Eighty days after the General Election, the Labour Party gathered for its annual conference in Liverpool earlier this week. With a majority of 174, this is their first as the party of Government in fourteen years; a conference sub-titled as ‘Change Begins.’
You would think that, therefore, the conference would feel full of sunshine and possibility. But for newly minted justice Ministers, eighty days of governing have probably felt more like a slog through a blasted landscape of heavy, energy sapping clay. The abominable mess in our adult male prisons meant the first act of the new Lord Chancellor’s reign had to be the very thing her Conservative predecessors had so desperately avoided: the early release of prisoners. With that decision made, the new team hardly had time to settle comfortably into their Ministerial sofas before the riots stoked by far-right racists broke out. This required a firm and swift response from a justice system that no one was sure would be able to, given how damaged it has become. No sooner was that over then the first early releases hit the headlines, with newly released prisoners popping champagne corks and, more darkly, committing crimes within hours of release.
So, in the rain-lashed conference centre, hemmed in by security barriers to the east, the pewter expanse of the river Mersey to the west and slate grey skies above, the mood has not been that of a self-confident party with a clear plan for justice reform. This is partly because, when you make the three minute walk over Parliament Square from the Palace of Westminster to Whitehall, time warps. You move from a world where the cut, thrust and parry of a news story is clocked in minutes and hours to a world that works in seasons and years. It is also, perhaps, the result of a party more than ready to fight a snap election but maybe not entirely ready with a plan for Government, with nascent policies backed up behind the outcome of a Spending Review.
Yet the threads of a plan are here if you look for them. The commitment to halving violence against women and girls is clearly a galvanising mission for Ministers and party members. To hear it articulated in different rooms in the conference centre, this mission will span plans not just for justice policy, but also about housing and economic reform. To hear the Lord Chancellor, the Solicitor General and other prominent figures at the Society for Labour Lawyers re-affirm a commitment to the rule of law, to radical change in the family courts and to upholding respect for the judiciary is to hear important new trends in the politics of justice. The animating spirit of Sure Start, re-articulated in youth and family hubs, and the commitment to rethink children’s social care, suggests a renewed commitment to marginalised and deprived children and young people. Even in that most politically tricky of justice areas, the relatively nailed-on gossip that David Gauke is to head the new six-month review of sentencing may offer some suggestion that they are prepared to confront some the realities of our current use of prison.
It is possible that here, amidst the puddles and Beatles memorabilia shops, a new plan for changing justice policy is emerging. The next few weeks and months will be crucial in setting the direction for the next few years. So, the job of change does indeed begin.