Richard Spring MP
Member of Parliament for West Suffolk

I read today in the East Anglian Daily Times that the Chief Executive of the East of England Regional Assembly, Brian Stewart, was attempting to “set the record straight” about his organisation.

Many people in Suffolk may remember the huge row which resulted from EERA deciding to delay the funding for the long-awaited dualling along the notorious stretch of the A11 – one of the most dangerous roads in the country. On that occasion, as the local Member of Parliament, I was not consulted or informed of this decision until the Transport Minister detailed the plans himself.

Yet, Mr Stewart claims that “the assembly has been successful in promoting a region-wide consensus to deal with issues like transport…” – how detached can these regional bureaucrats actually be?

On this point, I feel I need to do little more than let his words speak for themselves:

“The assembly is, therefore, more akin to a regional strategic partnership – similar to the local strategic partnerships of elected members and local stakeholders in counties and districts”.

If this explanation is the best way that the Chief Executive of EERA can summarise and justify what his whole organisation is for, then I feel further vindicated in my earlier calls for the whole body to be abolished as soon as possible.

It is remote and unelected and simply adds to the lack of accountability so many people now feel about arms of the Government.
 

On the first day of the new Parliamentary session we were treated to the unedifying spectacle of the Home Secretary, John Reid, addressing our prisons crisis. 

It is symptomatic of this Government and their reliance on spin that John Reid could begin by saying, with a completely straight face, that “public protection has always been our first priority”. 

The cold hard fact is that the prison population now stands at 79,819; prisons are desperately overcrowded and they are considering moving some prisoners into open jails simply to free up space for new criminals. The Government even accepts that “in a last resort” they would consider the early release of prisoners to help the crisis in prison capacity. What confidence can the public have in their safety and security when offenders are let out because there isn’t space to hold them. 

In many respects, the Home Secretary appeared before Parliament like the naughty schoolboy who after returns to school after the summer holiday to try to valiantly explain to the class why he hasn’t finished the project he was set. 

We had the full list of excuses, ready and prepared the night before – “I’ll stay behind after school to fix it”, “it probably isn’t as bad as it seems”, “I’m sure it will all be ok in the end”. 

Well, when we are contemplating using cells in police stations to detain convicted criminals because of a chronic shortage of space in actual prisons, then it is as bad as it seems and it probably won’t be ok in the end, especially when it costs £365 per night to keep a prisoner detained in a cell. 

All this is even more unbelievable when we consider that a string of Home Secretaries, over the past nine years, have known that the prison population was rising inexorably and sooner or later, this would have to be resolved. 

Instead the Government decided it would be better to squander millions of pounds trying to restructure the entire police service of England and Wales because it was “not fit for purpose”.  The Suffolk Constabulary, which polices my constituency, were tied up in endless red tape and confusion trying to comply with the various targets for reform, even though they are one of the best performing constabularies in England. 

A year later, John Reid came in and dropped the whole regionalisation/merger scheme. When they could see a prison crisis looming, why were more time and resources not diverted to urgently finding additional prison places. Why are we now searching around for more and more obscure solutions such as bribing foreign prisoners with education and training packages worth £2,500 to leave Britain. It is the politics of despair. 

Alas, if it all comes crashing down around John Reid’s head at the Home Office, at least he can resort to blaming the bigger boy who was sitting at the desk before him.