UNISON’s campaign to keep probation public goes up a gear this week as we ask members and supporters to email their MP ahead of tomorrow’s important opposition day debate on plans to privatise the service.
National officer Ben Priestley says: “The Ministry of Justice appears to delaying bringing the Offender Rehabilitation Bill to the House of Commons for its second reading, presumably so that Chris Grayling can get on with his plans to break up and privatise probation without any parliamentary scrutiny.
“UNISON is determined to ensure that the disastrous plans in the Transforming Rehabilitation white paper are properly debated by MPs, because so much is at stake.”
UNISON has produced a model email for members and campaign support to contact their MP ahead of tomorrow’s debate, which can be found on our campaign pages:
Probation: keep it public and local – take action
When the Offender Management Bill does eventually make it back to Parliament, we will be asking you to contact your MP again.
The union is also pushing to get 100,000 signatures on the parliamentary epetition against probation privatisation.
Please ask friends, family and fellow union members to sign the petition.
Mr Priestley says: “Just over 27,000 people have signed the petition to date, but numbers would be swelled considerably if every probation member managed to get 10 family and friends to sign.
Online petition: Do not privatise the probation service
Staff transfers
While campaigning against the sell-off, UNISON is hard at work preparing for the worst.
Following consultation on a draft national agreement on staff transfers if the government’s plans go ahead and staff are transferred to either the new National Probation Service or one of the ‘community rehabilitation companies’, the results of our consultation have been fed back into the negotiating process.
The next round of talks are due on 31 October and 4 November.
“Thanks to all of you who took part in the consultation and let us have your views on the proposed national agreement,” says Mr Priestley.
“As a result of your contribution, we are now nearer reaching an agreement at the national negoatiating committee, but we are not quite there yet.”
Meanwhile, the negotiating committee is advising probation trusts not to proceed with any action to split the workforce.