Are we too late to save Probation?

Saturday’s Guardian includes a review of a 500 page study of “the most egregious blunders committed by British Governments over the last three decades”.  There are many, myself included, who believe that the next edition- there will be a continuous need for updating- will include a section on Transforming Rehabilitation, aka selling off the Probation service.  There is simply too much which is likely to go wrong with what is an ideologically motivated policy in a politically sensitive area, being implemented in a rushed and untested way. But Governments, as the blunders study says, ignore well informed critics whom they treat as political enemies or defenders of producer interests.  And as we saw last week in respect of Universal Credit, when things do go wrong, risk assessment or not, civil servants can be blamed for implementation failure, whether or not the policy is capable of implementation.

So what can be done at this late stage to halt the headlong rush to disaster? I’ll be reading the blunders book to see if it has any insights. In the meantime a Probation blogger has made a useful list of what members of the service should do to save it.

http://poofficer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/how-to-save-probation.html?spref=tw

In addition , if they have not been done already, Probation organisations  need to :

a)      Get legal advice on whether what the government is doing is watertight.

TR relies on the Offender Management Act 2007 for the powers to contract out Probation services. Are there any elements of that Act that need to be amended to fit the TR agenda and if so are they all in the Offender Rehabilitation Bill? Even if they are, that Bill is not yet law. Should the government not have to wait until it is law before letting any contracts or incurring costs on doing the preliminary work? If they seek to rely in any way on the Bill as it stands to support their case for moving the agenda forward, then thanks to Lord Ramsbotham , they are stuck with the requirement that “no alteration or reform may be made to the structure of the probation service unless the proposals have been laid before, and approved by resolution of, both Houses of Parliament”.  

b)      Press for urgent Parliamentary scrutiny of the proposals.   The Justice Committee has been very disappointing in its failure to ask the Government about either the rationale for or consequences of such a wholesale reorganisation of a key service. It should hold an urgent meeting – why not this week-, particularly in the light of the G4S/SERCO investigations and their implications for outsourcing, the risks to the policy outlined in the leaked  register and the frankly unreliable cost assumptions in the government’s plans.

c)       Go for the post –Teather Lib Dems.  The Lib Dems have been silent so far. Maybe they have to pick their fights and this one is too small.  Perhaps Vince Cable likes the idea of   opening up a new market for British business. The government has made much of the alleged economic benefits of new electronic tagging contracts and the North Wales super prison. The Coalition after all is committed to rebalancing the economy in favour of the private sector.  But could calling a halt to TR – perhaps by way of a Task Force as with the NHS- be a way of shoring up some of their support among the members of the party more sympathetic to probation and what it stands for .

Before he entered Parliament in 2001, Chris Grayling worked for Burson Marsteller and declared in the Parliamentary register of interest that he undertook occasional consultancy work for his old employer advising companies on communication with their employees. This he stated was “a core area of my pre-parliamentary professional expertise.” Reports of morale in the probation service fly somewhat in the face of Mr Grayling’s claims.

He made clear that he had no involvement with Burson-Marsteller's public relations business. That may well turn out to be a pity for him as their area of expertise is high profile crisis management.