Chris Grayling will always have a special place in the annals of probation history and I suspect I'm not alone in being able to fully endorse this assessment on the Politics.co.uk website:-
Week in Review: A quick reminder that Chris Grayling is the worst person in a terrible government
It can be hard to keep track, when the government is as bad as this, of the various failures of the individual members within it. After a while it all starts to congeal into the same grey mass. But no matter how bad things get, there is always one minister who stands out. His name is Chris Grayling. He serves as a litmus test of how far an incomparably mediocre man can succeed in a Conservative government.
This week, he tried to explain his lack of popularity. "Some people want to have a go because I'm pro-Brexit," he told PoliticsHome. "A lot of people out there want to frustrate the democratic will of the British people who voted to leave the EU and because I'm a prominent Brexiteer in the Cabinet who backs the prime minister's deal I'm a lightning rod for the anti-Brexit brigade."
Normally the mind tries to avoid grappling with a quote from Grayling. It recoils in horror, starts to spasm up into itself. The thinking is so rote. The choice of words is so lazy. Even the structure of the sentences is turgid. They go on forever and yet never lead anywhere.
But it's worth taking a second to parse it down and note how relentlessly mechanical he is. Almost every sentence is a stereotype or a stock-phrase. He's "pro-Brexit". People want to "frustrate the democratic will of the British people". He "backs the prime minister's deal". It's an endless parade of reactionary mundanities, one after another. You can almost see the cogs slowly juddering in his echoey mind.
But seeing as he's mentioned it, it's worth taking a moment to recall the real reasons why people criticise him. It is because his record is one of unforced error after unforced error. He is the anti-Midas. Each department he touches crumbles into dust.
At the Ministry of Justice he instituted a hardline regime which saw a ban on books being sent to prisoners. The High Court eventually ruled it illegal. He angrily rejected efforts to improve condom access behind bars, despite warnings of the public health implications. He presided over a 5,000 decline in prison officer numbers between 2012 and 2015, which coincided with a rise in deaths and a broiling prison crisis which is still taking place today. The chief inspector of prisons, Nick Harding, accused him of interfering with his critical reports into the prison estate and threatening the independence of his office.
His reform of probation might, in a crowded field, be the most inept privatisation venture undertaken by the British government since Margaret Thatcher. No-one wanted it. Everyone warned it would be a catastrophe. He did it anyway. And it was.
Legal aid was stripped down for almost everyone. Judicial review, which allows individuals to challenge the decisions of government ministers in the courts, faced a sustained assault, only undermined by the incompetence with which he pursued it.
At the Department for Transport, he awarded a no-deal freight contract to a company which had never run a ferry service and did not own any ships. He set up a mock road blockage operation in Kent which went wrong because no-one turned up, costing the taxpayer £65,000. He literally couldn't even organise a traffic jam.
There are more failures, of course - countless more. Certainly far too many to list here. We laugh it off, but behind every self-imposed disaster there are real casualties: the prisoners reoffending because there was no interest in rehabilitating them, the victims of crime resulting from a probation system which cannot communicate between public and private silos, the people left without legal support in a baffling and under-resourced court system.
But there's something more deeply wrong than that. There's also the corrosive symbolism of the thing.
Grayling's continued presence at the top of British politics, under a series of Conservative leaders, proves that lack of talent, mediocrity and ignorance are no obstacle to success in modern Britain, and may in fact be an advantage. As Chris Allnutt wrote this week, it sends a message to young people and aspiring politicians that this system is geared up to select the very worst kind of person for high office.
We are now seeing the results of that failure. The political class is functionally inadequate. It has been presented with a clear-and-present danger to the British way of life and its response is to pass the buck, from government to parliament, from parliament back to government, and then from government to its own negotiating partner. This culminated yesterday in the appalling spectacle of Labour MPs on TV saying to the prime minister that they will vote for whatever Brexit deal she puts forward if she will "show us the money" for their local patch.
Grayling is at the top of that system of failure. He is that little bit more intellectually, presentationally and ideologically useless than all the others and therefore deserves special mention. But he is merely the totem of a culture that has singularly failed the country.
Ian Dunt is editor of Politics.co.uk
A no deal Brexit looms, and there's great concern over the movement of goods and our ports becoming lorry parks.
ReplyDeleteShouldn't someone in government be expressing concerns that this possible crisis will be presided over by the one and only failing Grayling?
https://amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/06/chris-graylings-record-of-catastrophic-failures?amp_js_v=a2&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQCCAE%3D#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fpolitics%2F2019%2Fjan%2F06%2Fchris-graylings-record-of-catastrophic-failures
I share Owen Jones’s view of Grayling’s staggering incompetence (How on earth is Chris Grayling still a cabinet minister?, 3 January). Similarly I am sadly not surprised that he keeps a job in what has become a shambolic government. In any other government it would have been truly amazing that he was put in charge of transport, particularly given his spectacular failures as minister of justice.
DeleteOwen Jones alludes to his record of “blunders” and “disaster” but I think his virtual destruction of a gold star probation service in 2013/14 needs to be spelt out. People need reminding about it. He oversaw the transforming rehabilitation agenda that meant selling off a huge section of the probation service to private contractors. Again no concern was shown that some of these had little knowledge of what delivering probation services involves. The government has already had to bail out these private firms who were not able to make the profit they expected – crime does not and should not pay!
Funny that Grayling has now chosen a “no ship” company to provide additional ferry services in the event of the desolation of a no-deal Brexit. Some of us who worked in probation likened the transforming rehabilitation project to the Titanic, all gloss and absolutely no substance. Many of us, including me, jumped ship before the doomed voyage into private justice began. We had already seen what privatisation had done and has continued to do to the prison service. As Dostoevsky said: “The degree of civilisation in a society can be judged by entering its prisons”. Certainly, as Owen Jones says, there are signs here of “national and political decline”. Many reports from HM Inspectorate of Probation have been scathing about the situation in the now fragmented probation provision. Grayling was warned that it wouldn’t work and that it could pose a risk to public safety but he took no notice. He was no more knowledgeable about criminal justice matters than he is a “specialist in rail matters”.
It appears that cabinet ministers can make catastrophic mistakes and still be given power to make more. This government’s policies usually involve giving shed loads of money to private firms who are ill-equipped to deliver and end up costing more to the public purse and causing damage to the communities Tory MPs claim to serve.
Jan Clare
Nottingham
Grayling even ran Theresa Mays leadership campaign, and what a disaster her tenure has turned out to be.
ReplyDeleteNor can we allow anyone to forget that he couldn't realise any of his monumental, catastrophic assaults upon the public sector alone. Without the willing assistance of civil servants at all grades AND the compliance of management, Grayling would have just been a raving right-wing loony-tune.
ReplyDeleteHe had help. And plenty of it. With a tiny number of notable exceptions, MPs across the House didn't fight TR. It wasn't seen as a key issue, nothing to get troubled by, it wouldn't make too much difference... Senior Civil Servants worked tirelessly to promote the privatisation; Romeo & Brennan were very vocal in their support & commitment & were rewarded accordingly.
Spurr was equally keen as it did him a massive favour - it killed off the irritating Probation problem-child, meaning he could nurture an 'elite' replacement in his own image, i.e. command-&-control. The meaningless stuff was given away to a not-too-enthusiastic private sector (remember, only 8 bidders for 21 CRCs, NOT the massive rush through the doors that Grayling had banked on):
“This competition will deliver real value for the hardworking taxpayer and ensure we get the best in the business when it comes to rehabilitating offenders...
... Along with the 30 lead providers who have passed the competition’s first-stage, a further 800 organisations have expressed an interest in playing a role as part of the wider supply chain. Among these are hundreds of British organisations, employing many thousands of people and more than 550 voluntary sector organisations." - Chris Grayling, 19 Dec 2013
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/best-in-the-business-bidding-to-rehabilitate-offenders
The bids are from a diverse mix of partnerships with more than 50 organisations represented. Private firms, charities experienced in tackling a range of issues affecting offenders, small and large British businesses and experienced multinationals have joined together to bid for the work that will help turn offenders’ lives around.
DeleteMutuals formed by probation staff also have the opportunity to play a major role in the reforms, with around a third of the shortlisted bidders including these groups.
All of the bidders have experience working with offenders or across the wider criminal justice system.
The competition winners will provide targeted rehabilitation to offenders across England and Wales. Our reforms will see, for the first time, every offender released from custody receive at least 12 months supervision in the community to help them turn their backs on crime.
This support will be crucial in tackling our stubbornly high reoffending rates that currently see 600,000 crimes committed each year by those who have already broken the law.
Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said:
“Not only does this competition usher in a fresh and innovative way of rehabilitating offenders – it also shows the Government doing business differently.
“Under this new approach voluntary groups, charities, small and medium enterprises, larger companies and the public sector will work hand-in-hand to turn around the lives of offenders and make our communities safer.
“This competition will deliver real value for the hardworking taxpayer and ensure we get the best in the business when it comes to rehabilitating offenders.”
The contracts, together worth around £450 million each year, have been split across 20 regions for England and one for Wales with responsibility for supervising and rehabilitating around 225,000 low and medium risk offenders.
Along with the 30 lead providers who have passed the competition’s first-stage, a further 800 organisations have expressed an interest in playing a role as part of the wider supply chain. Among these are hundreds of British organisations, employing many thousands of people and more than 550 voluntary sector organisations.
Providers will only be paid in full if they are successful at reducing reoffending, helping drive innovation and getting best value for hard-working taxpayers.
Along with extending community supervision to all offenders, we will be providing resettlement facilities at 82 prisons so offenders are held closer to their home, allowing us to deliver proper through-the-gate support.
We are also launching a new public sector National Probation Service, working to protect the public from high risk offenders and building upon the expertise and professionalism of the existing Probation Service.
Extract from the Waugh Zone
ReplyDelete"As if to underline the divergent views in government, Chris Grayling has told The House magazine that his own pro-Brexit views are the real reason he gets so much flak for everything else. Grayling says: “Because I’m a prominent Brexiteer in the cabinet who backs the prime minister’s deal, I’m a lightning rod for the anti-Brexit brigade”. Critics swiftly pounced to say that perhaps his nickname ‘failing Grayling’ is more due to his record on train chaos, probation blunders, no-deal lorry park and ferry farces in Kent. Still, Grayling also blames the RMT rail union for stoking calls for him to quit. “Inevitably, from an organised left-wing trade union, you’re going to get some missiles fired. But I’m going to do what I think is right.”
Pesky reds under the bed again.
Tom Richmond writing in the Yorkshire Post.
ReplyDeleteYet, while Mr Jones was speaking in response to criticism from MPs representing a London commuter line, it was significant that the complainants were predominantly Tory politicians. People like James Cleverley who said that commuters are pragmatic and reasonable people, but that “their patience is not an ever-filling well”.
And why did his intervention matter? He is also deputy chairman of the Conservative Party with responsibility for election planning. If he thinks there’s a problem, and feels the need to break ranks, then the time has come for every disgruntled commuter to put pressure on their MP. They will never have a more opportune time to do so. For, inadvertently or otherwise, Mr Cleverley helpfully confirmed that the biggest electoral threat to his party could be Chris Grayling, and not Brexit, if the country has to go to the polls in the near future.
Read more at: https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/tom-richmond-tories-let-slip-fears-that-rail-and-chris-grayling-could-be-ticket-to-election-defeat-1-9571618