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The goals which swept England to their first major football final on foreign soil. The permission for Kyiv to fire British missiles at Russia. The news that the UK economy has returned to growth. Prime Minister Starmer has had a good first week. When King Charles urged the England team to secure victory but avoid more penalty drama, he could have been channelling the country’s political desires.
Starmer is fielding a decently strong bench. Yvette Cooper, Douglas Alexander, David Lammy, John Healey, Pat McFadden, Hilary Benn and Ed Miliband know their way around the corridors of Whitehall. Chancellor Rachel Reeves is a former Bank of England staffer. Giving ministerial posts to two experts — the medic Sir Patrick Vallance at science and the businessman James Timpson at prisons — suggests this will be a technocratic government with a mandate to think big.
Timpson’s appointment is especially interesting because it confirms that serious public service reform is back on the agenda, after years of neglect. With limited fiscal headroom, entrepreneurial spirits are badly needed.
At health, the new secretary of state Wes Streeting is uncompromising about his plan to use private capacity to slash NHS waiting lists, revolutionise the use of data and stem the tide of illness by preventing, not just treating, chronic disease. Timpson has a similarly radical prospectus for prisons: to slash the reoffending rates which have helped make jails so full that 10,000 inmates have been released early.
It’s bad enough that prisoners will be set free after serving only 40 per cent of their sentence; it’s even worse that the usual time served is only 50 per cent, and that a crippled probation service may not be able to offer adequate risk assessments or supervision.
Britain is close to failing on a fundamental duty of every democratic government: to protect citizens from crime, and give them swift redress if their rights are breached. Justice is not being done when court backlogs delay some cases for years, and some litigants have to represent themselves because legal aid cuts have gone too far. Justice is denied when people who are found innocent cannot recoup the legal costs of their defence; and when a new generation of barristers turn away from criminal law because of woefully low fees.
Turning the situation around will require money, an end to the ratchet of tabloid-pleasing longer sentences, and a serious attempt at rehabilitation. The Timpson family has a record of successfully employing ex-offenders in their shops and empowering staff: an approach which would be appreciated by harassed prison officers.
James Timpson will be getting tips from his brother Ed, who as a Conservative minister focused on helping children in care — a disproportionate number of whom tragically end up in jail. The Timpson parents fostered nearly 90 children while Ed and James were growing up. So he will be especially alive to the stark fact that many prisoners had disrupted schooling, and that high numbers are functionally illiterate. Attempts to teach them often flounder in the face of requirements that they spend most hours locked in their cells.
Critics warn, just as they did when Michael Gove launched a similar strategy when he held the justice brief in 2016, that a focus on early release and rehabilitation could undermine the deterrent effect of prisons and sentencing. But when nearly half of those in prison go on to reoffend, the criminal justice system is not working. In Gove’s brief tenure, he quoted the rallying cry of Thomas Mott Osborne, warden of New York’s infamous Sing Sing jail: “We will turn this prison from a scrap heap into a repair shop!” That slogan could have been tailor-made for Timpson.
In public debate, justice is a poor relation of health, education and welfare but it is arguably even more vital. It has no powerful lobby group to compete with universities, health professionals or welfare recipients. In the 1980s, criminal lawyers were seen as fat cats; there was little sympathy when governments tried to get better value for money. But the slimming down has gone too far, and the poor suffer most. Closed police stations and courts in places riddled with crime are a visible sign that the institutions of law and order have retreated.
Meanwhile, good initiatives stand on the brink. The Family Drug and Alcohol Court cannot secure ringfenced funding despite clear evidence of its effectiveness in turning parents away from violence and substance abuse. This enables them to be reunited with children who would otherwise be taken into care, with all the terrible life-long consequences that entails. Research suggests that this body is cheaper and more effective than standard court proceedings; it saves the state significant sums of money, keeps more people out of prison and more families together.
New approaches can break cycles. But more money will also be needed. The government spends less than 1 per cent of its budget on the Ministry of Justice, and around 4 per cent on public order and safety, compared to over 50 per cent on health and welfare. Not every criminal can be rehabilitated — but helping those who can be would keep the public safer.
Intelligent reform takes tenacity, expertise and entrepreneurial spirit. Perhaps Starmer might now consider asking the anti-sewage campaigner Feargal Sharkey to overhaul the water industry, and Sir Alan Bates, the hero of the Post Office scandal, to fix public sector procurement.
In the coming months we will get tired of hearing Labour blame the previous administration. But on prisons, they are bang to rights.
camilla.cavendish@ft.com