Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:59 pm on 21 January 2020.
I thank the Member for that question and begin by agreeing with him that the destruction of the probation service, often referred to previously as the jewel in the crown of the England and Wales criminal justice system, is a stain on the record of the previous Conservative Government and a stain that had such devastating practical consequences in the case to which Adam Price has referred. I pay enormous tribute to the campaign led by Conner's mother. I know what an impact that has had on the wider family and on her own future. I know that, because she met twice with my predecessor as First Minister to present directly to him her and her family's experience and to ask for our help in putting pressure on the UK Government to right the wrongs that had been done, which was assiduously followed by my predecessor.
The Member asked what could we do to mark our difference here in Wales. Well, I have long argued that the probation service ought to be devolved here in Wales. I first gave evidence in 1995, on behalf of the National Association of Probation Officers, to a commission that was preparing legislation for devolution and argued there that the probation service and youth justice ought to have been on the early list of services to be devolved, because the things that a probation officer relies on to discharge their responsibilities effectively are all devolved already. If you're looking for a mental health service, it's controlled in Wales. If you're looking for a course for somebody to go on to improve their prospects of employment, it's devolved to Wales. If you're looking for somewhere for somebody to live, housing services are devolved to Wales. The alignment between the probation service and the services that are already devolved is so strong that probation ought to be devolved so that the dedicated staff who still work in the probation service, under often impossibly difficult conditions, would be better placed to do the job that they want to do, and we could have a probation service of the sort that we would want to see here in Wales.