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Despite some voices trying to argue that the prison crisis is nothing to do with privatisation, there is now a very clear pattern emerging and the politicians are going to have to address it. This from the New Statesman:-
2018: the year the failure of privatisation and austerity became undisguisable
The state takeover of Birmingham prison adds to a catalogue of private sector chaos: Carillion, East Coast, Northern Rail and bankrupt Northamptonshire council.
For nearly a decade, the Conservatives’ combination of austerity and privatisation has enfeebled Britain’s public realm. The failures of this approach have long been obvious (as the New Statesman’s Crumbling Britain series has charted) – but 2018 is the year they became undisguisable.
The Ministry of Justice has today taken emergency control of Birmingham prison – the first publicly-run prison to be privatised – from contractor G4S, after an inspection found chronic levels of violence and drug-use among prisoners, and corridors littered with cockroaches, blood and vomit. After cuts of more than 30 per cent to the Ministry of Justice budget since 2010, the UK's prison system has long struggled to manage, with a near-record population of 82,949 in England and Wales alone.
The events in Birmingham fit an unmistakable pattern: private failure, public rescue. In January, construction behemoth Carillion – which provided 11,500 hospital beds, 32,000 school meals and employed 20,000 UK workers – collapsed at a cost of at least £148m to the taxpayer.
In May, for the third time since rail privatisation, the East Coast Mainline was renationalised by the government after its private operators Virgin and Stagecoach defaulted on payments (costing the state an estimated £2bn in lost revenue).
The state of Britain’s railways is now a source of national shame. For too many commuters, the mere act of travelling to work is now an arduous odyssey characterised by repeated delays, cancellations and overcrowding. Northern Rail, one of the worst offenders, eventually cut more than 9,000 services from its timetable after daily chaos. On Southern, as many as 267 passengers have crammed into carriages designed for 107 people. And yet far from commuters being compensated, rail fares – already among the most expensive in Europe – are due to rise by another 3.2 per cent in January (having increased by an average of 32 per cent since 2010).
Meanwhile, Conservative-run Northamptonshire county council – once a Tory flagship – has been forced to declare effective bankruptcy and will now only provide a legal minimum of service (described by one observer as “a people-not-dying level”) including potential cuts to child protection. Up to 15 councils, according to the National Audit Office, are also at risk of insolvency (real-terms funding for local authorities has been cut by 49 per cent since the Conservatives entered office in 2010).
In every corner of the state, the cost of austerity is marked. Rough sleeping, which fell by three-quarters under the last Labour government, has risen by 169 per cent since 2010. The NHS has been forced to cancel operations and even urgent surgery as it struggles to meet ever greater demand. Relative child poverty has increased for three consecutive years and now stands at 4.1 million, or 30 per cent of children. Nearly 1,000 Sure Start children’s centres and 478 libraries are estimated to have closed since 2010. Potholed roads and uncollected bins are evidence of the scale of austerity borne by councils.
But the surprise is that anybody should be surprised. From the onset of austerity in 2010, critics warned that it would inflict irrevocable harm without achieving the aim of eliminating the deficit. The government’s dogmatic commitment to privatisation – foreign state firms have taken ownership of British rail franchises – has long put ideology before evidence.
For Britain, the sixth largest economy in the world, with its own currency and low borrowing costs, austerity has always been a choice, rather than a necessity. National governments have a duty to manage the public finances responsibly. But as economic evidence shows, the best long-term means of debt reduction is productive investment, not politically-driven cuts. Government borrowing, it is said, will “burden” younger generations. Yet austerity has enfeebled the collective institutions that they depend on and that their forebears strove to build.
In these circumstances, unsurprisingly, public appetite for alternatives is growing. A poll published last year by the Legatum Institute and Populus found the majority of Brits favour public ownership of the UK’s water (83 per cent), electricity (77 per cent), gas (77 per cent) and railways (76 per cent) - as proposed by Labour. Voters are weary of the substandard service and excessive prices that characterise many firms. Indeed – let it not be forgotten – the pretext for austerity was a financial crisis that originated in the private sector. Now, as then, the state – long disparaged by economic liberals – is being forced to intervene to save the market from itself.
Britain’s economic and social divisions are the root of its political polarisation. The Brexit vote was not merely an expression of antipathy towards the EU but a symptom of far greater discontent. Should the Conservatives continue to preside over a new era of private affluence and public squalor, the UK will become a yet more troubled and divided country.
--oo00oo--
Polly Toynbee writing in the Guardian:-
The state takeover of Birmingham prison adds to a catalogue of private sector chaos: Carillion, East Coast, Northern Rail and bankrupt Northamptonshire council.
For nearly a decade, the Conservatives’ combination of austerity and privatisation has enfeebled Britain’s public realm. The failures of this approach have long been obvious (as the New Statesman’s Crumbling Britain series has charted) – but 2018 is the year they became undisguisable.
The Ministry of Justice has today taken emergency control of Birmingham prison – the first publicly-run prison to be privatised – from contractor G4S, after an inspection found chronic levels of violence and drug-use among prisoners, and corridors littered with cockroaches, blood and vomit. After cuts of more than 30 per cent to the Ministry of Justice budget since 2010, the UK's prison system has long struggled to manage, with a near-record population of 82,949 in England and Wales alone.
The events in Birmingham fit an unmistakable pattern: private failure, public rescue. In January, construction behemoth Carillion – which provided 11,500 hospital beds, 32,000 school meals and employed 20,000 UK workers – collapsed at a cost of at least £148m to the taxpayer.
In May, for the third time since rail privatisation, the East Coast Mainline was renationalised by the government after its private operators Virgin and Stagecoach defaulted on payments (costing the state an estimated £2bn in lost revenue).
The state of Britain’s railways is now a source of national shame. For too many commuters, the mere act of travelling to work is now an arduous odyssey characterised by repeated delays, cancellations and overcrowding. Northern Rail, one of the worst offenders, eventually cut more than 9,000 services from its timetable after daily chaos. On Southern, as many as 267 passengers have crammed into carriages designed for 107 people. And yet far from commuters being compensated, rail fares – already among the most expensive in Europe – are due to rise by another 3.2 per cent in January (having increased by an average of 32 per cent since 2010).
Meanwhile, Conservative-run Northamptonshire county council – once a Tory flagship – has been forced to declare effective bankruptcy and will now only provide a legal minimum of service (described by one observer as “a people-not-dying level”) including potential cuts to child protection. Up to 15 councils, according to the National Audit Office, are also at risk of insolvency (real-terms funding for local authorities has been cut by 49 per cent since the Conservatives entered office in 2010).
In every corner of the state, the cost of austerity is marked. Rough sleeping, which fell by three-quarters under the last Labour government, has risen by 169 per cent since 2010. The NHS has been forced to cancel operations and even urgent surgery as it struggles to meet ever greater demand. Relative child poverty has increased for three consecutive years and now stands at 4.1 million, or 30 per cent of children. Nearly 1,000 Sure Start children’s centres and 478 libraries are estimated to have closed since 2010. Potholed roads and uncollected bins are evidence of the scale of austerity borne by councils.
But the surprise is that anybody should be surprised. From the onset of austerity in 2010, critics warned that it would inflict irrevocable harm without achieving the aim of eliminating the deficit. The government’s dogmatic commitment to privatisation – foreign state firms have taken ownership of British rail franchises – has long put ideology before evidence.
For Britain, the sixth largest economy in the world, with its own currency and low borrowing costs, austerity has always been a choice, rather than a necessity. National governments have a duty to manage the public finances responsibly. But as economic evidence shows, the best long-term means of debt reduction is productive investment, not politically-driven cuts. Government borrowing, it is said, will “burden” younger generations. Yet austerity has enfeebled the collective institutions that they depend on and that their forebears strove to build.
In these circumstances, unsurprisingly, public appetite for alternatives is growing. A poll published last year by the Legatum Institute and Populus found the majority of Brits favour public ownership of the UK’s water (83 per cent), electricity (77 per cent), gas (77 per cent) and railways (76 per cent) - as proposed by Labour. Voters are weary of the substandard service and excessive prices that characterise many firms. Indeed – let it not be forgotten – the pretext for austerity was a financial crisis that originated in the private sector. Now, as then, the state – long disparaged by economic liberals – is being forced to intervene to save the market from itself.
Britain’s economic and social divisions are the root of its political polarisation. The Brexit vote was not merely an expression of antipathy towards the EU but a symptom of far greater discontent. Should the Conservatives continue to preside over a new era of private affluence and public squalor, the UK will become a yet more troubled and divided country.
--oo00oo--
Polly Toynbee writing in the Guardian:-
Squalid prisons are just the start. The entire justice system is in meltdown
Austerity’s most savage cut is barely visible. Ambulances stacked up outside overflowing A&E departments make news because that could affect you or yours, any day. Pot holes in the road draw motorist and cyclist wrath, as do missed bin collections. But the near collapse of the entire criminal justice system can happen right under our noses, and none but judges, lawyers, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and prison staff know anything about it.
Prisons did top the news on Monday when the horrifying inspection report on HMP Birmingham forced the government to take it back from G4S. Blood, vomit, cockroaches, rats, the air thick with the drug spice, staff hiding, in fear of violent prisoners: here was a scene of hell and squalor that should knock the “prison works” nonsense out of the most ardent lock-’em-up MP. One shock inspection report after another has thudded on to ministers’ desks, many among the 102 state-run as well the 14 privately run jails, revealing a prison estate in crisis. Under all previous governments, journalists could regularly visit any prison with due notice – and prison governors would speak out about problems. Now they are frightened into silence. I was allowed to film a whole Panorama programme in the most disturbed and violent part of Holloway prison, known as the “muppet wing”, in the Tory 1980s, when authorities were still open about prison problems. No longer.
In 2010 the shutters came down and it’s virtually impossible for journalists to visit prisons, except for a rare manicured walk-about with a minister. Why not? Because what the media would see would be too disgusting. Because desperate staff might say too much. Because the worst are too out of control. But where scrutiny by the press is denied, as it is now in benefit offices and anywhere else the effects of austerity are on display, this government bars access to public services as never before in my professional lifetime.
Secrecy suggests shame. The prisons minister, Rory Stewart, a semi-amateur politician, earns growls from colleagues for promising to resign if there’s no improvement by next year. He could start by opening the gates of his filthy estate to us of the filthy fourth estate.
Prisons returning to Newgate conditions are just the most extreme fallout from the disintegrating justice system, from inadequate policing to a crumbling CPS, malfunctioning magistrate and crown courts and vanished legal aid. The tottering edifice is only kept going by the superhuman goodwill of the dwindling numbers operating it. Who else sees it, beyond frequent-flyer criminals? The public – victims, witnesses and jurors – may only touch it once in a lifetime: then they find delays, adjournments and collapsed cases deeply distressing.
The Ministry of Justice is suffering the deepest cuts of any department – a huge 40% to be sliced away before 2020. The Treasury knows this is a secret world, hidden from public eyes, as courts are removed ever further from the local community, an integral part no longer. On the last day of term, when the government scuttles out bad news in written statements, the MoJ slid out an announcement that seven more courts are to be shut and sold off. That’s on top of the 258 that have closed and been sold off in England and Wales since 2010. In the great sale of public property – hospitals, schools, police stations, courts and more – the Treasury demands that capital raised be sucked into the running costs of remaining services, regardless of how a growing population will need this valuable land, gone forever.
Courts are so packed that clerks book in as many as seven extra cases, summoning lawyers, witnesses, victims and defendants from afar to wait all day, hoping a case collapses and they can be slotted in. If not, they are all summoned on another date to lose another day off work; child care rearranged, carers rebooked. Cases are often adjourned several times over or collapse altogether from bungled evidence collection. An over-stretched CPS after 25% cuts and a shrunken police force means evidence goes uncollected or is not disclosed to the defence, so the case goes under, setting free violent criminals and domestic abusers out of sheer incompetence. Political pieties promise to “put the victim first” – but victims are often left bereft and endangered by failed cases, after travelling miles several times over. A 2017 government report showed some 50% of cases are not prepared for hearings after the CPS lost a third of its workforce.
The great 1945 government is celebrated for its welfare state of pensions, benefits and the NHS. But less remembered is how its legal aid brought equal access to justice. No longer. In 2012 legal aid entitlement was removed from family, housing, immigration, debt and employment, leaving the poorest and weakest unable to claim their rights. Those trying to represent themselves take hours of expensive court time, where a lawyer representing them would cut to the chase. Defendants are granted longer sentences and less bail by magistrates when left to defend themselves: 15% of those remanded in prison, often for long periods, are found not guilty.
The unfolding calamity in our criminal justice system is best told in The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken. This angry yet forensic analysis from first arrest to prison is a gripping front-line view by an anonymous, lowly criminal barrister. Read and rage at evidence that “every day the provably guilty walk free”, while the hapless needlessly end up in jail.
All 650 MPs were sent a copy, crowdfunded by young legal aid lawyers. A ComRes survey of MPs’ summer reading finds it to be the third most popular beach-list book, a matching tale of woe to follow Tim Shipman’s account of the Brexit fiasco and Anthony Beevor’s history of the battle of Arnhem. But will they read it, or is it just listed by their spads, while they devour the latest Jack Reacher?
If they do, all 650 should return in September boiling with indignation. What have they been doing, prattling away about “sovereignty” and the supremacy of our laws over European courts, when gross injustice is done here daily by a legal system in meltdown, as reported by the Public Accounts Committee? Two-thirds of crown court cases are delayed or collapse, leaving 55% of witnesses saying they would never do it again.
When criminal barristers went on strike recently against 40% pay cuts leaving them often with less than the living wage after travel costs and waiting time, the government said: “Any action to disrupt the courts is unacceptable.” But they are the deliberate disrupters of a legal system that is the basis of democracy.
Austerity’s most savage cut is barely visible. Ambulances stacked up outside overflowing A&E departments make news because that could affect you or yours, any day. Pot holes in the road draw motorist and cyclist wrath, as do missed bin collections. But the near collapse of the entire criminal justice system can happen right under our noses, and none but judges, lawyers, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and prison staff know anything about it.
Prisons did top the news on Monday when the horrifying inspection report on HMP Birmingham forced the government to take it back from G4S. Blood, vomit, cockroaches, rats, the air thick with the drug spice, staff hiding, in fear of violent prisoners: here was a scene of hell and squalor that should knock the “prison works” nonsense out of the most ardent lock-’em-up MP. One shock inspection report after another has thudded on to ministers’ desks, many among the 102 state-run as well the 14 privately run jails, revealing a prison estate in crisis. Under all previous governments, journalists could regularly visit any prison with due notice – and prison governors would speak out about problems. Now they are frightened into silence. I was allowed to film a whole Panorama programme in the most disturbed and violent part of Holloway prison, known as the “muppet wing”, in the Tory 1980s, when authorities were still open about prison problems. No longer.
In 2010 the shutters came down and it’s virtually impossible for journalists to visit prisons, except for a rare manicured walk-about with a minister. Why not? Because what the media would see would be too disgusting. Because desperate staff might say too much. Because the worst are too out of control. But where scrutiny by the press is denied, as it is now in benefit offices and anywhere else the effects of austerity are on display, this government bars access to public services as never before in my professional lifetime.
Secrecy suggests shame. The prisons minister, Rory Stewart, a semi-amateur politician, earns growls from colleagues for promising to resign if there’s no improvement by next year. He could start by opening the gates of his filthy estate to us of the filthy fourth estate.
Prisons returning to Newgate conditions are just the most extreme fallout from the disintegrating justice system, from inadequate policing to a crumbling CPS, malfunctioning magistrate and crown courts and vanished legal aid. The tottering edifice is only kept going by the superhuman goodwill of the dwindling numbers operating it. Who else sees it, beyond frequent-flyer criminals? The public – victims, witnesses and jurors – may only touch it once in a lifetime: then they find delays, adjournments and collapsed cases deeply distressing.
The Ministry of Justice is suffering the deepest cuts of any department – a huge 40% to be sliced away before 2020. The Treasury knows this is a secret world, hidden from public eyes, as courts are removed ever further from the local community, an integral part no longer. On the last day of term, when the government scuttles out bad news in written statements, the MoJ slid out an announcement that seven more courts are to be shut and sold off. That’s on top of the 258 that have closed and been sold off in England and Wales since 2010. In the great sale of public property – hospitals, schools, police stations, courts and more – the Treasury demands that capital raised be sucked into the running costs of remaining services, regardless of how a growing population will need this valuable land, gone forever.
Courts are so packed that clerks book in as many as seven extra cases, summoning lawyers, witnesses, victims and defendants from afar to wait all day, hoping a case collapses and they can be slotted in. If not, they are all summoned on another date to lose another day off work; child care rearranged, carers rebooked. Cases are often adjourned several times over or collapse altogether from bungled evidence collection. An over-stretched CPS after 25% cuts and a shrunken police force means evidence goes uncollected or is not disclosed to the defence, so the case goes under, setting free violent criminals and domestic abusers out of sheer incompetence. Political pieties promise to “put the victim first” – but victims are often left bereft and endangered by failed cases, after travelling miles several times over. A 2017 government report showed some 50% of cases are not prepared for hearings after the CPS lost a third of its workforce.
The great 1945 government is celebrated for its welfare state of pensions, benefits and the NHS. But less remembered is how its legal aid brought equal access to justice. No longer. In 2012 legal aid entitlement was removed from family, housing, immigration, debt and employment, leaving the poorest and weakest unable to claim their rights. Those trying to represent themselves take hours of expensive court time, where a lawyer representing them would cut to the chase. Defendants are granted longer sentences and less bail by magistrates when left to defend themselves: 15% of those remanded in prison, often for long periods, are found not guilty.
The unfolding calamity in our criminal justice system is best told in The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken. This angry yet forensic analysis from first arrest to prison is a gripping front-line view by an anonymous, lowly criminal barrister. Read and rage at evidence that “every day the provably guilty walk free”, while the hapless needlessly end up in jail.
All 650 MPs were sent a copy, crowdfunded by young legal aid lawyers. A ComRes survey of MPs’ summer reading finds it to be the third most popular beach-list book, a matching tale of woe to follow Tim Shipman’s account of the Brexit fiasco and Anthony Beevor’s history of the battle of Arnhem. But will they read it, or is it just listed by their spads, while they devour the latest Jack Reacher?
If they do, all 650 should return in September boiling with indignation. What have they been doing, prattling away about “sovereignty” and the supremacy of our laws over European courts, when gross injustice is done here daily by a legal system in meltdown, as reported by the Public Accounts Committee? Two-thirds of crown court cases are delayed or collapse, leaving 55% of witnesses saying they would never do it again.
When criminal barristers went on strike recently against 40% pay cuts leaving them often with less than the living wage after travel costs and waiting time, the government said: “Any action to disrupt the courts is unacceptable.” But they are the deliberate disrupters of a legal system that is the basis of democracy.
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