By Mark Wallace
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One sure sign of a successful reform is when the vested interests it is intended to take on start to squeal about it. So it is good news that Chief Constables are getting their knickers in a twist about Police and Crime Commissioners using their powers.
Their protests come after the Chief Constable of Gwent was ousted from her job by independent PCC Ian Johnston. Sir Hugh Orde of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), the deeply suspect (and very wealthy) union for senior coppers, has demanded a meeting with the Home Secretary to discuss proposals to rein in PCCs.
They don't need reining in - in fact, Gwent is a good example of a PCC doing his job. As a representative of the people, Ian Johnston is meant to do what he thinks is in the best interests of effective policing. He has done so, and will be judged on the results at the next election. If the Chief Constable was to be protected from such action, PCCs would be hamstrung - which is exactly what senior police officers want.
A few years ago, I spoke at an ACPO conference. I told the assembled top brass that the MPs' expenses scandal was just the beginning - that transparency and accountability would come to policing just as they were starting to come to other parts of the public sector. They should prepare to embrace such a process, I suggested, or else fall foul of it.
It's fair to say my message didn't go down well (not helped by the fact that day's Sun front page featured me criticising an absurd ACPO report on training police officers on how to ride bicycles). In fact, I felt about as popular as Darth Vader at an Ewok's birthday party, but I hadn't come to make friends.
Some senior police officers took on board the fact that democratic oversight was coming - either at that conference or since. As Sir Hugh Orde's intervention makes clear, many others still haven't woken up to the new situation. The louder he squeals, the more committed to preserving accountability the Home Secretary should become.
By Paul Goodman
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Our columnist Jesse Norman asked yesterday whether the market principle should have limits (he believes that it should), and if so where these should apply. Is it right to use shaven heads as cranial billboards, he asked, drawing on the work of Michael Sandel? Should better-off non-violent prisoners be able to buy themselves bigger and better prison cells? Should students be paid to do well in exams, or HIV-carrying mothers to have long-term contraception? He will presumably have dropped his marmalade spoon with a clatter at breakfast this morning when he saw the Times's splash headline: "Courts to be privatised in radical justice shake-up".
The essence of the paper's story is that Chris Grayling is considering two privatisation options: "hiving off court buildings to a private company, which would run and maintain them, or a more radical proposal in which the 20,000 courts staff would also transfer to the private sector". The Department denies planning "the wholesale privatisation of the courts service" in the Guardian, but the Justice Secretary clearly wants radical change. Funding for the courts would apparently "be generated by bigger fees from wealthy litigants and private sector investment, with hedge funds encouraged to invest by an attractive rate of return."
By Mark Wallace
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The full details of yesterday's horrific murder in Woolwich, and the terrorists who carried it out, are yet to be revealed. With both suspects alive and in custody, albeit undergoing treatment for gunshot wounds, there is a reasonable prospect that we will learn a lot more in the coming weeks about their motivations, possible links to other individuals or groups and so on.
It's therefore too early to give a definitive answer as to how the various arms of government should respond. Broad areas that require our attention are emerging, though.
Continue reading "Post-Woolwich, what should we be watching out for?" »
By Mark Wallace
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In Britain we have a proud policing tradition which has seen our forces of law and order stay more free of corruption than most others in the world. That makes it all the more shocking when an instance of corruption does come to light - and all the more important that we preserve our policing heritage by clamping down hard on problems when they arise.
So Theresa May is absolutely right to have set up an independent review of the murder of private detective Daniel Morgan. Since Mr Morgan's death in 1987, suspicions have lingered that he may have been killed because he had uncovered evidence of corruption within the Metropolitan Police. In 2011, Scotland Yard confirmed that corrupt officers had obstructed the original investigation into the killing.
The coalition government has a good record of confronting the wrongs of the past - from Hillsborough to Bloody Sunday. Mrs May is continuing that policy by lifting the lid on what seems likely to be a very uncomfortable story for the Met.
Continue reading "Theresa May is right to take on police corruption" »
By Paul Goodman
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There's a triple significance to the post-Eastleigh interventions of the three main Conservative members of the National Union of Ministers - Philip Hammond, Theresa May, and Chris Grayling.
It may look at first glance as though Hammond's plea for savings from welfare to be found to protect his budget, and May and Grayling's interventions over the European Court of Human Rights and the Human Rights Act last weekend, have little connection, if any - but they've more in common than meets the eye.
Continue reading "The next Conservative leadership election is under way" »
By Paul Goodman
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Chris Grayling says in tomorrow's Sunday Telegraph that if David Cameron is returned with a majority in 2015, his Conservative Government will scrap Labour's Human Rights Act. He has told the paper:
“I cannot conceive of a situation where we could put forward a serious reform without scrapping Labour’s Human Rights Act and starting again.“We cannot go on with a situation where people who are a threat to our national security, or who come to Britain and commit serious crimes, are able to cite their human rights when they are clearly wholly unconcerned for the human rights of others.
“We need a dramatically curtailed role for the European Court of Human Rights in the UK."
The Mail on Sunday carries an even more dramatic story. Its splash claims that Britain is to pull out of the ECHR altogether. It reports that Theresa May is to announce the move soon. The story continues:
"Mrs May wants to withdraw from the convention before the next election in 2015, but Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, a keen pro-European, has made it clear he will veto the initiative.
As a result, it is set to be a manifesto promise to be put into action if David Cameron wins an overall majority.
Together with the Prime Minister's vow to hold a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU, it will give the Tory manifesto a strong anti-European theme to combat the increasing appeal of UKIP."
Continue reading "Grayling and May in pincer movement on the ECHR" »
By Peter Hoskin
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The Daily Mail has written up a new opinion poll on drugs policy, conducted by Ipsos MORI. “Just one in seven want drugs laws liberalised and majority say possession should remain criminal offence,” reads their headline – and it’s true. Looking at the full results, only 14 per cent of respondents think that “the law in the UK should be changed so that the possession of small quantities of illegal drugs is decriminalised.” (Although a further 21 per cent support limited trials of such a measure). 60 per cent think there should be no change to the law at all.
But the poll contains other findings that the Mail’s headline doesn’t capture. Turns out, 53 per cent of people support either the legal regulation of cannabis or the decriminalisation of possessing it. And that includes 50 per cent of those respondents who intend to vote Conservative at the next election. It also includes, as it happens, 46 per cent of Daily Mail readers.
By Paul Goodman
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Furthermore:
- @i-images
You can see where Chris Grayling's mind went when mulling over these facts, given the combination of social failure and Treasury pressure that they represent. So no wonder he has announced today that young offender institutions will be closed down and replaced with new secure colleges. The Mail's take on the scheme is that -
"The Justice Secretary will invite private schools to bid to run the new centres, which have been inspired by the Government’s free schools policy. It raises the prospect of schools such as Eton helping to put tearaways back on the straight and narrow."
By Paul Goodman
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Today is Chris Grayling's day to star in Downing Street grid - as the afterwash of yesterday evening's welfare vote sloshes through this morning's papers. (No doubt it will also feature in Prime Minister's Questions today. The Daily Mail reports that -
"Private firms and charities are to be paid to meet offenders at the prison gate and seek to turn them away from a life of crime, the Justice Secretary will announce today. In a major shake up of prisoner rehabilitation, Chris Grayling will set out plans to offer cash incentives if inmates are prevented from reoffending after release."
The Justice Secretary believes that since almost half of all prison-leavers are reconvicted within 12 months, Something Must Be Done. The plan is a "major extension of ‘payment by results’ - pioneered by Mr Grayling in back-to-work programmes when he was employment minister".
Continue reading "Compassionate conservatism from Grayling as he moves to cut re-offending" »
By Peter Hoskin
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This
morning’s edition of the Telegraph contains
an interview with Chris Grayling, from which a number of points stand out…
1. Another attack on the ECHR. We know Chris Grayling’s views on the European Court of Human Rights, not least because he set them out in Paul Goodman’s interview with him for this site. But it’s still striking how much firmer, and less forgiving, his rhetoric is becoming. In ConHome’s interview, he said of the prospect of a Conservative government quitting the ECHR that, “I’m not ruling it in or ruling it out at this stage.” Today, according to the Telegraph write-up:
“He says that, at the very least, the reach of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) should be limited in Britain — and that after a series of controversial rulings the Tories may ultimately leave the system.”
2. Which becomes an attack on the courts in general. And it’s not just the ECHR on the receiving end of Mr Grayling’s disapproval; British judges come in for it, too. As the paper puts it: