Criminal courts charges, introduced during Chris Grayling’s tenure as justice secretary, were a bad policy. Their abolition by Michael Gove is welcome. The fee is paid by convicted criminals on top of fines, damages and legal costs, with a preferential rate as a reward for a guilty plea. Thus, Mr Grayling asserted, would criminals “pay their way”.
The perversity of the device was obvious to anyone who applied a moment’s study to it. It encouraged poor defendants to own up to offences they had not committed if they felt there was any risk of conviction. Magistrates hated the charge; scores resigned, and one even paid the charge himself. Last month, a Commons committee report identified “serious problems” with a system that imposed “grossly disproportionate” penalties.
Famously polite, Mr Gove praised the intent of Mr Grayling’s plan, but his actions since inheriting the portfolio suggest a bleak evaluation of his predecessor’s legacy. Like a new home-owner dismayed to discover faulty wiring and wonky construction beneath the developer’s glossy decorations, Mr Gove has been stripping down and rebuilding the government’s justice agenda.
Within months of moving in, he abandoned petty restrictions on prisoners’ access to books that Mr Grayling had already been forced by courts to water down. He scrapped plans for a vast “secure college” for young offenders that penal reformers had criticised as a “super-sized child prison”. Mr Gove also killed off Just Solutions International, a commercial venture selling departmental expertise to foreign governments, such as Saudi Arabia, with appalling human rights records.
But the Justice ministry is not the only Whitehall space that has had to repair jerry-built policy installed by Grayling Solutions Ltd. A little-noticed feature of last week’s autumn statement was the decision to abandon the mandatory work activity programme, which was Mr Grayling’s responsibility as employment minister at the work and pensions department. A government review found the scheme, which forced claimants to take unpaid work in exchange for benefits, was ineffective in promoting long-term re-employment. Even some supporters of welfare reform thought it gave the government’s agenda a bad name. The efficacy of the wider Work Programme, of which the MWA was a part, has also come into question. The scheme was constructed at breakneck speed on Mr Grayling’s watch but was found, once he had moved on, to be no more effective than pre-existing policies.
Mr Grayling is in danger of acquiring a reputation as the cowboy builder of Whitehall, knocking policy together for a quick political hit, leaving leaky pipes and peeling plasterwork for unfortunate successors to contend with.
In that context, it is worth noting that, as leader of the house, he has been responsible for the statutory instrument providing “English votes for English laws”, complicating the legislative process without properly addressing the constitutional asymmetries introduced by accelerating Scottish devolution; a sticky-tape bodge on a serious problem.
So far the fix has held but its sturdiness has yet to be tested. No one should be surprised if, like much of Mr Grayling’s handiwork, it unravels under stress.
