Letters: Gove unlikely to save a justice system in crisis

These letters appear in the 12 May edition of The Independent

The dispiriting news that Michael Gove is the new Justice Secretary will alarm anyone who cares about the future of the probation service. He is hardly likely to call a halt to the increasing evisceration of our public-sector community justice system.

After the cavalier dismantling of probation by Gove’s predecessor, Chris Grayling, hard-pressed front-line practitioners deserve some respite. They have had to endure the scandalous futility of consigning 107 years of world-class public-sector rehabilitative intervention to the dustbin of history.

Multinational companies – some already enriching shareholders via privatised incarceration – rushed to embrace the lucrative reality that probation in England and Wales is an industry worth some £820m a year.

Sodexo, running six of the new community rehabilitation companies, will deliver “biometric reporting”. The planned use of cash-machine-style electronic kiosks allowing offenders to report without seeing a probation officer is beyond satire.

The axing of 700 highly skilled probation practitioners may pump up shareholder profits, but will not strengthen public confidence that potentially risky individuals are being effectively managed.

Gove is renowned as a radical thinker within the Conservative Party. He now enjoys an unparalleled opportunity to bin the philosophy that has prioritised private profit at the expense of public service delivery in our community justice system.

He could derail the transformation of probation into a competitive market place and end the continual undermining of probation’s reintegrative ethos.

But, given his previous as a zealous neo-liberal ideologue in education, I wouldn’t bet on it.

Dr Michael Teague
Senior Lecturer in Criminology
University of Derby

Before Michael Gove strikes out my human rights, I would ask him to spend a few hours in the British Library, studying its current exhibition which commemorates the 800th anniversary of the sealing of the Magna Carta. I will happily pay for his admission ticket.

Here are two quotations from the exhibition guide: “The different uses made of the Magna Carta since the Middle Ages have helped to shape its modern meaning, turning it into an international symbol of freedom and a rallying cry against the arbitrary use of power.”

“It is strongly associated with freedom and the rule of law, and has inspired drafters of modern democracies, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the European Convention on Human Rights (1953).”

If, after seeing it, he still wants to discount 800 years of history, he might as well close the exhibition down and sell our copies of the Magna Carta on eBay.

Dr Peter Garside
Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire

Labour needs to look outward not inward

I am dismayed that the Labour Party should pay any attention to Blairites or Brownites or indeed any of their own members in determining what went wrong (“Blairites fight to stop union favourite Burnham becoming new leader”, 11 May).

Rather, they should first seek views from a large sample of people who did not vote for Labour.

The same goes for the Lib Dems.

Giles du Boulay
Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire

Predictably, Blairites are demanding that the Labour Party returns to the centre ground, in order to promote the “aspirational” politics favoured by Middle England.

There is no denying that New Labour and Tony Blair were electorally successful, but apart from the (low) minimum wage, how were their governments any different to the Conservatives?

New Labour was slavishly pro-business and pro-City, lauded “labour market flexibility” (and was thus hostile to workers’ rights and trade unions), enthusiastically handed over swathes of the public sector to a few private companies (while repeatedly denigrating front-line professionals in education and the NHS), introduced student fees, allowed privatised companies to fall into the hands of multinationals (so much for sovereignty), and did nothing to tackle the obscene pay and tax evasion of our financial elites.

The voters might well have firmly rejected “socialism” last week, but growing inequality, zero-hours contracts and chronic job insecurity, along with the growth of food banks and a shortage of affordable housing, will not be tackled by exhuming the politics of New Labour.

Pete Dorey
Bath

The New Blair Bitch Project kicked off immediately. For those taken with Blair’s claim that “the route to the summit [is he ever going to get over his messiah complex?] lies through the centre ground”, just remember: the mountain turned out to be a volcano and it’s still spewing destruction.

Amanda Baker
Edinburgh

It’s time we had a brand-new party

Tim Farron might find himself in a pivotal position. He could initiate a “big idea”: a Lib Dem-Labour-Green-Nats centre-left merger. I have a suggestion for the party’s name: Democrats.

The Democrats need a grass-roots movement – much like 19th-century Chartism – with a compelling narrative that is neither frightening nor weak.

Nearly two-thirds of the population, and a clear majority in Westmorland and Lonsdale, did not vote for more selfishness, division and greed. Perhaps the rebuild starts in the home of Wordsworth and Ruskin?

David Jackman
Grasmere, Cumbria

How a different electorate saw it

Just before the election YouGov also conducted an opinion poll in Germany on how Germans would vote here if they had been allowed to.

Interestingly, only 38 per cent didn’t know how they would vote. I wonder what this percentage would have been if Brits were asked the same question about a German election?

The fact that 62 per cent of Germans were interested enough and able to have at least some sort of opinion as to how they would vote is highly indicative of the fact that Germans are far better informed by a more politically balanced press than we Brits.

In the UK we are kept in ignorance by a predominantly right-wing press. Topics such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) or the environment scarcely get a mention.

In the days running up to the election, the UK public was subjected to a barrage of highly subjective propaganda from a Tory press playing on any number of fears.

And how would the Germans who had an opinion have voted?

Labour 35 per cent, Lib Dems 19 per cent, Greens 17 per cent, Conservatives 13 per cent, SNP 5 per cent, Ukip 5 per cent, others 6 per cent.

Phil Fletcher
Barnet, London

What PR would have done for us

It is often said that figures never lie. True, but they can be easily manipulated to present a misleading picture, even when the arithmetic adds up.

According to my calculations, first past the post gave the Tories 91 more MPs than they really deserved from their share of the vote.

The other lucky recipients were Labour (34), SNP (25), DUP (4) and SDLP (1). In fact, in purely percentage terms the DUP did marginally better than the SNP, with twice as many MPs as it actually deserved.

The big loser was Ukip (-81) followed not by the Greens (-24) but by the Lib Dems (-43). Of the others, only the independents (-6) really lost out.

There are conclusions to be drawn from the very different result strict proportional representation gives, but for once I am going to keep my opinions to myself.

Roger Chapman
Keighley, West Yorkshire

David Cameron wants a fair society. How can it be fair that people who voted for smaller parties get no representation at all?

Ukip got 13 per cent of the vote (3.8 million people) and is represented by one MP, whereas the SNP only got 5 per cent of the vote but 56 seats.

If Cameron wants a fair Britain, let him start with this. The call now is for proportional representation and nothing else will do. Everyone in Britain needs a voice.

J H Moffatt
Bredbury, Stockport

By my calculation, the SNP got 56 seats for 1,412,172 votes, while Labour got one seat for 703,295 votes in Scotland. Could PR be part of the new Labour agenda?

Lindsay McGregor
Sudbury, Suffolk

Conservatives not so different to SNP

Haven’t the Tories noticed that their attitude to the EU is very similar to the SNP’s attitude to the UK? What’s sauce for the goose...?

Robert Davies
London SE30