Omnishambles Update 48

First off, the latest from Pat Waterman, Chair of Napo Greater London Branch:-

TO: NAPO MEMBERS

Showing the privateers what we think of them

Following the valiant example set by members in other trusts, when some of the prospective bidders came to visit Camden & Islington last week some members of this branch showed them what they think by walking out of the office. WELL DONE

This caused a bit of a stir amongst LPT Senior Management who wanted to know if this was official industrial action. The matter was referred to our General Secretary who responded as follows: "National Office is not empowered to issue any such instruction unless we have served notice of specific action. We have not called for any action to this effect and if members choose to walk out spontaneously and are victimised we will seek to support them"

Here is my advice: You are not being instructed by your union to walk out when any prospective bidders visit. BUT you are entitled under Health & Safety legislation to take breaks from work. Should you decide to take a “break” with your colleagues at the same time that any prospective bidders are visiting your office would be entirely coincidental.

Sick of hearing the latest scandal about Serco, G4S and Capita?
Unhappy that £4 billion of public money goes into their pockets every year?
Want to have your say over YOUR public services?

SERCO is holding its AGM at: Clifford Chance LLP 10 Upper Bank Street London E14 5JJ (Canary Wharf tube or DLR) on Thursday 8th May. This branch will be supporting the “SICK OF SERCO” demonstration being organised by We own it www.weownit.org.uk and 38 Degrees www.38degrees.org.uk from 10.30 a.m. – 11.30 a.m. Join us to tell Serco that they're part of the problem, not the solution. The government needs to give shady outsourcing companies the boot.

Serco is currently under criminal investigation by the Serious Fraud Office for defrauding the taxpayer. - they'd rather we forget about that. The company has an image problem, and hiring Winston Churchill's grandson (Rupert Soames) as new chief executive won't solve it. Despite the criminal investigation, Serco has been cleared to bid for government work. Your branch officers will be there. Please join us.

The next branch meeting is on Friday 16th May. Our guest speakers will be Sara Robinson and Nick Smart. This will be your opportunity to ask them all the questions you have been wanting to ask. As LPT hurtles to its end with leaving parties for some members of SMT and a service of Thanksgiving, remember that this is NOT the end of Greater London Branch NAPO. We will be continuing to represent the interests of ALL our members be they in the CRC or NPS.

On Friday 6th June we will be showing the film “Spirit of 45” by Ken Loach at 6 pm at BPR Conference Room. We hope that this film will act as an inspiration to us all to continue the struggle against this government’s plans to sell us off. Refreshments will be provided and entrance is free. Donations are welcome and any money raised will go to the EDRIDGE fund.

PROBATION IS NOT FOR SALE

Pat Waterman
Branch Chair

Some interesting news sent in from one Trust confirms how things appear to be changing on a daily basis:- 

"You will all now be in the process of making arrangements to transfer cases. New guidance has been issued by NOMS based on legal advice which means that any case which has not been transferred by 30 June will need to have a formal agreement in place. This would only be in exceptional circumstances. This supersedes previous messages from NOMS that the transition could occur over a longer period. Updated guidance on the process will shortly be issued to staff in both Trusts."

and comes on top of this:-

ps did you know that trainee po's are now going to be seconded back to CRC in order to gain a broader range of experience for their qualification. Madness!

Here's some news from the charity sector on the Johnny Void website that will really upset government plans:-

Over 200 charities and voluntary organisations have now signed the Keep Volunteering Voluntary agreement in response to the Government’s launch of mass workfare.

As pointed out by Boycott Workfare, this vastly outnumbers the 70 organisations that the DWP claim have backed the new Community Work Placements, which involve 780 hours forced work under the threat of meagre benefits being stopped.

Many more charities have confirmed they will not be involved in the scheme on twitter, including household names such as British Red Cross, Scope and Friends of the Earth. This is a disaster for the DWP as they attempt to find tens of thousands of workfare placements in the voluntary sector.

It could also spell trouble for Mandatory Work Activity (MWA), the shorter workfare scheme which used to punish claimants when Jobcentre busy-bodies decide they aren’t trying hard enough to find work. The Keep Volunteering Voluntary agreement does not just apply to the new six month workfare scheme, but all mandatory unpaid work for benefits. Visit the Keep Volunteering Voluntary website for a handy guide to current workfare schemes.

Mandatory Work Activity suffered another blow this week after St Werburgh’s City Farm in Bristol suspended their involvement with workfare following a protest by Bristol Anarchist Federation. With many of the larger charities now publicly distancing themselves from forced work, actions like these, to pick off the smaller users of workfare, will be vital. If you know of an organisation near you who uses forced unpaid work then contact Boycott Workfare to have them named and shamed.

Boycott Workfare are also calling for everyone opposed to workfare to contact local voluntary groups and charities and ask them to sign up to Keep Volunteering Voluntary: “If you’re part of a voluntary organisation, or you know one that hasn’t signed the agreement yet, then please ask them to sign the pledge. Any kind of voluntary group can sign up: from a union branch to a major charity to a local housing action group.”

There's more bad news in the Daily Telegraph for those charities who still might be tempted to bid for probation work:-

Charities bidding for contracts to rehabilitate criminals under the Government’s “payment by results” probation reforms could be gambling with their future, a new report has warned. A think-tank called for significant changes to the shake-up of probation services, devised by Chris Grayling, the Justice Secretary, which will see voluntary groups taking on work currently carried out by the public sector.

The Social Market Foundation (SMF) said it amounted to a “game of roulette” for smaller charities and warned some could be forced out of business by the way the new contracts are due to work. Nigel Keohane, the SMF’s research director, said: “Taken to extremes you could find charities that go into these contracts going under if they are not fully aware of the risks that we have identified. “I do think it’s a very serious situation.”

One of the key problems the SMF identified with the system is the way charities could have to wait many months for payment, creating cashflow problems. It will also be difficult to measure the performance of small organisations working with as few as 100 offenders with national trends in reoffending, he added. The SMF said it was “broadly supportive” of the Government’s reforms but called for a number of changes to ensure charities can play a major role without taking risks which could threaten their future.

A previous report by the group, published last year, said the plans could backfire and actually increase crime. The scheme contained “perverse incentives” that could deter firms and charities from investing in crime-cutting projects, it said.

A piece in the Guardian suggests there's little if any evidence that privatisation works:-

The outsourcing bandwagon has now been rolling for three decades, but it's remarkable how little robust evidence we have about contracts and contracting in public service. Assertions and propaganda, yes; rigorous evaluation and instructive case studies, no.

The Local Government Association says hundreds of councils across England – 95% of them – are now inside shared service arrangements. The LGA claims hundreds of millions of efficiency savings. That's a formidable body of potential evidence, but to be useable it needs audit and high-grade external appraisal. Shared services may be an efficient alternative to outsourcing, but as yet we have no way of knowing.

The Institute for Government's Tom Gash – who is as clued up as anyone – has to reach back to the 1980s to come up with credible figures on possible savings from outsourcing. Those came from the first round of local authority cleaning and bin emptying contracts, which were very much of their time. Why is there nothing more recent?

The IfG and the National Audit Office have done good, informative work about the companies proffering their services. But where are the shelves full of analysis on the voluminous experience of Whitehall and local government in specifying, letting and monitoring service contracts with for-profit firms?

"Good question", was the response of the Cabinet Office's Ed Welsh, who was on the panel with Gash at a recent IfG "new ways of working in Whitehall" event. Welsh is an ex-Rothschild banker in charge of promoting commercial models. He can't be held responsible for the Cabinet Office's failure to do research and collect data, which could be due to its oddly contingent relationship with other departments. The same could be said of the Treasury and Number 10.

(cont)

Ministers (justice minister Chris Grayling at their head) still have dogmatic views about the benefits of compulsory tendering, but Whitehall officials add they must also think through the consequences of outsourcing for accountability and the involvement of service users. Does outsourcing really bring innovation, or are there other ways of improving performance in public services and departments?

Unusually, the consultants who are so facile at putting themselves ahead of the game are struggling to catch up. PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the patrons of the IfG seminar, produced a booklet, Opening Out?, which is still locked into the belief that private firms will always do a better job, and that government should not press them too hard on their performance and profits.

Even the Confederation of British Industry, which has been conducting a consultation on the future of public services contracting, acknowledges that after Serco and G4S, the least the public expects is transparencyaround their governance, ownership and profits.

Is it naive to look forward to a more reasoned and evidence-rich discussion about how public bodies cope with financial pressure and demand, given what we now know about the limits and risks of traditional contracting?

Finally, I know it's somewhat old news, but I really did find this in the Independent from Sadiq Khan a bit feeble to say the least:-

One of Whitehall’s most senior civil servants has been asked to tell the Tories not to sell off the probation service to private firms before next year’s general election. Labour fiercely opposes the planned privatisation, which would transfer £650-£700 million year worth of business to the private sector, and wants to cancel them. But the Justice Secretary Chris Grayling is hoping to see the privatisation through before the end of this this year.

Labour’s shadow Justice Secretary, Sadiq Khan, has written to the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Justice, Ursula Brennan, asking that the contracts be held up on the grounds that it would be wrong for the coalition government to make a decision of this importance only months before an election. Alternatively, he has asked that the contracts be written in such a way that they can be cancelled by an incoming government without huge financial penalties.