When Chief Inspector of Probation Paul McDowell’s links with
Sodexo became public last October, it was pretty obvious he would have to quit
sooner or later. How could he be possibly be seen as an “independent and authoritative source of fair comment” on Probation when his household income might
depend in part on his judgments? When
Ministers made it clear that it was to him that they looked for any warnings
that the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms might be in trouble, his number
was up.
It’s a disaster that he delayed until yesterday his decision
to go. Had he departed three months ago, progress could have been made to
recruiting a replacement. As things stand, Probation is undergoing the most
fundamental and most controversial changes in its history with a much weaker level
of scrutiny than is needed. To its credit the Inspectorate called some major
risks and challenges in their report on the early implementation of Transforming Rehabilitation in December. Their report concluded that “what happens in
this next period of implementation, and particularly the way it is led and
managed, is crucial to ensuring the longer-term development of quality and
innovation in Probation that the public expects”. Given the concerns that both the National Probation Service and Community Rehabilitation Companies are under prepared and under funded for the changes that came into force on Sunday, the lack of a high
profile independent monitor could not have come at a worse time.
Although Chris Grayling said yesterday that the appropriate pre-appointment processes were followed when McDowell got the job, something went
badly wrong. The Justice Committee claim they were not told about his conflict
of interest when they interviewed him in 2013. But did they ask? Much more
robust scrutiny is needed of this and similar appointments in future. Paul is a
former Chief Executive of NACRO. Arguably this provides an additional conflict
of interest, since the charity will henceforth play a major role in the
probation landscape alongside, as it happens Sodexho. While the success of the
Sodexo/ NACRO partnership in winning CRC contracts could not be foreseen when
Paul was appointed, their interest in bidding was well known.
In the future, the Probation Inspector should be drawn from
outside the fields they inspect. This has always been the case with the
Chief Inspector of Prisons, a post for which the Ministry of Justice is
currently seeking a successor to Nick Hardwick.
The advertisement for that post makes it clear that the MoJ “would
particularly welcome applications from those currently working in, or with
experience of, the private sector, and those who have not previously held
public appointments”. That’s fine as long as there are much more rigorous
checks in place to ensure that candidates and their families for these and similar posts are independent
not only from the services they inspect but from the companies that increasingly
provide them.
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