Shadow Justice Minster Visits Wyre Forest - Edward Garnier QC, MP visits important local organisations.
Conservative Shadow Minister for Justice Edward Garnier QC, MP visited Wyre Forest yesterday as the guest of Wyre Forest's Conservative Parliamentary Candidate Mark Garnier. The tour started at the head office of the newly created West Mercia Probation Trust in Mill Street Kidderminster, where Edward and Mark met with Chief Probation Officer David Chantler and local chief Jonathan Hayward.
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Mark Garnier
Conservative Shadow Minister for Justice Edward Garnier QC, MP visited Wyre Forest yesterday as the guest of Wyre Forest's Conservative Parliamentary Candidate Mark Garnier. The tour started at the head office of the newly created West Mercia Probation Trust in Mill Street Kidderminster, where Edward and Mark met with Chief Probation Officer David Chantler and local chief Jonathan Hayward.

Topics discussed were, in the main, to do with how an incoming Conservative Government would be able to help with issues such as an overburdening bureaucracy, lack of co-ordination of targets and key performance indicators, and inefficiencies of internal controls that increase costs and inefficiencies to regional probationary services.

On a positive note, however, David Chantler was very keen to press the point that offenders provide a useful resource to communities, and that many worthwhile organisations and causes benefit from offenders undertaking community punishment projects. In this way, offenders are putting back into the community that which they may have taken out, and doing it at very little cost to the public. Low risk offenders help with organisations such as Kemp Hospice, the Furniture re-use network, Sue Ryder, Cancer Research, Oxfam and other charity shops. Moreover, they work with specific projects such as St Michael's Church in Stourport, the Millennium Green in Bewdley, recycling for Save the Children, and the Stourport Day Centre.

Mark Garnier commented: "Given that offenders are a cost to the taxpayer when they undergo punishment, the work offenders do under these schemes is a great benefit to society as a whole. I would far rather see offenders contributing to society than locked away on very short sentences. It is far more important to rehabilitate an offender than to see them re-offend a short time after their release, and the probationary service do huge work in this field."

Later, Edward and Mark visited Wyre Forest police headquarters and met with local police chief Jim Baker and his number two Paul Crowley.

The meeting was timely and comes after Home Secretary Jacqui Smith hinted in a leaked memo that economic crime was on the increase. Edward and Mark learnt that this is indeed the case in Wyre Forest as theft has certainly picked up. This relates to crimes where goods stolen can be exchanged for cash fairly quickly and includes hi-fis, televisions, and metal from catalytic converters, roofs and drain covers.

However, yet again discussions surrounded how a lack of co-ordination regarding regulation and targets has resulted in confusion for police officers, who now have to spend a great deal of time with unwelcome paperwork. Moreover, surprising unintended consequences have come as a result of a decade of confused legislation and it now seems the Courts Service is suffering from a lack of persecutions.

Mark continued: "Time and again we see organisations hampered by ill thought through legislation. Today it was the probation service and the police, but ten years of a government seeking headlines rather than results has resulted in a bureaucratic and organisational mess. There is a lot of work for the next government to take on just to get the system running properly again."

Edward Garnier added: "I am very grateful to Mark for bringing me to Wyre Forest. It is very important for me to get out and about to hear first hand the views and opinions of people who are involved in running our county's services. Justice is an important department and is to do with how we protect our society. I am very grateful for the input I received today from Wyre Forest."