DELEGATES at the TUC Conference in Liverpool yesterday voted unanimously for Composite 14, Protect Probation and Speak up for Justice.
The motion calls on the General Council to ‘call upon an incoming Labour government to revoke any contracts should any of these be awarded this side of the next general election’.
This was a reference to the plans to privatise whole chunks of the probation service. 21 Community Rehabilitation Companies came into effect on 1st June.
Moving the motion, NAPO General Secretary Ian Lawrence, said: ‘The probation change in June has been an unmitigated disaster.
‘G4S, Carillion and a number of other are hovering around to pick up the scraps. The split in probation is a disaster and threatens public safety.’
He said that the pressures were seeing staff going off sick, adding ‘two have taken their own lives’.
He also pointed out that a murderer had ‘slipped through the net’ and killed again.
Lawrence declared: ‘Grayling you have blood on your hands, just as we predicted. We are on the point with Unison and the GMB to take Grayling to the High Court for a judicial review.’
Seconding, Peter McParlin, POA, said: ‘There is a need to speak up for justice. Prisons have been under attack from privatisation.
‘Successive governments have gambled over justice. They have undermined the right of our citizens to access to justice.
‘Prison suicides are up by 70%. Assaults on staff have gone through the roof. Speak up for Justice calls for a not-for-profit prison system.’
Speaking in support, John McDonnell, GMB, said: ‘We call for an integrated justice system that is properly funded. We demand a system that all are equal before the law.
‘The list of miscarriages of justice is long – Hillsborough, Cammel Laird, Orgreave, the Shrewsbury 24 – there is an abuse of power by authorities for the self-preservation of the establishment.’
Delegates went on to also pass unanimously Motion 46 Oppose the Privatisation of Children’s Services.
Mover Yvonne Patterson, NAPO, said: ‘Privatisation is a real attack on people’s liberty where profit is seen as more important than the good of society.’
She said that because of legal aid cuts ‘the vast majority of family law cases have not had parents represented.’
She stressed: ‘Decisions to remove a child from its parents need to be taken by a number of agencies. This doesn’t happen if it’s private.
‘We need to organise and counter further attacks on our public services.’
Seconder, Chris Tansley, Unison, warned that the government had used regulations and ‘sneaked through outsourcing services, including child protection to private corporations,’ despite huge opposition. ‘They use a non-profitmaking subsidiary loophole,’ she said.
She insisted: ‘There is no place for profit in children’s services. Protect children from reach of privateers.’
At the end of yesterday morning’s session, the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney was invited to address Congress.
He said: ‘What matters for inflationary pressures, irrespective of the type of job, is the relationship between wages and productivity as captured by unit labour costs.’
In a question and answer session, he said people ‘should get a wage rise that the economy can sustain’.
