Today the Public Accounts Committee published their first report scrutinising the Secretary of State's, Chris Graylings plans to privatise up to 70% of the Probation Service. Napo welcomes the Committee's conclusions and recommendations which echo the concerns raised by Napo and other stakeholders. Napo has continued to raise our concerns over the plans with the government which we believe will undermine public protection, place the public at risk and allow private companies to profit from working with offenders.
Ian Lawrence, General Secretary said "we have said all along that these plans are an untried and untested social experiment that simply cannot work in the timetable laid down by the Secretary of State. These plans are being rushed through to meet an election timetable and are not in the best interests of the public and the taxpayer. We welcome the Ministers commitment not to go ahead unless he is satisfied it is safe to do so. However, we have real concerns that they will not sufficiently test the new organisations before selling off the shares to private companies. We would urge the PAC to insist that these tests are carried out over a period of time and include testing the supervision of the under 12 month custodial population. Something that has not been done before and must be evaluated prior to any bids being accepted."
Napo is receiving evidence on a daily basis that the split of staff that has already been implemented is not working. The service currently has 500 vacancies across England and Wales and the splitting of staff into two organisations is bringing the service to its knees.
Ian Lawrence said" there is simply not enough staff in either organisation to make this work. We are aware of some offices having just one Probation Officer allocated to the National Probation Service and therefore carrying caseloads of over 80 high risk of harm cases. This is just not workable in terms of public safety and staff welfare. The bureaucracy that has been introduced to make these plans work have left staff using more time completing forms and less time to deliver services to the Courts and to supervising offenders. We urge the Government to halt its plans until there is a proper infrastructure in place."