouble'. He says, 'I've got a knife', before dropping it on the counter."
Mr Bailey described the blade as between four and five inches long and wrapped in a sheet.
Ms Naz added: "The defendant said, 'I don't want to hurt anyone. If police are not here within the next three minutes you are going to have a really bad day'. Police were there within five minutes."
The court heard Wallbank walked out of the shop and dropped the blade at the request of officers. He was arrested but made no comment during his interview.
Hamish Noble, mitigating, said Wallbank had not been in trouble since he spent time in custody for offences in 2009. He was keeping appointments with the probation service following his release.
Mr Noble added: "However, since that came to an end, things have been more difficult. He accepts he started misusing cocaine and things have been going from bad to worse as far as he's concerned.
"He hasn't been sleeping properly and suffers from stress and anxiety. He was in a desperate position and decided it would be better for everyone if he was locked up. Unfortunately he made the decision in committing this offence to go further than was necessary to be locked up."
The court heard Wallbank had a number of previous convictions, with the most recent being an attempted robbery and wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm in 2009.
Ordering the knife be destroyed, chairman of the bench Stella Gibbs said: "This offence was committed in a shop with other people present which must have been very frightening for all those involved and you were unable to comply with probation."
Th chair's comments do not make sense, as it reads as if his probation has finished but she states he was unable to comply?
DeleteThere is a lot happening in the court system.....this week as CDO I witnessed two defence solicitors asking for their clients to be remanded due to being homeless and committing shop thefts as they were subject to benefit sanction and unable to feed themselves. Two separate days....is this happening anywhere else?
ReplyDeleteThere are some very interesting but very disturbing things occurring as a result of tory party policy.
ReplyDeleteLow level crime is rising as a consequence of benefit cuts and sanctions. Shoplifting and theft become a means of survival for many when there is no income whatsoever.
Fear of being caught has gone out the window for those who choose that route. Having no home and no food prison can be seen as a sanctuary rather then punishment.
It does however mean that the prison population will grow by virtue of short term sentences albeit with a greater turnover.
Those short sentences are soon to be released on a years supervision to private companies. Many will be supervised by the same company that stopped their benefit or imposed a sanction in the first place.
It wont take these companies long to realise how they can manipulate the system. Need more offenders to supervise? Then sanction more low level offenders. Need to hit PbR targets? Sanction less low level offenders. The scope for fraud in my eyes is immense.
And just a thought, but how many people now facing a criminal charge that may attract a more lengthy sentence will plead not guilty in the light of the reasons for yesterdays collapsed trial due to legal aid reforms?
Grayling could not have made a bigger mess of the CJS, and here ls perhaps a clue as to why.
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/05/operation-cotton-and-23-pages-which-skewered-chris-grayling-s-legal-aid-reforms
Part 1
DeleteChris Grayling is the first politically-appointed Lord Chancellor who has never been a lawyer.
Did you hear the “snap”?
If you were in Southwark Crown Court at 11:30 yesterday morning, you would definitely have heard it.
That was when His Honour Judge Leonard QC delivered a ruling (pdf) which in 23 pages put Justice Secretary Chris Grayling’s major legal aid reforms in jeopardy.
The judge effectively terminated the prosecution of five men for allegedly stealing over £5m from UK investors. The reason? The government had failed in its duty to ensure the defendants were represented.
The barristers who were supposed to represent the men pulled out of the case after the Ministry of Justice cut legal aid fees for complex cases by 30 per cent. They were told if they refused to work under the new rates their existing contracts would be terminated.
Back to that “snap”. The UK has an unwieldy but remarkably flexible unwritten constitution. Think of that scene where Gulliver wakes up to find he is bound by hundreds of tiny little ropes. In the UK, those in power are also bound by tiny ropes, woven over centuries to prevent them oppressing the people.
It was those ropes which stopped fascism and communism succeeding here. As George Orwell said in 1941, the “totalitarian idea that there is no such thing as law, there is only power, has never taken root”.
But one of those ropes just snapped.
It began to fray almost a decade ago. That was when the Constitutional Reform Act fundamentally changed the ancient role of Lord Chancellor. For hundreds of years the Lord Chancellor had been a judge or senior lawyer. A key part of his job was speaking up in Parliament for the rule of law.
No more. Now the Lord Chancellor is a political appointee and is responsible for managing the criminal justice system. He need not know anything about law...
Part 2
DeleteIt took a while for the change to be felt. Jack Straw and Ken Clarke, the first two of the new breed, were former lawyers who understood the system they were entrusted to protect.
But that changed with Chris Grayling, the first non-lawyer to hold the post in over three centuries. The result has been constitutional carnage, wrought on three fronts.
First, there have been swingeing cuts to legal aid. Legal aid is often described the NHS for justice. Providing representation for poor people in proceedings which could affect their lives as much as a serious illness has been a proud tradition. But facing huge cuts to the budget, lawyers have been unable to generate the kind of sympathy that has kept cuts away from doctors and nurses.
Second, human rights laws have been under attack. Grayling is soon to unveil plans to curtail the role of the European Convention on Human Rights, a system created over 60 years ago largely by Conservative lawyers. Lawyers who speak up against the proposals are branded self-interested fat cats, even though they are amongst the lowest earners in the profession.
Third, there has been an assault on Judicial Review, which lets ordinary people can take public authorities to court to ensure they act within the law. The Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) said last week that evidential basis for the Government’s proposals is “weak”.
The JCHR also said the government’s approach “expose[d] the conflict inherent in the combined roles of the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice”. It criticised Grayling’s “energetic” and “politically partisan” pursuit of reforms which “place direct limits on the ability of the courts to hold the executive to account”.
The most telling evidence to that committee was Grayling’s own. In an attempt to show how seriously he takes protecting the rule of law, he said he would never criticise judges except “if I am directly involved in a case, I disagree with the judge and plan to appeal it”. How can the minister fighting hundreds of prison-related judicial review claims also be responsible for reforming the system?
So the rope frayed. Then, yesterday, it snapped. The government argued that it should be allowed an adjournment, to some time in 2015, so that representation could be found. No, said the judge. Because to allow the State a long delay to put right its “failure to provide the necessary resources to permit a fair trial” would, he ruled, be “a violation of the process of this court”...
http://www.localgov.co.uk/Union-urges-social-workers-to-reject-outsourcing-proposals/36213
ReplyDelete