Gove : TR Omnishambles Next?

From the Independent:-

Tax on justice: Victory in our campaign to repeal the atrocious criminal courts charge

If there is one phrase that David Cameron does not like to see in the headlines, it is “government U-turn”. The Prime Minister believes it is a sign of weakness, of not sticking to your guns. Yet we have seen two significant about-turns by cabinet ministers in the past nine days.

First, George Osborne wisely ditched his £4.4bn of cuts to tax credits that would have hurt Britain’s low-paid “strivers”. Now, Michael Gove, the Justice Secretary, has dumped the controversial criminal courts charge introduced by his predecessor Chris Grayling – who would have been better described as the “Injustice Secretary”.

The move followed a sustained campaign by this newspaper against the pernicious “tax on justice”, and complaints from magistrates, judges, lawyers and MPs. They warned that defendants could be encouraged to plead guilty to offences they did not commit in order to avoid a charge of between the flat rate £150 and up to £1,000 if convicted after pleading not guilty. The charge led to the resignation of more than 50 magistrates who felt they could not conscionably impose a counter-productive fine on individuals who had committed minor crimes, often motivated by poverty.

We wholeheartedly welcome Mr Gove’s rethink and take pride in our part in securing it. Mr Gove argued that the intention behind the policy was honourable, while admitting it had “fallen short”. That is an understatement. Mr Grayling must have been well aware of the likely effect of his policy. The lesson is that austerity should never mean balancing the books on the backs of the most vulnerable.

Mr Gove has now announced a review of the financial sanctions and penalties courts can impose, with a view to bringing greater simplicity and clarity. That sounds sensible; the current regime is very complicated. But Mr Gove, under Treasury pressure to cut costs in a department not protected in last week’s Spending Review, should not undo his good work by finding other ways to hit people on low incomes when reducing the taxpayer’s share of running the criminal justice system.

Mr Gove has also wisely ended Mr Grayling’s attempt to ban books for prisoners. He scrapped the Ministry of Justice’s bid for a £5.9m prisons contract in Saudi Arabia, saying it should not help a regime that uses beheadings, stoning and beatings. He is held up by Mr Osborne as a model moderniser for his plans to reform prisons, which will see inner-city sites sold off for housing and could result in a net gain for the public purse. He is looking at radical ideas to tackle underlying causes of criminality following the example of initiatives which have cut the prison population in parts of America. There might just be the seeds here of a revolution that would finally address our high reoffending rates and stop our jails being “universities of crime”.

The Justice Secretary’s new broom is welcome. He should go further by looking again at another aspect of Mr Grayling’s legacy: the contracting out of much of the probation service to private firms, which now monitor low- and medium-risk ex-offenders. This has led to hundreds of jobs being lost, an exodus of 1,800 experienced probation staff and complaints of extra bureaucracy. No doubt the Treasury would be nervous about rewriting contracts with private providers, which could be expensive. One key test of Mr Gove’s credentials will be whether he can mitigate the crisis in the probation service.e is likely to happen until there is a major catastrophe - which may have already happened but been unreported yet.

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Many close to probation predicted disaster from the moment the announcement to split probation locally was announced over two years ago and at a stroke, create a more dangerous structure throughout England and Wales.

Parliament failed to act rejecting amendments to the Offender Rehabilitation Bill (now Act) 2014 - which would have put Parliament in charge of the reform process.

Folk simply do not care and probation folk are worn out with protesting - mine is the first comment to this article - 22 hours after it was published - meanwhile I am sure the blogs are alive with talk about stuff that is beyond the influence of the UK Parliament that are of little direct consequence to us - despite their interest.

I see the Napo (probation union) general secretary has to day blogged about 40% staff cuts by one probation employer - I shall be amazed if it is reported by any news outlet apart from maybe The Morning Star!

Andrew S Hatton

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Latest blog from Napo General Secretary:-

WORKING LINKS SPECIAL

JOB LOSSES LOOM AS HUGE OPERATING CUTS ARE ANNOUNCED

If further proof were needed of the total shambles that Transforming Rehabilitation has caused, than look no further than the news revealed over the last day that the Community Rehabilitation Companies owned by Working Links are about to put forward plans for swingeing cuts in the region of 40%.

This has rightly caused anger amongst members in the three CRC’s concerned covering Wales, Avon, Bristol and Devon, Dorset, and Cornwall who having gone through the trauma of the TR assignment process now find themselves in a potential redundancy situation.

Urgent talks are being convened between the national probation unions, local reps, senior CRC management and their owners about the extent of the intended cuts and their impact on staff numbers, but it is not hard to see how disastrous these will be to people’s future employment prospects in areas already blighted by the austerity agenda.

As always Napo will issue more detailed news once it is available but during my visit to South Western Branch members in Exeter recently I made it clear that Napo stands ready to assist them in negotiations with management, local campaigns against cuts of this order that can only pose a serious risk to public safety and ultimately industrial action if members decide that this is what they want.

Heads should roll but it shouldn’t be our members

Whilst Working Links will no doubt join the ever increasing whinge queue and pray in aid the Weighted Annual Volumes (WAV) figures and the absence of reliable information that was available to them from the infamously dodgy MoJ Data Room (see my ‘Salting the Mine’ Blog from a while ago). Key question doing the rounds is that someone ought to be accountable for predicating a bid that several months on could see one third of the combined workforce over the three CRC’s disappear.

We were told by Ministers before TR that the workforce in the then proposed CRC’s would ‘evolve’. Try telling that to staff who have given their all whilst being treated like chattels in the shambolic and discredited procurement process, and people who, even if they secure the Early Voluntary Redundancy terms that of course we will be insisting upon so as to avoid compulsory redundancies, face little likelihood of similar employment.

Ministers will offer a sympathetic message or two and again praise the hard work of probation staff etc. etc. but the reality is that their platitudes will be seen by our members as not worth a fig. More news on this development next week, along with the other stuff that I have had to park for now.

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Mcr. CRC Chief at recent staff meeting stated job losses imminent - whilst going on to announce her own promotion!