After more gaffes, Chris Grayling has come out of hiding. But his interventions yesterday on drugs and reoffending are out of touch with society and reality.
Chris Grayling has been spotted! After gaffe after gaffe, the Conservative shadow home secretary has come out of hiding. And once again, he has been making wild accusations – not yet picked up by the mainstream media.
A video on the Conservative Party website popped up yesterday suggesting that there is a causal link between education and drugs. Surprisingly, there is no text backing up the claim. Mr. Grayling was filmed on a council estate, north of Kings Cross in London. While blaming “education failure” he forgets to make the link between poor social housing and drug usage. This is a much more accepted link within the social policy literature.
In Puerto Rico, for example, the campaign against illegal drugs has taken place mainly in social housing. According to Shulamith Lala Ashenberg Straussner, this has lead to “fences, access controls, and bulletproof guard stations” manned by the National Guard. Of course, no British politician would want to introduce this kind of radical manifesto policy. But it is a pity that some Conservative candidates are ready to blame Labour’s execution of education policy, but not local government social housing policy.
Redundant housing estates, usually not properties that Margaret Thatcher sold off to the housing market are left redundant and lacking services and amenities for local people. Indeed, Iain Duncan Smith told the Daily Mail last year that Margaret Thatcher’s flagship policy of selling off council homes led to swathes of the population being “left behind” in ghetto estates. Moreover, a report published this week by the Public Accounts Select Committee found that:
“Despite local authorities spending £30 million on housing support for problem drug users in 2008–09, up to 100,000 drug users in England continue to have a housing problem”
Mr Grayling’s second intervention of the day was a press release claiming, “Most children released from jail reoffend within a year.” The reality is that the number of young people entering the Criminal Justice System is falling for the first time – from 94,481 in 2007-08 to 74,033 in 2008-09. Reoffending is also falling with a 7.3 per cent reduction between 2000 and 2008 in the proportion of young offenders who reoffend.
The man who aspires to be Home Secretary in May is clearly out of touch with both society and reality.
26 Responses to “Out of hiding, Calamity Grayling is wrong on drugs & reoffending”
Claire French
hey hey hey. stop talking about “her”! I’m not a member of the Labour Party because I don’t agree with a lot of what they say. If you look at what I write on my blog, I am not focused on promoting the party at all.
I am rooting for Labour to win because their policies are closer to what I believe in than the other two main parties.
This piece was written because of the way in which Chris Grayling has made a causal link between education and drug use. The evidence which I provided backed this up…
Nick Wilde
Claire, what a refreshingly honest post. I was actually having a go at Will more than you because he strikes me as just the sort of one eyed activist (on either side) who gets under my skin. On the specific points you make in your blog, Margaret Thatcher was selling off council houses 25 years ago. The council tenants who bought might tell you that they were grateful for the chance to own their own home. Of course, the more people who do that, the fewer clients of the state there are. Isn’t it time we looked at more recent causes. One of them might be continual underfunding of local government by Labour, leading to ever increasing council tax and strain on local services, including housing. Just, a thought. I am not defending Chris Grayling, it seems to me that there is little difference between him and people like Ed Balls, just that their prejudices are different.
Claire French
Selling off council houses for affordable prices was a good idea, but the government failed to rebuild more houses to replace them. Catastrophic failure, and now there is a housing shortage which Labour is not doing much to solve.
Should be a priority in the campaign, but not an election winner, so probably won’t be.
Andy Sutherland
RT @leftfootfwd: Out of hiding, Calamity Grayling is wrong on drugs & reoffending http://bit.ly/dgTa4v
Martin
@TransformDrugs @leftfootfwd have a post criticising Grayling on drugs. Thought you'd be interested. http://bit.ly/dgTa4v