Not priority to devolve probation says UK minister

A UK government minister has been accused of pouring "cold water" on the prospect of the Welsh government taking control over probation and youth justice.

The Labour-led Cardiff administration has been pushing for further devolution on criminal justice - calls that Westminster colleagues have promised to consider.

But Prisons Minister Lord Timpson has told a committee in the Welsh Parliament it is not "a priority" while the criminal justice system is "in crisis".

Labour MS Jenny Rathbone said the comments were very disappointing.

Lord Timpson says the criminal justice system faced "huge pressures" and there needed to be "stability" before "further changes" were considered.

Under the system of devolution established in 1999, the Senedd and Welsh government have never had control over criminal law.

Various reports, including one from the former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, have called for more devolution on criminal justice including youth justice and the probation service.

Last summer's Welsh Labour manifesto said the party would "explore" the devolution of probation "to enable them to be more locally responsive".

It was planned as part of a strategic review into probation and added it would "consider" the devolution of youth justice.

Speaking to the Senedd's equality and social justice committee, the Prisons' Minister Lord Timpson told MSs that "we need to be in a much more stable position before we can think about further changes".

Mick Antoniw, the former chief legal adviser to the Welsh Government, says there are "volumes of evidence" that devolution of probation "needs to happen and quickly".

The Labour former counsel general told the committee that there was "no logical response to that other than we've had a decade of delay on actually looking at the enormous accumulation of evidence".

Questioning Lord Timpson, he said: "What you seem to be suggesting is that we are going to go through that process of just continually looking at the evidence without ever really coming to a proper conclusion."

Former Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price added: "Are you ruling out for the foreseeable future the full devolution of executive and legislative powers?".

Lord Timpson said he wanted to "stabilise" a "bruised" service but added: "I'm not ruling anything out, I'm not ruling anything in.

"What I'm focused on is trying to sort out the crisis in our justice system."

After the meeting committee chair, Labour MS for Cardiff Central, Jenny Rathbone said the committee was "very disappointed".

"The Welsh government has already started the groundwork to prepare because it believed there was a realistic prospect that these aspects could be devolved soon," she said.

"This is in stark contrast to Lord Timpson's evidence before the Committee today which seemed to pour cold water on the prospect."