Is Kenny Everett Inspiring the MoJ or is something more sinister at play?

I remember being shocked when, during the run-up to the 1983 election, one of my TV comedy heroes, the anarchic DJ Kenny Everett, came out as a Tory by urging us to bomb Russia. Even if it didn’t look like this was in the “best possible taste”, no-one seemed to take Everett seriously and it didn’t stop many from buying his hit “Snot Rap” record. This had the key hook line:

“If you make it up as you go along,

No-one knows if you’re going wrong”

I mention this because I’m wondering if Everett had more of an impact than is generally recognised. In the same way that 60’s and 70’s musicians are often said to have had a disproportionate impact upon the social and political thinking of the generation of teens who bought their records, comedians are the rock n’ roll stars of the 80’s and 90’s – selling out stadia in minutes and recordings of their gigs selling millions of copies. Tory comedians are always in short supply. Is it possible that Everett’s philosophy has had a lasting impact on the thinking and actions of the Tory Party now run by kids from the 80’s?

David Cameron was about 17 when “Snot Rap” was in the charts. Gove was about 15. George Osborne and MoJ Minister David Gauke were about 11 or 12. Theresa May having been a much more grown-up married 27 year old could begin to explain why she’s struggling to control her anarchic ranks 35 years later.

The evidence to back-up the Everett theory surfaces across Government policy – has anarchy and confusion ever seemed more prevalent in Conservative policy and practice? One brilliantly clear example is the planned re-sale of probation services following the early termination of existing contracts that were announced in July 2018, with the NAO estimating private sector losses of ￡440M+ and the MoJ refusing (or incapable) of accounting for the additional costs to taxpayers of their reform’s nationalised twin-sibling, the NPS.

Logic and reason would suggest that a cautious, considered, conservative approach to re-modelling probation would follow recognition that Grayling’s “Transforming Rehabilitation Revolution” had failed all parties and all sides. Surely no-one would rush ahead and re-let contracts without working out exactly what was needed and how much this would cost? Surely on-one would grab any easy answer like “Just make it bigger” when everyone with an interest in probation has said the solution is making things smaller and more responsive to local need? Surely no-one would stand in parliament and answers questions like, “How much will this cost?” with “It’s cost neutral” when the safest, honest answer is “We don’t know yet” because they are still consulting about the requirements with possible bidders?

Except that’s exactly what’s happening. So is Kenny Everett the Tories new Philosopher King? Or is there another explanation?

ANOTHER EXPLANATION....

Probation experts could have another more plausible but less funny answer. Lying and making stuff up, hiding from your failures and not taking responsibility for actions – these are common behaviours that probation staff are trained to spot and recognise. 

People are complex and probation’s clients usually more complex than most. Rarely is there an obvious or single reason for their having offended. Critical elements of probation training therefore include identifying and measuring the client’s willingness and then readiness to change their behaviour. Without recognising where they made a mistake or wanting to avoid the same mistakes, the chances of the Offender moving away from poor habits are remote.

After in effect being caught and blamed for the failure of Grayling’s TR revolution the traditional approach of politicians would be to stop programmes and then put things on hold for as long as possible, holding an inquiry and seeking out who they can shift the blame on to until people forgot about the scandal. The sensible and responsible thing to do would also be to stop, pause and put everything on hold until they know how to proceed safely - just don’t make anything worse.

Probation officers know that Offenders often don’t do what’s safe, rational or reasonable. If they’re still locked into their Gang culture; or still addicted; or feel the alternative pathway presented has too many risks or challenges they may present as not ready to change. If they refuse to accept responsibility for their actions and the costs to their victims and society then they’ll be likely to reoffend. If they blame their victim then the fear could be they’ll not only reoffend but escalate the seriousness of their offending, targeted at their victim. The MoJ are displaying worrying parallels.

Gauke and his crew are demonstrating dangerous reactive emotional behaviours. They recognise they’ve been caught but blame everyone but themselves –

·        They blame Grayling for rushing everything whilst aping the old Gang boss by rushing ahead with re-tendering even quicker than he did;

·        Like a Dealer blaming the Grass who sold them out, they blame individual contractors for poor performance whilst promising their other clients they’ll see them right and offering “incentives” if they just stay loyal and help them out now;

·        They blame those who caught them as being ideologically motivated and part of an evil State determined to stifle their creativity and entrepreneurial spirit - with a “What else do you expect me to do? How else can I deliver what’s needed with the resources at my disposal?”

For proof of how unready to change the MoJ is you need only to register an interest in their on-going consultation about re-tendering the contracts and see how quickly mistakes are recognised then ignored and likely to be repeated.

A core failing in TR1 was the contract payment mechanism. An unpiloted payment by result mechanism crashed and burned. Not knowing what was required meant some things were over-priced and others under-priced. As the contract progressed this led contractors to gaming the wrong priorities, placing efficiency and profits over quality provision. Very quickly, the small market was captured. Minister and MoJ officials imposed fines it couldn’t afford to collect and gradually made the contracts more prescriptive, whilst promising parliament everything was under control and costs were being maintained. The price of failure increased with each turn of the cycle of denial until it had spun out of control. Every contract change came at a higher actual and political price.

So surely, to start retendering the contract they must have established a credible pricing mechanism this time around – based upon careful and considered assessment of exactly what is required and what this reasonably costs? A rational person may think so…

The Government’s consultation with potential bidders does indeed have a clearer and more fixed set of core requirements the TR1 – for example, in the new contract clients will be expected to be seen regularly face to face. But the price of this isn’t clear – it will obviously be vastly more expensive than the first contracts which allowed occasional contact via phone calls but Minister’s are still telling parliament and bidders the new contracts will be “cost-neutral” – i.e. cost the taxpayer no more than they’re spending now…i.e. denying the costs.

Privatisation is also powered by profit. Without the chance of profit the private sector will not play. Champions of privatisation will argue the additional bureaucracy and inbuilt barriers to decisive leadership inherent within the State sector (and demonstrated in the Kafkaesque management of the nationalised NPS) mean that the private sector can generate its own profits by being inherently more efficient. If this were true, it is countered by greater contract regulation from the Centre making the pricing mechanism in TR2 even more critical. The more prescriptive the contracts the harder it will be to make a profit without evidently charging more than in-house or not-for-profit providers for doing the same things. But it gets more complicated when how much of one thing you do over another is unpredictable and can vary from place to place and time to time, in reaction to a volatile and complex client group. If tasks are weighted differently and an element of bonus or reward is to ‘feed profits’ then Government must avoid contractors gaming the system by only doing what they’ll get well paid for.

Again surely, after the problems with TR1 no-one could rationally let contracts until a safe model has been designed and tested. You’d think but the Government consultation presents 5 options to potential bidders – 4 of which they admit risk driving “efficiency over quality”. In other words – most of the options (fixed or firm costs, volume based unit costing, a mix of firm and fixed costs with some unit cost interventions, a guaranteed maximum price model) risk putting efficiency before quality of provision. The MoJ say its last option could work - the combination of a guaranteed fixed price with targeted costs to counter the risk of gaming. However, this is complicated to set-up and requires an accurate assessment of what is a fair guaranteed maximum price for each element and a confident assessment of right things to reward. There is no sign Government knows what it is going to require well enough to competently to do this any time soon and we all know, any contract variations set against a guaranteed pricing model will be an opportunity for contractors to drive up the price.

So in summary, we are a few weeks off the start of a tendering exercise for multi-million pound contracts and Government are still nowhere near having a safe pricing mechanism ready. The market is so thin the threat of walking away from the market and causing huge political embarrassment will be used to get maximum leverage from existing bidders who’ve captured the market.

The best chance we all have of saving the MoJ from itself is if they can be kept away from their old gang for long enough in a safe enough space to reassess their own past offending. This is possible. If parliament can be persuaded to stop making it up as they go along and pause until they have a safer plan – and after all Theresa May has just tried to put off Brexit until she has a better plan – then the MoJ can still be rehabilitated.

That would be in the best possible taste!