GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

4

This principle can extend to shared commissioning of research into

common bargaining challenges, with the GFTU brokering this via their network

of academics.

5

Indeed, this BCGM believes the GFTU is uniquely placed to promote,

coordinate and broker such sharing across affiliates.

Therefore, this BCGM calls upon the GFTU to:

A

include opportunities to specifically promote this sharing in the GFTU

annual events programme.

B

create a working party of union sharing champions.

She said: Good afternoon and welcome, everybody. My name is Yvonne

Pattison. I am NAPO’s co-chair. I am a practitioner, but I am elected into this

position, so I am very pleased to be here.

Motion 6 is called Probation reform and public safety. I am quite mindful that

there might be a lot of people in the room that do not have a clue about what

probation does or what I am talking about, so I am going to give you a really

brief overview before I move into the motion as such. For those of you that do

not know what has happened to the Probation Service over the last few years,

apologies if you do, once upon a time there was a Secretary of State for Justice

called Chris Grayling (yes, go on, hiss, boo, yes), a man with no prior legal

training who thought he needed to reform the Probation Service. His reforms,

namely the Transforming Rehabilitation agenda, were based on political

ideology really, no evidence base and an assumption that these reforms would

address the stubbornly high reoffending rates of a group of people that the

Probation Service actually had no jurisdiction over. That was a group of people

that got under 12 months custody when they were sentenced and, therefore,

they were released with no supervision, no licence and they reoffended,

because, guess what, nobody gave them any help.

So what did he do? Did he widen the remit of the Probation Service so that we

can look after those people? Did he hell. No. He decided to destroy it and to

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