Cameron takes a leaf out of Howard's book

Tomorrow’s editorial in The Spectator praises David Cameron for taking on board one of the many lessons to be learned from the his old boss at the Home Office, Michael Howard: prison works. One of the other conclusions that Mr Howard reached during his remarkable spell as Home Secretary – during which crime fell by 18 per cent – was that the prison system itself needed a radical overhaul. Part of that would involve ending the vice-like grip of the Prison Officers’ Association upon our jails, its Spanish practices and Jurassic approach to pay and conditions. One solution was the contracting out of prison management to the private sector – rather lazily described as “privatisation” – a project that never truly got off the ground. Those who say that public services are always best run by public sector workers affiliated to public sector unions may have pause for thought today as they survey the POA’s deplorable strike action. For a decade these unions have been cosseted and indulged. Well, you reap what you sow.