Privatisation poisons public service, because it replaces care and commitment with the heartless profit motive.
So it’s not surprising the sell-off of the probation service has failed disastrously.
Instead of getting criminals on the right path and keeping them there, it degenerated into a fast-buck business based on targets not people.
A coherent national operation coping with 250,000 offenders a year was split up into 24 different private contractors, none with experience of doing this difficult job – but all with an appetite for taxpayers’ money.
The death sentence for this failed experiment was pronounced yesterday by Dame Glenys Stacey, chief inspector of probation. She called for the “irredeemably flawed” service to be brought back into public ownership.
Eight out of 10 contractors were rated “inadequate” while the residual national service looking after high-risk offenders was performing better.
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Despite united opposition from probation officers, privatisation was imposed five years ago by Useless Eustace, aka Chris Grayling, who was the worst-ever Justice Secretary before becoming the worst-ever Transport Secretary. It’s possible that Dame Glenys is pushing on an open door. Justice Minister Rory Stewart, one of the few Tory politicians with half a brain, admits “the current model is not working.” But that’s a very long way from accepting that the principle of privatisation itself is flawed.
Yet pretty well everywhere it has been enforced, from water to energy and the NHS, service has gone down and costs have gone up.
One or more universities may go bankrupt because overpaid, smart-alec bosses are obsessed with running a business, not educating the next generation. Outsourcing of forensic services is failing.
In our hospitals, managers ape the private sector by creating “subsidiary companies” to end direct employment of staff and drive down pay and conditions. Morale collapses.
The first duty of government is to maintain the safety of the people. Dame Glenys warns that the public is less safe as this key element of the justice system is in private hands. “It is well-nigh impossible to reduce probation service to a set of contractual requirements,” she says.
The answer to this dangerous mess is not more contracts next year, but taking back control this year.
