'The risk register is quite clear about what is involved. The 35
existing probation trusts are to be replaced by 21 government companies
"delivering all functions subject to market competition", and the
establishment of a new national public probation service to deliver the
remaining 30% of the work involving public protection and high-risk
offenders. It means transferring 18,000 employees to new organisations,
reallocating 250,000 offender cases, recruiting 22 new management teams
and merging more than 2,000 existing computer packages. All of this
needs to be in place by October next year so that it is up and up and
running by the May 2015 general election.
The justice minister,
Lord McNally, told peers that Grayling intends to use existing powers in
Labour's Offender Management Act of 2007 to "create and sell companies,
and to transfer the delivery of a large proportion of the probation
service to the private sector via contractual arrangements involving the
formation and sale of a number of new community rehabilitation
companies" '.
18,000 "new" private sector jobs, 18,000 "fewer" public servants. On that basis alone this plan must surely be allowed to proceed, and without delay. And as for the small matter of merging 2,000 existing computer packages, I am sure if a big enough carrot is dangled some private sector organisation with a proven track record will step up and deliver.
Inconvenient people
2 hours ago
3 comments:
You are clearly mistaken. The proposals mean 18,000 public sector probation employees will be made redundant or rendered unemployed. As we saw when Serco took over Community Payback for London Probation Trust, jobs were cut by at least a third and the remaining staff suffered an erosion of pay, terms and conditions. The indication is that private firms set to take over probation services will not want the 18,000 staff and will not want to honour existing levels of pay, conditions or training.
SP, the post was supposed to be sarcastic.
Umm, I think that you missed the sarcastic tone of this posting, Save Probation. It is clear to me that Bob E agrees with you and so if he is "clearly mistaken", then you must be too.
But I don't think that either of you are mistaken. The only difference between you is that Bob appears to be pointing out that privatising the probation service is a bad idea in principle even if not a single job is lost or changed whereas you appear to think that it's only a bad idea inasmuch as it is bad for existing probation officers.
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