Grayling's Legacy

The 5,863 visits to this platform yesterday helps to confirm another extremely significant milestone in the reversal of Chris Grayling's completely unwarranted and catastrophic destruction of a once-proud and gold award-winning public service. He must never be allowed to forget and history must record the full horrors of this piece of ideological vandalism and the tragic effect it has had on many people's lives. This from the Guardian:-  

Probation services to return to public control after Grayling disasters

Move marks nail in coffin for widely derided shakeup of probation sector in 2014

Probation services in England and Wales will be fully restored to public ownership and control, the justice secretary has announced, marking the final nail in the coffin of Chris Grayling’s disastrous privatisation reforms. Under Grayling’s widely derided shakeup in 2014, the probation sector was separated into a public sector organisation, the National Probation Service (NPS) managing high-risk criminals, and 21 private companies responsible for the supervision of 150,000 low- to medium-risk offenders.

The Ministry of Justice previously announced that all offender management, about 80% of all probation work, would be brought under the state-run NPS. The remaining services, such as rehabilitation and the provision of unpaid work, will no longer be offered up for private tender, the justice secretary said, marking the complete return of probation services to the public sector. About 2,000 workers at the private providers, known as community rehabilitation companies (CRCs), are to be brought over to HM Prison and Probation Service.

Robert Buckland told the House of Commons: “The delivery of unpaid work, behavioural change programmes will be brought under control of the NPS alongside offender supervision when current CRC contracts end in June next year. This will give us a critical measure of control, resilience and flexibility with these services which we would not have had were they delivered under 12 contracts with a number of organisations.”

The NPS will take full responsibility for sentence management, interventions and programme delivery and will at some point in the future be able to commission specialist charities to offer additional support services for offenders. This broadly mirrors the arrangements that existed prior to Grayling’s so-called “transforming rehabilitation” reforms several years ago.

Ian Lawrence, general secretary of the probation union Napo, said: 

“Our members across the whole of probation, and especially those who have been working tirelessly against the odds to maintain services in the private sector, will breathe a huge sigh of relief that Napo’s relentless campaigning has at last helped to bring certainty over the future of the service. Ministers have taken a courageous decision to fully reverse the earlier reforms that we opposed from the start and which have also been widely and continuously criticised by parliament and HM Inspector of Probation. We will now be urgently engaging with ministers and employers to ensure that all staff currently working in a CRC are guaranteed a future offer of employment in a publicly owned probation service.”

The chief inspector of probation, Justin Russell, cautioned the announcement was “not a magic bullet for improving performance”. He said: 

“The probation service must be properly funded. The quality of probation supervision will not improve merely by lifting and shifting large volumes of cases from CRCs back into the NPS next year. Vacancies for probation officers must be filled and staff properly trained for their new responsibilities.”

Private providers expressed frustration and disappointment at the announcement. Liz Crowhurst, the head of infrastructure and public sector policy at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), said: 

“This news will come as a disappointment to the public service suppliers – including charities – who have worked hard to deliver innovative probation solutions. All will urgently want to understand the implications for their staff, continuity of provision and their investments amid challenging times. Public-private partnerships can deliver high-quality public services, and have done so successfully for decades, in tandem with local and central government. So it will be important to keep an open mind and understand what’s worked – and what hasn’t – to ensure that public contracts continue to provide people with best-in-class sustainable services.”

Grayling ignored significant warnings from within his department to push through his reforms in 2014. MPs on the public accounts committee said the changes were rushed through at breakneck speed, taking “unacceptable risks” with taxpayers’ money. The justice committee described the overhaul as a “mess” and warned it might never work.“We will now be urgently engaging with ministers and employers to ensure that all staff currently working in a CRC are guaranteed a future offer of employment in a publicly owned probation service.”

In 2017, the then chief inspector of probation, Dame Glenys Stacey, revealed that the Grayling shakeup had led to tens of thousands of offenders – up to 40% of the total – being supervised by phone calls every six weeks instead of face-to-face meetings. Since the reforms were introduced, the government has had to bail out the private providers by more than half a billion pounds.

The shadow justice secretary, David Lammy, said: “The opposition welcomes this U-turn the government is announcing today. It’s a U-turn we have been calling for for many, many years in this House.”

Lammy added it was “such a shame” Grayling was not present in the House of Commons for the announcement. He said: “Since the reforms reoffending rates have climbed up to 32%, that is members of the public, victims across the country, who have been subject to offenders and to crime that would not have been subject to the trauma that they were put through had this privatisation not been brought in in the first place."

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This from Byline Times:-

Chris Grayling's probation reforms have cost people their lives

As the Government announces plans to renationalise probation, reversing the catastrophic privatisation of the service, former MP Ian Lucas explains how the murder of a constituent damaged his faith in the criminal justice system

Nick Churton was murdered in March 2017 at his home by Jordan Davidson. The attack on him in his own home was so horrific – involving a machete, a knife and extreme violence – that the then Attorney-General Robert Buckland appealed successfully to increase the tariff on the life sentence imposed on Davidson when he pleaded guilty to the murder in December 2017.

Though Davidson committed the crime, he was free to do so because of a criminal justice system stripped bare by years of budget reductions and the introduction of a new, part-privatised probation system by then Justice Secretary Chris Grayling that did not work and have resulted in gross failures by the probation service – the professionals who supervise people released from prison and those serving sentences in the community – and the police.

Nick’s death resulted from one of a series of armed attacks which Davidson committed over a few days, after being released on bail from police custody in Wrexham.

When a Government makes political choices, as has been the case since 2010 with our criminal justice system, it impacts people’s lives. The impact on Nick Churton contributed to his death. His murder poses dreadful failings in the Government’s changes to the probation system since 2015 and also the failure of the authorities tasked with doing so to investigate those failings fully, openly and promptly.

The situation with probation is so bad that the same Government that introduced the changes is now reversing them, following its decision to reverse cuts to police numbers since 2010. But for Nick Churton and his family, it’s too late.

I first heard the terrible details of Nick’s death from a journalist. In December 2017, Jez Hemming of the North Wales’ Daily Post was in court, reporting on the sentencing hearing of Davidson for the murder. When Jez sent me the facts of the case, it was immediately obvious to me, a former solicitor, that there had been serious failings in the way Davidson had been supervised by the criminal justice system. I saw immediately that he was on licence, subject to the supervision of a community rehabilitation company (CRC).

CRCs were introduced by Grayling as part of the Government’s part-privatisation of the probation Service, which until then, had been run entirely by the public sector. Grayling boasted that, for the first time, those released from prison following short sentences would be supervised. They would be done so with a departmental budget in the Ministry of Justice reduced more than any other since 2010, even in this time of savage budget cuts.

Davidson was released from prison in December 2016. We now know, as a result of a report released more than three years after Nick’s death, that he had broken his licence conditions, imposed when he left prison, eight times in the four months before he killed Nick, at a time when he was nominally under “supervision”. At no time was he recalled to prison.

On the final occasion, after Davidson was arrested for possession of a knife in the middle of the night in Wrexham town centre, he was released on bail by the police without the community rehabilitation company even being informed of the offence by the police. The system was so dysfunctional that there was no prescribed rule that someone on licence should have their arrest reported to their probation supervisor. Within four days, Davidson killed Nick Churton.

When I read the details of the case, I immediately asked the then Chief Constable of North Wales Police why Davidson had been released on bail. I was told that this matter was subject to an investigation by the Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC).

This was not true. In fact, both North Wales Police and the IOPC had failed to tell me that an IOPC inquiry had started eight months earlier, as the rules required. But the release of Davidson by the police and their extraordinary failure to inform the CRC of Davidson’s arrest was not even made subject to an IOPC investigation until May 2018 – 14 months after Nick’s death.

Nick’s family had not been told either by North Wales Police or by the IOPC that Davidson was released on bail by the police days before Nick was murdered. If I had not told the family and the public, I believe this fact would never have been known.

Having failed to tell me of the IOPC inquiry in March 2017, and misleading me as to what was covered by it, the then Chief Constable’s conduct was excused by the IOPC on the basis that he did not mislead me deliberately and that he had delegated this most heinous of cases to a more junior officer.

The IOPC report discloses that there was no requirement for the police to disclose the fact that Davidson had been arrested to the CRC that was supervising him. The police officer involved says he cannot remember the detail of the case because of the length of time it took for the IOPC report to be completed. The recommendations from the IOPC took more than three years after Nick’s death to emerge and they did so after the CRC in Wales had been stripped of the probation contract for inadequate performance.

The delay is entirely the fault of those running the system, who did not start obvious investigations and inquiries immediately. As an MP and as a lawyer, I have heard the constant refrain within the criminal justice system that there should be openness and transparency when things go wrong.

At every stage in this case I encountered concealment. First, I was not told of the IOPC inquiry or its terms of reference, as I should have been, when it was first set up in March 2017. Second, when I found out the facts of the case and asked the police about their errors, I was misled by them about what was being investigated. Third, Nick’s family were told of police mistakes by the press and I, rather than by the criminal justice authorities. Fourth, probation reports about the case were treated as internal government documents and have never been publicly disclosed or shown to me as the then MP for Wrexham.

I was not briefed privately about the case by either the IOPC or North Wales Police despite its horrific violence and the case occurring in the middle of a constituency I had then represented for 16 years. I did meet with the then Justice Ministers Rory Stewart and Robert Buckland to discuss the case but no Ministry of Justice, probation or CRC reports into the case have ever been disclosed to me or the public. The detail of the case was retained within the ministry, avoiding public scrutiny.

Fundamental errors in communication between North Wales Police and the probation authorities occurred and these were concealed from all outside the Government, criminal justice organisations and the IOPC. As a result, there has been no independent examination of the failures in the system to enable us to learn from the mistakes made. The IOPC has, throughout, failed to identify failings in the case without me first identifying those failings to it and has failed, even now, to explain errors in the terms of reference of its own inquiries.

Why did the police, the probation service and the IOPC not consider the release of Davidson on bail for an offence of violence, only to commit a murder days later, worthy of investigation?

I have no confidence in any of the criminal justice bodies involved or in the Government. The case requires an independent investigation into the conduct of all the public bodies involved and access to all relevant documents.

I met Buckland, now Justice Secretary, to discuss the case last summer and was told that I must await the release the IOPC report – which has just now been released – before he could consider ordering an independent investigation into the case. If he wishes to begin to restore any faith in our criminal justice system, he must order such an investigation now.

Ian Lucas was the Labour MP for Wrexham from 2001-2019