Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood will now be getting diversity briefings instead of, say, updates on the prison crisis. HM Prison & Probation Service is splashing out £78,129 a year on a new “Area Senior Diversity & Inclusion Manager”. The lucky recruit will be charged with “building understanding of equality and diversity, to meet the needs of the prisoners in our care” and “providing high-quality briefings” for the SoS, Director General of Operations and the HMPPS CEO. Whilst “leading on all Equality matters across the area” they’ll also get £20,576 towards their pension…
This is just months after Shabana Mahmood accepted the “soft on crime” sentencing review’s recommendations scrapping all jail terms under 12 months and letting violent offenders, including sex criminals, out after serving just 30% of their time. Priorities…
Green Deputy Leader Rachel Millward said:
“The reality is that it’s Zack Polanski who brought the nation, Andy Burnham. And if we hadn’t had the success of the Green Party in this last year since Zack’s been leading, which has been unprecedented, phenomenal success and a growth from about 60,000 members to 230,000, if we hadn’t had that much pressure on Labour, then we’d probably still be in the Starmer regime, which was pretty much ushering in a Reform government with its lurch to the right. So actually, what we’re seeing now is that we’ve set the political agenda and the government is picking that up.”