Lord Barber of Ainsdale (Lab)

My Lords, I rise to move this amendment on behalf of my noble friend Lord Woodley, who is a little unwell today. Amendments 77 and 135 are in his name. As a lifelong trade unionist, I have seen too often the damaging impact that privatisation can have on public services; in pursuit of maximising profit, costs are too often cut to the bone, often starting with workers’ pay, terms and conditions. The quality of service goes down, while the cost to the taxpayer goes up, and we are left with the worst of both worlds. Privatisation has failed especially badly when it comes to the justice system. Probation is the classic example: it was part-privatised by the last Government, who had to renationalise it five years later because the service was close to collapse. Take prisons: private prisons are on average 47% more violent than public prisons, according to research published by the Guardian. Yet still we build more of them, with, of the three new prisons announced by the Government, two to be run for profit. Quite apart from the practical problems that come with outsourcing, it seems to me to be morally wrong for private companies to profit from prisons or probation, or indeed any part of our precious justice system. With this in mind, Amendment 77 seeks to address concerns that the Ministry of Justice is preparing to let private companies profit from unpaid work orders, also known as community service.