Sunday, July 5, 2009

New Labour lies branded ridiculous and totally wrong on the Justice brief!


Dear All

New Labour can’t just get anything right whether it be housing, education or indeed as in this case, crime!

Former First Minister and chair of the Scottish Prisons Commission Henry McLeish has today branded Labour opposition to the Scottish Government's prisons policy "misleading", "ridiculous" and "totally wrong."

In other words McLeish uncoupled from the Labour Party has found out what everyone knew, Prison doesn’t solve the problem of minor nuisance offending.

The problem with the Labour Party is that they have no credible policies or people willing to be radical, even the English Prisons Commission is praising the Scottish Government's "courageous lead" on prison policy.

What a slap in face.

The Commission, chaired by Cherie Booth praises the SNP for taking “serious steps to address its prison crisis”. In speaking out against Labour, Mr McLeish states; "Their claims are wholly ridiculous. They are arguing against something that is not being implemented of recommended by the Government. My appeal to Labour, who were the progressive party, is to read the report”.

New Labour have a long history of complain first and then find out the facts.

McLeish is damning in stating;

“they are misleading the public."

To add insult to injury; Cherie Blair completely backs the SNP stance;

“Crucially, more widespread use of effective community sentences would both allow us to reduce the use of prison and allow for reinvestment of resources into local communities to cut offending.”

As I previously have stated elsewhere, it is important to break the cycle of minor reoffending that has dogged the Prison Service for years. It costs approximately £32k to keep a person in prison for a year, that money would be better spent providing proper training and education to turn these people into useful members of society.

People who have a future have inbuilt fear of loss, the petty offender has no future and no fear of loss. By giving these people a stake in society we solve many problems and do the right thing.

Although this report is important there is other work which needs to be addressed for example changes to employment law and the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. This report is a start and hopefully the SNP will have the courage to be more radical to pull all the pieces of the puzzle together.

The Justice Spokesman for New Labour is Richard Baker MSP who has now been shown to have a serious lack of credibility on the justice front.

New Labour has only one policy to create fear and alarm in Scotland and people are beginning to see through that in greater numbers.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

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