Wednesday 12 July 2017

MoJ Cocks It Up Again

Regular readers of this blog will be very familiar with the legendary failings of the Ministry of Justice, especially with regard to contract management, and its ability to waste vast sums of public money on numerous projects that never deliver improvements that are promised. Despite this, Civil Servants win awards, are promoted and move to other departments and no one is ever held to account. 

No matter how damning any subsequent report is, and this is from the National Audit Office, the answer is always the same 'lessons have been learnt; much is improved; there remains a lot to do'. It's like a particularly sick joke repeated by cynical PR professionals who don't give a toss about anything. We're not talking about TR this time, but that other long-running saga of tagging. This from the Guardian:-  

New criminal tagging system scaled back after ministry failings

A new tagging system to monitor criminals has been dramatically scaled back and is running at least five years behind schedule after a series of expensive failings by the Ministry of Justice, the government’s spending watchdog has found.

The National Audit Office (NAO) discovered that as attempts to develop bespoke technology failed, civil servants turned to G4S for a new tagging contract even though the outsourcing firm is under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office. A report released on Wednesday describes a chaotic picture of the department’s handling of the project, launched six years ago under the then justice minister Ken Clarke, and supposed to be a cheaper and efficient alternative to prison.

Annual monitoring costs were supposed to drop by £9m but instead, costs up to March this year have increased by £60m while the old system is still in use, the report said. The department failed to achieve value for money in its management of the service, which is expected to cost £470m between 2017-18 and 2024-25, auditors found.

The cabinet ministers who have overseen the project since Clarke are Chris Grayling, Michael Gove, Elizabeth Truss, and the incumbent David Lidington. Amyas Morse, the head of the NAO, said that the department had not even established whether an expansion in tagging was needed before committing public money to a failed project.

“The case for a huge expansion of electronic monitoring using GPS was unproven, but the Ministry of Justice pursued an overly ambitious and high-risk strategy anyway. Ultimately, it has not delivered. After abandoning its original plans, the Ministry’s new service will now, ironically, be much closer to its existing one. Even if it launches in 2018, it will still be five years late,” he said.

Since 1999, the government has used contracted-out electronic monitoring, or “tagging”, services for the sentencing and supervision of offenders. The system is used by police, courts or probation services to monitor offenders’ locations and compliance with home curfews. In 2011, the department launched a programme to develop a new “world-leading” ankle tag that combined radio frequency and GPS technology.

Auditors found that the Ministry did not do enough to establish the case for location monitoring using GPS. “The Ministry assumed there would be high demand for location monitoring from those who sentence offenders but did not run a pilot to test this before launching the programme,” the review said. “It also did not understand the potential financial costs and benefits of expanding location monitoring.”

Capita was asked to co-ordinate four suppliers, each of whom would provide different elements of the service, but the project quickly ran into problems, the report said. One firm, Buddi, was appointed as a preferred bidder in 2013 to produce the tags, but left six months later after a row over sharing data. Another supplier, Steatite, only had seven employees when it was appointed, but was expected to attend up to 40 meetings a week related to the programme.

The MoJ is “only now” running location monitoring pilots to test how the use of a GPS tag might affect the behaviour of offenders, the report noted. Auditors concluded that the department’s bespoke requirements for world-leading tags proved too ambitious; the new tags are now expected to be deployed from the end of next year – five years later than planned. The original projections suggesting that between 160,000 and 220,000 offenders would be tagged were exaggerated and instead, the programme is expected to be for under 65,000 people.

An SFO investigation into allegations of overcharging in the main electronic monitoring contracts of offenders in England and Wales began in 2013, when a general ban was imposed on G4S and a second company, Serco, from bidding for any government work. The ban was lifted in 2014 when G4S agreed to repay £109m and put in place a “corporate renewal plan” to prevent any recurrence.

Richard Garside, the director of the centre for crime and justice studies, said the bespoke tagging programme had been so shambolic that it resembled an act of sabotage. “It would be better if the ministry scrapped this pointless vanity project, stuck with the tried and tested radio frequency technology, and addressed more pressing problems, such as the prisons and probation crises,” he said.

A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman said: “As the National Audit Office makes clear, there were challenges in the delivery of the electronic monitoring programme between 2010 and 2015. “As a direct result, we fundamentally changed our approach in 2015, expanding and strengthening our commercial teams and bringing responsibility for oversight of the programme in-house. We are now in a strong position to continue improving confidence in the new service and providing better value for money for the taxpayer.”


--oo00oo--

 From the BBC website:-

Government criticised over satellite tagging system
A new £60m GPS tagging system for offenders is five years behind schedule and has so far delivered no benefits, a report has said. The Ministry of Justice had said the new technology would save money and be in place in England and Wales by 2013. But a National Audit Office report says the plan was too ambitious and lacked evidence it would work. The MoJ said it was now in a "strong position to continue improving confidence in the new service".

'Unrealistic' timetable

The government has used electronic tagging services as part of the sentencing and supervision of offenders since 1999. The technology is used by police, courts or probation services to track the location of offenders and make sure they comply with home curfews. In 2011, the MoJ launched a programme to develop a new "world-leading" ankle tag that combined radio frequency and GPS - or satellite - technology.

It set out to procure the service using a new "tower" delivery model, which incorporated contracts with four separate suppliers who would provide four different elements of the service. But the NAO, an independent spending watchdog, found the MoJ set an "unrealistic" timetable for the plans and adopted a "high-risk" procurement strategy. The MoJ also did not do enough to establish the demand for location monitoring using GPS, the report found.

The NAO said the MoJ had failed to achieve value for money in its management of the scheme, which will have cost an estimated £130m by 2024-25. The service itself is expected to cost £470m between 2017-18 and 2024-25. The report said there was also limited evidence on the effectiveness of electronic monitoring in the UK, with most experience of location monitoring based on small numbers of volunteers rather than typical offenders. "The ministry assumed there would be high demand for location monitoring from those who sentence offenders, but did not run a pilot to test this before launching the programme," the review said. "It also did not understand the potential financial costs and benefits of expanding location monitoring."

'Bungle after bungle'

The MoJ is "only now" running location monitoring pilots to test how the use of a GPS tag might affect the behaviour of offenders, the report noted. Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Sir Ed Davey said the system had been a "disgraceful waste of public money". He added: "It has been bungle after bungle and now we learn that very little will change after all."


An MoJ spokeswoman said the NAO had noted were "challenges" in the delivery of the programme between 2010 and 2015. As a direct result, we fundamentally changed our approach in 2015, expanding and strengthening our commercial teams and bringing responsibility for oversight of the programme in-house. We are now in a strong position to continue improving confidence in the new service and providing better value for money for the taxpayer."

14 comments:

  1. At first I thought this was fake news. After all, I understood that the award-winning team at the MoJ rose to meet every challenge with confidence. This evidence-led outfit could surely not be guilty of mismanagement that has cost the taxpayers tens of millions and will still not deliver on promised objectives. The outcomes speak for themselves. But why dwell on past mistakes? They will learn from their mistakes and find different ways in the future of squandering public money. And that's it. No one gets demoted or disciplined – for incompetence or adding to the public debt. The rest of us may be living under austerity, but in the MoJ there is obviously a money tree that enables these masters of the universe to have their cake and eat it too.

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  2. I'm just puzzled how the electorate keeps re-electing such idiots back into government. Surely his Surrey constituency should have realised by now that everything Grayling does turns to disaster and costs huge amounts of ££. Same could be said for Truss who seems to be more clueless than most. Gove always has an agenda that is in no one's interests but his own. Does anyone on here live in their constituencies who could throw some light on why people continue to relect these idiots?

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  3. The MOJ is not fit for purpose and should be disposed of accordingly

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  4. Is the third sector flexing it's muscles and also looking for a few quid from the MoJ?
    There's no doubt TR damaged the relationship between probation services and the third sector, but charities, of late do seem to be rattling their sabers much more loudly then before.

    https://www.theguardian.com/voluntary-sector-network/2017/jul/12/criminal-justice-charities-prison-probation

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    1. The UK's criminal justice system would fall apart without charities

      It is almost impossible to imagine what the criminal justice system would be like without the voluntary sector. The numbers tell their own story: the prison and probation services combined employ some 43,500 staff, but 66,344 people – volunteers and employees – work for charities in this sector.

      These people – on average two volunteers to every employee – provide a range of services to meet clients’ complex needs. They offer housing, help getting a job, drug and alcohol services, mentoring, advocacy, finance, benefit and debt support, mental health services and legal advice. The list goes on.

      We know the prison system is in desperate need of reform and that probation services are struggling to resettle people into the community. We believe the voluntary sector is key to any reform because it is the backbone of our rehabilitation and resettlement services.

      Our research on the state of the sector, published on 12 July, outlines the pressing challenges facing charities working in the criminal justice field. One charity told us it was seeing more homeless clients, more people with debts and rising alcohol and drug abuse.
      More than half the charities we spoke to had seen a rise in the number of service users. They said people were in crisis, with increasingly urgent and complex needs. At the same time, they reported a reduction in support from other agencies due to cuts in funding and restrictions on who was eligible for support. They reported a lot of exhaustion and frustration in charities. One told us that because other services were stretched as well, people were “really falling through the net”.

      Rather than turn people away, the voluntary sector is working overtime. Four in 10 staff are being asked to take on bigger caseloads. More than half of all organisations are recruiting more volunteers to meet the demand. Inevitably, this puts staff and volunteers under pressure and makes us concerned for their wellbeing.

      Our prisons and probation services are not easy places to work. Staff from all sectors are supporting people who have experienced significant trauma and huge disadvantage. We need to make sure that staff and volunteers have the right training, skills and support. We were pleased to hear that more than half of the organisations we spoke to were already doing this. However, more needs to be done, not just to support staff but also to make prison and probation services more progressive and rehabilitative.

      One charity told us that conditions in some prisons made their work difficult. “If the wings aren’t open, we can’t work,” it said. “If people are locked out, we can’t work. If people are suffering from mental health challenges and can’t get out of their cells, we can’t work.”

      Money is a worry too. In this sector, charities get almost no money from public fundraising, and funding pots are dwindling at the same time as the people our sector supports are finding it harder to access the help they need.

      Charities play an essential role in helping people turn their lives around, but they now face significant challenges.

      Nathan Dick is head of public policy and communications at Clinks, which supports voluntary organisations working with offenders and their families.

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    2. https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/criminal-justice-charities-struggling-to-recover-costs.html


      https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/report-charities

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  5. what are the probation institute doing?

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  6. What is the probation institute for?

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    1. The probation institute is a heritage site.

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  7. I am no longer in Probation having been made redundant after 25 years. I still have many connections with the service however and know what is happening across the piece.

    I have nothing but contempt for the MOJ. Since the takeover of Probation by the Prison Service, the expertise of the thousands of Probation staff of all grades have been ignored with the kind of 'anti-expert' logic that gave us Grayling, Gove, Farage, Trump, Boris Johnson, Katie Hopkins and the rest of these ridiculous imbeciles. The private sector has crucified public services and continues to do so, inviting nothing short of an early death to those it is supposed to care for. I a wider context, repeated failures by the private sector, the Conservatives, the repeated success of self interested parties, civil servants who screw things up and then leave without having any level of accountability (e.g. MPs who are landlords or who have interests in private health care voting for policies that favour their interests, claiming six figure sums in expenses whilst denying the disabled benefits, Right wing media moguls undermining the most popular Labour Party leader in decades, civil servants leaving jobs at the top of a ministry and then working for private companies that benefit from the policies introduced whilst they were civil servants etc) has become so transparent that there is no longer any shame in any level of dysfunction or dishonesty.

    I have a feeling that the first quarter of the 21st Century will one day be known as the age of the idiot. I genuinely believe that we are witnessing the end of the international standing of the UK and US and the beginning of the breakdown of society in those countries. The fact that Grayling can screw up so regularly and so completely, that Boris Johnson and Michael Gove can misrepresent the benefits of leaving the EU and then, having admitted to having done so, not only remain in public life but remain at the very centre of Government and, at the very apex of this farce, the ridiculous Presidency we are witnessing over the pond, for me, represents the willingness of sections of the community to turn a blind eye to literally anything if it matches their prejudices and they can make an extra dollar out of it. It's bl***dy madness wherever I look. Total bl***dy madness.

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  8. Steve Sturgess12 July 2017 at 17:48

    "Total bloody madness". It's difficult to disagree with those sentiments.
    9.33 asked how the electorate keeps electing such idiots back into Government. A question I've grappled with for years and one which would peraphs require a whole thesis to answer. However for what it's worth here's my take on it.

    Unless the public desperately wanted a return of fox hunting or grammar schools, it's difficult to see what the Tory manifesto held that was so alluring.
    The Tories themselves didn't seem to particularly like it given they changed it on a number occasions during the general election campaign.
    The normal cry of "it's the economy stupid " meaning that if the economy is sound, political parties can expect to be re-elected,now longer seems to hold true . The UK has the lowest growth rate in Europe and of most industrialised country's. This would surely demonstrate that after seven years austerity is simply not working. Could this be the "age of the idiot"?
    Possibly.
    Or it maybe most people have just a passing intrest in politics.
    The newspapers are run in this country by five billionaire's who live on off shore tax havens. They are however allowed to print on a daily basis lies, and rubbishing anyone they disagree with . Which would not normally be the Conservative party.
    In addition the main broadcasting company's, for example the BBC will broadcast Conservative propaganda . Even their own news reporters have been censured by their board of trustees for delivering news that was untrue and out of context. In addition the last five and indeed the most recent Conservative media spokesperson have all come from the BBC.
    Thus people pick up sound bites in passing which are simply not true and take it as gospel.

    In addition I've long felt people show far to much deference to their perceived betters. The Royal family go someway in perpetuating this. The Tory front bench are full of privately educated ministers who have Been "trained" to belive they have a right to govern . The majority fall behind and grant them this right,whatever their abilities are or their level of intelligence. An example would be Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary .An Eton educated man that is little more than an embarrassment . It's not clever to tell your opposite negotiating members to "go whistle".
    So until people become more aware and politically astute I can only see our current state of affairs continuing. Which will no doubt please some.
    That's my little rant over !

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  9. As soon as you read or hear that oft used mantra from Government investigations, reports and public inquiry "Lessons have been learnt"... you just know it's just a case of move on to the next one and what really transpires is "Lessons have simply been forgotten".

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    1. No-one ever went to the lessons, there were no teaching notes, the facts of each & every catastrophic fuckup have simply been redacted & reimagined by Simple Serpents.

      The Age of The Idiot it is... a time when The Revisionists simply and ostentatiously revelled in unseemly wealth whilst a divided nation either lived on infinite credit & voted Tory or queued at foodbanks & died in their beds.

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    2. Lessons have been forgotten or lessons have been ignored

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