May 12, 2004: Probation Protest

1200 staff from throughout England and Wales lobbied against plans to merge the probation and prison services into the new National Offenders Management Service (NOMS). The rally reflected widespread concern amongst probation staff about the transition to NOMS, due to commence on June 1, 2004.

The rally was organised by Napo, the trade union representing over 7500 probation and family court staff. Napo believes that NOMS will mean greater bureaucracy and confusion. According to a Napo statement:

“The Probation Service was last reorganised in April, 2001, is chronically underfunded and understaffed and does not need yet another reorganisation. Staff also feel they are being cajoled into accepting the changes with the threat of contestability or privatisation if they do not meet arbitrarily set targets.”

Napo general secretary Judy McKnight told the rally:

"Today our fight is not just about seeking to preserve our standards and ethos and values, and yes, all those issues are at risk again, but it is also much more. It is about the opposing destruction of the service in its entirety, by splitting it in two, and casting it out to the wolves of the private sector."

Speakers from the three major political parties who opposed the planned merger included Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews. He argued that offenders were best dealt with via rehabilitation rather than punishment and prison. If NOMS moved away from this principle, it represented a “ghastly Orwellian idea."

The Home Office plans to introduce “contestability” by 2009 and allow private organisations and voluntary agencies to compete with the public sector, The Home Office perspective suggests that developing a market will enable value for money for the taxpayer and reduced offending, and ensure that the service can benefit from private sector input.

Napo sees the move to allow this as effectively introducing  privatisation, and inherently problematic in that public protection may be compromised by private firms cutting corners. Members of Parliament were urged by Napo to sign an early day motion which endorses the work of the Probation and Prison Services and urges that these be properly funded to allow them to carry out all their statutory duties free of the threat of contestability. According to a Napo press release:

"The Probation Service was last reorganised in April 2001, is chronically underfunded and understaffed and does not need yet another reorganisation."