Monday 20 October 2014

AGM 2014 Speeches 2



AGM Scarborough 2014 Motion  

A Parting Shot -The Questions remain!

This AGM views with considerable interest the valedictory report from the Probation Association (PA) ‘A Parting Shot -The Questions Remain’ published in July 2014. Colleagues will note that although the report offers a critical timeframe of the progress of the Ministry of Justice's Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) programme. The PA, with few honourable exceptions, offered little effective opposition to the unwarranted privatisation and abolition of a public probation service and maintained throughout this period a shameful collusive silence to TR, best captured in this tell tale quotation from page 7 of the NOMS Annual Report 2013/14: “progress could not have been achieved without the positive engagement and support we have received from Probation Trusts."

However, the report does pose some vital unanswered questions for the continuing viability of TR, in particular with the run-up to the 2015 election, which Justice Secretary Chris Grayling, cannot evade (even with his record of dissembling!) which include the following:

By how much have the reforms reduced re-offending?

Has the CRC bidding process proved successful in funding the provision of services, across all of England and Wales, to those with sentences of less than 12 months leaving prison?

How significant is Payment by Results in the new arrangements, or are the contracts really block payments with a bit of a reward added on?

In addition to the declared costs, how much have the reforms really cost across the piece to implement?

Are the CRCs any more liberated than Trusts could have been and wanted to be?

Has the NPS been able to sustain managing the exclusively high risk caseload?

What has been the effect on staff professionalism, morale and motivation in the longer term? 

This union will, of course, continue to campaign vigorously against TR in the run-up to the 2015 election and press for definitive answers to the above questions (and many more). This AGM therefore calls upon the national officers’ group, when making contacts with all MPs standing for election in 2015, as part of its anti-TR campaigning strategy, to continue to press the MoJ strongly for answers to the above questions, expose Grayling's TR plans as unworkable and dangerous, and publish every response received from those MPs canvassed.

Proposer: Mike Guilfoyle
Seconder: Christopher Hignett


Chair, Conference - Mike Guilfoyle, Professional Associate Member, Greater London Branch. 


Colleagues, just before I left Probation in 2010, a Senior Manager described my relationship with the service as akin to a 'marriage that had broken down due to irreconcilable differences'. My retort was that it was more like an 'enforced separation occasioned by unreasonable behavior'. A politically driven and bewilderingly stupid bureaucratic target mania meant that processes trumped people. What now of the totemic achievement of Trust Status, ostensibly set up to liberate probation from the suffocating prison-centric carapace of Noms? An association that has since proved to be, as this union knows all too well, a truly unmitigated disaster for probation. Although in spite of these enforced changes and NOMS bullying culture, probation still performed!

My late mother used to say 'I know that something's amiss in probation when I see one of Michael's letters in the papers'. Indeed former General Secretary Judy McKnight once paid me the accolade of being an 'indefatigable letter writer' intent as I was in rebutting in letters and debate some of the lattice of half-lies and MoJ speak that has so soured the probation landscape. And I take some wry satisfaction from the belief that at the MoJ there is a fusty sub-office entitled 'replies to Mike Guilfoyle'. At one MoJ presentation a civil servant in an audible whisper to a former Justice Minister and with weary familiarity noted after I had asked a pointed question on TR, 'it's that bloke from Napo again'..

Conference, I arrived late for AGM yesterday (missing Ian's Keynote Address) as I was being sworn-in as a newly appointed Magistrate. Greater London colleagues please note that I will be sitting on the SE London bench. Due notice having been shared, but I can promise you that I will continue to unashamedly champion probation at every available opportunity. 


At the reception following the swearing-in ceremony, a magistrate colleague asked 'who is speaking up for probation these days?' I hesitated for a moment, 'of course this union with its many parliamentary, academic and high profile supporters'. The now defunct Probation Association in its valedictory report 'A Parting Shot' provides a grim timeline leading up to its own, dare I say it predictable, demise. Aside from a snide reference to Napo, and some self-serving, supine observations noting without a hint of irony the positive engagement of probation trusts in securing thus far an almost unruffled passage for a politically driven TR timetable. 

It is important to acknowledge the principled and fearless contributions from a handful of PA members in the fight to save the Probation Service. How could such an untried, untested and uncosted and unevidenced ideological experiment pass with such little vocal dissent? I note the MoJ's Stalinist gagging clause, but what a truly shameful collusive silence in the destruction of the service has shrouded the PA's dismal epitaph. The paper does however provide a tally sheet of pivotal questions which should send out a clear message to politicians to think again before rushing into a hasty CRC share sale. If this is allowed to proceed will those with the power and influence look back and recoil when they fully appreciate the true consequences of TR? Will these reforms reduce reoffending? Has the CRC bidding process enabled funding to be released for those serving under 12 months? Is the Payment by Results mechanism now just a specious loss leader? How much have these reforms 'really' cost?  What has been the lasting effect on staff professionalism, engagement, morale and motivation?

Colleagues - you are now at the sharp end of this pernicious TR process. The service and union are at an existential moment. We know that Chris Grayling has nothing but withering contempt for all those who he sees as a hindrance to his dismantling not only of an internationally recognised Probation Service but a decent, accessible and humane Criminal Justice System with a veritable origami of private providers perched to feed off the carcass of an already fragmented service. With a contract culture displacing any semblance of public accountability, just how many Judicial Review's can he afford to lose before he bows out? If ever the designation of defender of justice was so poorly served in one office holder. And as for Lib Dem Justice Minister Simon Hughes stating at his party's Conference 'Day in, day out we are holding Ministers feet to the fire on justice issues' - seems TR has yet to flame up!


With the run-in to the 2015 election now months away and the prospect of further targeted draconian public sector cuts in store, whatever the political stripe of the party in power, this union, in spite of its recent travails, remains a bulwark and bastion in defence of a publicly owned and accountable Probation Service. 

With the planned share sale now in December it will need to summons together its most resolute fighting strategies to challenge and defeat TR, raise a deafening cacophony of noise to resist the potentially irrevocable sale of CRC's to new (read single contractor dominant) commercial providers, cloaked by confidentiality and seemingly immune to public scrutiny, with profit the only driver, with rehabilitation being downgraded, a significant rise in Electronic Monitoring at the cost of more human interventions, and warehousing and processing becoming the name of the game?

This motion aligns itself with what Napo is already doing, it simply seeks to reaffirm and reinforce the need to critically question, challenge, call to account and record all responses from those politicians supporting the implementation of TR in the forthcoming election that it remains ideologically unworkable dangerous dogma  and also serve to remind those now unthinkingly doing the bidding of politicians in the MoJ of the undoubted risks that when you decimate a professional probation service, things start to go wrong and this whole sorry TR mess crashes. The confidence of victims, communities, probation staff and partners, courts and users will take a very long time to repair. 

Colleagues, it's that bloke from Napo again this time saying,

Conference, I move....

28 comments:

  1. Where has everyone gone??? It's ML again. I have just rung the Mirror again after I had no response to the letter I sent them - largely updating the Shakespearean tragedy thing. The same offhand man said they must not have received it, 'send it again', which I have done. I also rang him back again to say it had just been sent. And just as offhand, he said 'OK, IF IT'S OF ANY INTEREST WE WILL BE IN TOUCH', AND PUT THE PHONE DOWN! pleeeeese, contact them at 'mirrornews@mirror.co.uk' or phone - 02072933831. ASAP! Last weekend they had an 8 page pull-out on the Equal Pay rally, and a 2 page one on badger baiting - important issues, but this dangerous stunt is up there with the worst of them.

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    1. Theres a lot of media coverage about the prison crisis in todays papers and TV news.
      It may be worth looking to make some contact with thoses covering the story, because if the prison side of TR is failing things are only going to get worse if probation services are privatised.
      I'm sure someone will take such an issue up as a follow on story if enough people make contact.

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    2. I wrote to 11 papers in total, several of those to a direct influential name, but only the Nle Journal responded and did an article. I am despairing over the silence. Today, as I re-sent the letter to the mirror, I added a link with the prisons, what the man in charge has done with y.p's and his desperate denial of raised violence in all prisons, and I gave the mirror the dates and names of the papers who published the info on yp's . My mind boggles that NOWHERE is publishing the true horror. Even the posh papers are mainly printing it in columns, not pages. I would have thought that the Mirror would have even been keen to sensationalise it - though in this case, what is more sensational than the TRUTH! Please you guys, get in touch with the newsapapers, -get their details off the internet, back me up by contacting the Mirror, and phone Simon Israel - 07801033410, the last I heard was that he is still wanting evidence. He may accept info without you having to appear, if he has a few people willing, and the off -TV interviews/chats would back up the others. It is over a week since the AGM and time is running out. Those who have not made contact, please don't let those down who have.

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  2. This morning I got a sad email from a friend who works for a partnership in the Service, teaching basic literacy skills. Her contract was due to end in Dec but under normal circs it would likely have been renewed until 2017. But now, she has been on short time since 1 Sep, and from today has been laid off for 5 weeks, presumably unpaid. She is a single parent and has, most competently, held this role in the Service for about 6-7 yrs, well liked by staff and client groups, and she quietly gets on with her job,never moaning or getting angry. But today she said 'I don't remember a worse shambles from any govt in all my time in this country (20 years)'. That says it all. It's not only Probation staff who are suffering. Competent partnerships are being dumped, for companies to employ their own. I have also stayed friendly with our office cleaner, who of course is also employed by a private company, and as the only earner in the family, with a sick partner, she is also very anxious about the future of her job. These are the voiceless employees, We MUST speak up for them too.

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  3. Latest tweet from Napo Dean Rogers 20/10 "Napo submitting latest legal challenge to MoJ, as explained at AGM, doesn't prohibit further evidence of risk coming to us #saveprobation "

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  4. yo Dean, bro - latest from the frontline: client dead, paperwork a priority, PO "in the shit for not completing relevant form", CRC management furious about Kevingate being damaging to share sale, disabled not worthy of £2 a week, NPS have no idea what happened at Crown Court because they're too stressed to give a shit - and my piles are itchy today.

    Tweet that.

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    1. No, seriously, they are REALLY itchy. I know this ain't "embarassing bodies" or something but before TR I never knew what itchy stress-related conditions were. Now, well let me tell you I don't sleep well, I sleep in the spare room, I wake every hour with sweats and needing to pee, I ache in the morning, I itch in places I wished I didn't, I yawn all day, and my colleagues have started to not ask me out for drinks, coffee, meals, etc.

      Maybe its time to review (a) my meds (b) my career and (c) my choice of shampoo.

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  5. Please read this and take note.

    http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/20/prisons-whistleblowers-threatened-with-dismissal

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    1. Whistleblowers in the Prison Service are being threatened with dismissal for raising serious concerns about their ability to keep inmates safe and their fears over soaring levels of violence.

      The attempts to silence staff have been condemned by a Conservative member of parliament, who was approached in confidence by a number of officers working at a prison in his constituency during the summer with details of how staffing shortages were causing concerns over safety.

      The MP, Gavin Williamson, said the “arrogant, high-handed” attitude to those raising legitimate concerns risked creating another scandal in the public sector on the scale of the Mid Staffordshire affair in the NHS. After the MP was approached an officer was singled out by the prison service and has been served a disciplinary notice which could end with his dismissal.

      Williamson told the Guardian: “It’s a totally disgraceful situation and goes against everything that we want to be seeing within the public sector, where whistleblowing needs to be encouraged when the concerns of those working within the system are not being addressed internally.”

      Officers are facing dismissal after raising concerns about the high levels of violence within prisons, their fears for their own safety and that of inmates, and predicting that short staffing will lead to more rioting.

      In HMP Lewes Kim Lennon is fighting for her job after raising her worries about the safety of her and her colleagues in the local newspaper in August.

      Allegations of a crackdown on whistleblowers follow an investigation by the Guardian which revealed that a distinct patterns of failings was contributing to more than six suicides of prisoners a month on average. Between January last year and 2 October this year, 134 inmates took their own lives – three on one day in September 2014.

      The shadow justice secretary, Sadiq Khan, has urged ministers to launch an urgent inquiry into the rising rate of suicides in prisons.

      “Time and again the chief inspector has warned that staff shortages and overcrowding are the underlying causes of violence and deaths. Yet ministers have their fingers in their ears, and carry on denying there’s a prisons crisis,” he said.

      The allegations come ahead of the chief inspector of prisons’ annual report. The report, due out on Tuesday, will give a detailed examination of the state of prisons in England and Wales.

      Williamson said he was approached by prison officers from HMP Featherstone in his constituency of South Staffordshire who brought their concerns about the rising levels of violence, their anger that inmates were not being brought to justice for attacks against staff and how short staffing was affecting safety.

      He took these points to the prisons’ minister and the Ministry of Justice.

      But the Tory MP later discovered that an officer from the prison had been singled out and served with a disciplinary notice, saying he had brought the service into disrepute.

      “They are taking an arrogant and high-handed attitude towards pursuing prison officers who have raised issues they are concerned about perfectly legitimately either through their MP or through other means,” said Williamson.

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    2. “The right for people to whistleblow must always be there. We have seen what happened in Mid Staffs hospital and we don’t want a repeat of that. I fear that that is the route the prison service seems to be going down. If people aren’t able to speak up and say this is wrong, then the public services will be weaker for that.”

      Lennon, an officer from HMP Lewes, gave an interview to her local paper about the deteriorating safety within the prison after raising her concerns internally but being ignored – sources close to her case said. She warned that serving officers were concerned that staff shortages within the prison were sparking increased levels of violence, that she feared an attack on officers was imminent, that staff cuts were fuelling the increase in violence and there were not enough staff to look after prisoners properly.

      Lennon told the Argus: “We’ve not got enough staff to look after prisoners properly. They are becoming extremely frustrated and frontline officers are in danger. Staff are doing more jobs than ever before and there’s fewer of us.”

      After Lennon spoke out a senior officer was attacked at Lewes by three prisoners and required hospital treatment.

      But Lennon was later sent a letter by the then prison governor, Nigel Foote, informing her she was to be disciplined for “failing to meet the standards of behaviour expected of staff”. She now faces dismissal.

      A few days later Foote quit his post as governor of the prison with no explanation.

      Paul Laxton, former deputy governor at Lewes, said there was a climate of fear within the prison system. “People are chained to their desks because of the workload and they don’t want to put their heads over the parapet.

      “They are trying to sack Kim, to make an example of her in order to show others that they have to keep their mouths shut. The senior civil servants will do what Chris Grayling wants, but there is also a culture at senior civil service level that people should be seen and not heard, you should sing the company song, constructive dissent is not wanted.”

      A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “Any concerns raised by staff members are taken extremely seriously. The department has a policy which encourages staff to raise concerns to nominated officials or the confidential wrongdoing hotline.”

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  6. There's a climate of fear... People chained to their desks too frightened to speak out... SOUND FAMILIAR?

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  7. Respect for Kim Lennon at HMP Lewes:

    "Lennon told the Argus: “We’ve not got enough staff to look after prisoners properly. They are becoming extremely frustrated and frontline officers are in danger. Staff are doing more jobs than ever before and there’s fewer of us.”

    After Lennon spoke out a senior officer was attacked at Lewes by three prisoners and required hospital treatment.

    But Lennon was later sent a letter by the then prison governor, Nigel Foote, informing her she was to be disciplined for “failing to meet the standards of behaviour expected of staff”. She now faces dismissal.

    A few days later Foote quit his post as governor of the prison with no explanation.

    Paul Laxton, former deputy governor at Lewes, said there was a climate of fear within the prison system. “People are chained to their desks because of the workload and they don’t want to put their heads over the parapet.

    “They are trying to sack Kim, to make an example of her in order to show others that they have to keep their mouths shut. The senior civil servants will do what Chris Grayling wants, but there is also a culture at senior civil service level that people should be seen and not heard, you should sing the company song, constructive dissent is not wanted.”

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    1. Kentonline and south east news highlight prison crisis and cut in prison officers as much as 55 per cent. MOJ dispute the figures.

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  8. Oh the poetry of symmetry, Mr Brown

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  9. Midlands area NPS have been warned about posting things on social media.

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  10. I was told ages ago 'remember you are a civil servant now .. You can't be seen to criticise the government publicly on social media'

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    1. Even if what the government do is bat shit crazy.

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    2. I did respond with similar wording !

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  11. A new Traînée Probation Officer joined the NPS in our office today. Its another kick in the teeth that probably in 18 months she will be employed as a PO in the NPS which I'm not able to do. Surely there should be a case for constructive dismissal. I am now unable to under take the role that I trained for, even though they see now advertising for nps PO's. I know I could apply but none of those sifted had to apply for their jobs.

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    1. I feel the same. If there was a legal challenge to be had, would taking this forward as a group of POs make a difference to TR do you think?

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  12. We have had two new trainees in our office start today too. I know it's not their fault but the government's, but I feel bad for those POs who cos they were put in crc and didn't want to be there,can't do a lot of the job they were trained to do

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  13. We got the shittier end of the stick alright. These new entrants will get the nod ahead of us, we can't apply for the new NPS prison jobs and NPS OM's are lining up to get trained in SOTP whilst my 8 years experience goes to waste. Oh, and we'll be expected to train up the newbies when the CRC placements eventually get sorted.

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    1. the thought of training up NPS TPO's makes my blood boil. I'm aware it's not their fault, but why should I spend my time training someone to do a job that I'm no longer allowed to do? If there's a need for new officers in the NPS, then why are CRC PO's not allowed to transfer over?

      The trouble is, I see no room for development in a CRC - the vast majority of specialisms are in the NPS and if you're in the CRC and don't want to work in a field team, then you have nowhere to go.

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    2. There are no 'opportunities' in the CRC and that's before share sale. Just imagine what it'll be like post.

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  14. We have the opportunity to see our roles slowly eroded before our eyes

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  15. Slowly? It's breakneck.

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  16. Once the multinationals are in then POs in CRC needn't worry about seeing their roles eroded cos they'll be gone; too expensive. Replacements will be recruited for less. HMP Northumberland is the model - expensive prison officers shovelled out the gates within 24 hours of Sodexo taking the reins, then new jobs advertised not many weeks later at 60% of the previous rate of pay. Bye bye experience; hello cost cutting. £30k for a PO holding 50 cases or two PSOs holding 100 cases between them for £36k? Economies of scale - 1000 cases now costs £360k, not £600k. Over a ten year contract you've saved £millions. You only need a Team Manager to have 'oversight' of the DV stuff (because as we know everything else is lower end risk, the scary shit's with NPS) & your Poundsaver Service is complete. Ker-ching!
    Shareholders - happy
    Accountants - happy
    Grayling - happy
    Spartacus - not best pleased

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