Offender Rates

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:37 pm on 22 January 2019.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:37, 22 January 2019

I thank Jayne Bryant for the question. I entirely agree with her that we have to recapture the ground that the probation service traditionally occupied, and occupied with such success. We know that the transforming rehabilitation reforms were brought to us by that well-known emblem of successful administration, Chris Grayling—'failing Grayling' as he's known across the House of Commons—and this is yet another area in which his dead hand hands on difficulties to those who come after him. Now, we have the right prescription, we know what we want to do, and it is the one the Member set out—a reunified, properly resourced, publicly run probation service, in which public service and not private profit is at the heart of what that service does. We continue to have discussions with Welsh interests. The real answer is to put the probation service in Wales under the control of this National Assembly, where we could make sure that it does the job that delivers in the courts and delivers in the community as well.