Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Williamson Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

2. What progress he has made on his plans for changes to the probation service.

[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

12. What progress he has made on his plans for changes to the probation service.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)]

We are making good progress with our transforming rehabilitation reforms, which will realign current probation structures to address the gap that sees 50,000 short-sentenced prisoners released on to the streets each year with little support. The new structures will come into effect on 1 June. The process of reallocating staff to those new structures is now complete.

[Chris Williamson]

The Secretary of State has a reputation for making policy based on ideology rather than evidence, as we saw with the shambolic Work programme that he bequeathed to the Department for Work and Pensions. Now his own officials have warned him that

“an unacceptable drop in operational performance”

is causing

“delivery failures and reputational damage”.

Why is he continuing with the reforms when all the informed opinion is shouting at him to stop?

[Chris Grayling]

The Opposition continue to refer to the planning document at the start of the project, and they cannot explain what they would do instead. Their policy is to leave 50,000 people walking the streets and likely to commit serious offences again with no support post-prison. Until the Opposition tell us what they would do to address the problem, which they identified when in government and did nothing about, they will have no credibility.