2013-05-24T01:37:23-04:00 Sadiq Khan http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=sadiq-khan Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Sadiq Khan Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1853683 2012-09-04T07:38:42-04:00 2012-11-04T05:12:01-05:00

Sadiq Khan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sadiq-khan/
But, despite his best efforts at a rearguard action to hold on to his job, today's reshuffle sees Ken Clarke shifted out of his role at Justice into an undefined role as Minister without Portfolio. It represents a new chapter in a long political career but it remains to be seen if it's nothing but an embarrassing demotion for a political giant of the last 25 years.

Over recent weeks, Ken has received plaudits from the right for the supposed good job he's done in slashing the Ministry of Justice budget yet is railed against for an approach which they perceive as 'soft on crime'. From the left, many see his questioning the inexorable rise in prison numbers as a refreshing change from the "prison works" mentality of the previous twenty years, but his ruthless slashing of legal aid led to accusations he betrayed his legal roots by removing access to justice for thousands of the most vulnerable in society.

And herein lies the complexity of Ken Clarke's legacy. True, he's been a pretty ruthless cutter of the Ministry of Justice budget. We know how he simply accepted the Treasury's quarter cut to his budget without so much as a whimper, and he has delivered this by destroying access to justice, slashing compensation for victims of crime, cancelling prison building and placing his faith in often untested payment by results methods.

But while he may appear to have cut spending, what he's actually done is displace spending. Slashing social welfare legal aid funding for law centres and Citizens Advice Bureaus doesn't simply remove the scale of demand by many of the most vulnerable in society -issues with housing, education and benefits won't just magically disappear but will simply fall to other arms of central and local government to deal with, but being off the books of the Ministry of Justice is all Ken cares about.

And squeezing more and more prisoners into a smaller and smaller prison estate, manned by fewer and fewer prison officers will do little to reduce re-offending, with those released unreformed at the end of their sentences going on to commit crimes that blight families and communities with enormous social and economic cost. So because of his short-sighted cuts, expenditure and costs will rise elsewhere across government and society.

Ken's economy is a false economy. It's a victory for ideology over reality. We saw this taken to its extreme in his aborted attempt to abolish the Youth Justice Board for the dogmatic reason that it was a quango, ignoring the startling success it has presided over in bringing down the numbers of young people committing crime and held on the secure estate.

Ken's whole raison d'être in the aftermath of the May 2010 election was delivering reduced reoffending by increasing support for addressing mental health problems, education and training, all on a shrunken budget. But it would take Superman to square that circle. And in this respect, it was more Clarke Can't than Clarke Kent. Prison numbers continue to rise, prison inspection reports continue to slam the absence of decent rehabilitation support, prison officer numbers continue to fall and our prison estate risks decay as he slashed the prison building programme to zero - not enough for even a cursory replacing of outdated facilities.

On human rights, within Government he's been a sometimes lone voice of support in our obligations towards the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act. He has sought to face down - indeed, sometimes ridicule - the more outrageous posturing of his Cabinet colleagues on supposed and sometimes artificial abuses of our human rights legislation. With his departure, one of the few sane voices in the human rights debate within Government will be lost.

But Ken's always had this wider appeal than many other front bench Tory politicians. He's affable charm has struck a chord with many beyond the natural Tory hinterland. And in many respects, he's out of kilter with his own party - pro-European, pro-human rights legislation, broadly liberal on justice issues - as his amusing clashes with Teresa May over the past two years testify. In fact, his liberal instincts have led to him being dubbed the sixth Lib Dem Cabinet Minister in the coalition government - I'm not sure whether he sees this as a compliment or an insult.

It's a shame that his relaxed approach has been his Achilles heel over recent months. Being caught using loose language on rape on a Five Live phone-in might have been a genuine error, but the time it took for him to realise how offensive his outdated use of words had been demonstrated just how out of touch 1960s criminal barrister Ken Clarke had become with today's justice system.

However, David Cameron knows he has an uphill struggle to win a majority at the next General Election. Prime Ministers tend to hit their high watermark of popularity at their first General Election, which doesn't bode well for Cameron. To appeal to a broader electorate, Cameron needs people in his Cabinet in the mould of Ken Clarke. But keeping Ken in Cabinet for his easy and affable way with the voters is insulting to him and to many of the views he holds which are much at odds with mainstream Tory thinking. For all his criticisms and his recent sloppiness, he has always been a bittersweet Tory for many in the party - more popular outside his party than in it. Front bench Tory politics might just need his type if they are to avoid being kept out of outright power for a generation.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.997866 2011-10-06T08:46:07-04:00 2011-12-06T05:12:02-05:00

Sadiq Khan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sadiq-khan/
There are approximately 87,501 offenders incarcerated on our secure estate - some 2,500 more than when the coalition government was formed in May 2010. Ken Clarke's early days as Justice Secretary were characterised by his desire to reduce the numbers in prison. Sometimes, this desire spilled over into an explicit target - to bring down the prison population to the levels seen in 2004, some 3,000 less than now. It's my view that being prescriptive on the specific size of our prison population is a mistake. An ever-increasing prison population should not be a badge of honour, but a lower prison population must come about as a result of falling crime, reduced re-offending and tough community sentence that garner public confidence. Not because of artificial measures designed to send fewer people into custody as a means of simply cutting costs.

However, When the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill was published, the impact assessment illustrated just how Ken Clarke would deliver his reduction in prison numbers - the majority coming from the widely unpopular and completely unjust policy of reducing the length of custody by 50% for those pleading guilty early. In proposing this, he placed short-term spending cuts over what is in the long-term interests of our nation's justice policy. It is good that Ken Clarke has been forced to ditch this policy, but in doing so he has blown a £140m hole in his department's already diminishing budget and has yet to explain how he would fill it.

Labour's approach to law and order - running across both Home Affairs and Justice - continues to focus on being tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime, a phrase as relevant in 2011 as when Tony Blair first uttered it in 1993. By rooting out deep-seated deprivation, we sought to prevent the drift into a life of crime, through investment in health, education and housing. This is tough on the causes of crime. And by ensuring there are sufficient police to catch those who do commit crimes and a penal system to punish them appropriately, we can be tough on crime itself.

But in Ken Clarke's blinkered view of our justice system, there was no mention of the tough on causes of crime agenda. No discussion of the impact his government's cuts to EMA, education and Sure Start will have on future crime levels. Nor did he touch on the 16,000 fewer police officers on our streets, and how this will affect the safety of our communities.

A central tenet of Ken Clarke's justice policy is his fabled 'rehabilitation revolution', focusing on reducing rates of re-offending. Under Labour re-offending rates fell, but far too slowly I accept. So, I agree that one of our major priorities must be a reduction in the number of prisoners going on to re-offend upon their release from the justice system. But this is not going to be achieved by slashing a quarter from your department's budget as Ken Clarke is doing - resulting in thousands of dedicated, experienced prison and probation officers losing their jobs.

Nor will it be helped by cancelling Labour's prison building programme and slashing capital spend on prisons by 83% - resulting in an ever growing number of prisoners being housed in overcrowded and outdated facilities. A sure fire way of undermining the chances of reducing re-offending is to restrict prisoners to idling in their cells for 20 hours a day, with limited access to education, training and support for medical problems, all of which will worsen under this government.

Ken Clarke also talked of turning prisons into places of hard work. In this respect, he is right to see employment as a productive use of prisoners' time, a central component of the punishment and reform agenda and a way for offender to pay reparations to their victims. But, as with many of Ken's ideas, this policy is heavy on rhetoric but light on detail. There is no mention of how he proposes to resource this policy - requiring 1 in 4 prisoners to work 40 hours a week will need proper prison officer supervision. Nor has he mentioned where the jobs will come from, as this government is incapable of creating employment out of prison, let alone within them. People will also rightly be concerned that employment within prisons does not come at the expense of the law abiding majority.

Ken Clarke continues to demonstrate how out of touch he is on so many levels. He is out of touch with the victims, he is out of touch on how to make our communities safer and he is simply out of touch with the reality faced in today's prison service. ]]>