Osborne swings it on sentencing policy

George Osborne, as so often, sounds like the vital cog in the Government’s swing-round on sentencing policy. He was supporting the reforms until very recently. But he’s seen the polling on law and order and sniffed the air.

His biggest worry – like David Cameron’s right now – is the NHS. Regaining voter trust on law and order should be an easier operation but the Chancellor decided the sentencing policy (or the most toxic aspects of it) needed to be dropped.

He is worried that the Conservatives right now don’t have a clear policy on law and order and are in danger of being painted as the party of police cuts and prison sentence remission.

When Ed Miliband in the Commons today said the Tories on law and order were in a “mess” he wasn’t a million miles away from what George Osborne has been thinking.

Like David Cameron, he hopes that the Prime Minister’s speech on crime, expected later this month, will help give the policy a shape. If that turns out to be along the lines of “locking up more of the worst offenders for longer, letting out the lesser offenders earlier to make room” you can see how a similar approach to sentencing remission would fit in. Rapists and other scheduled, more serious offences could be exempted.

It was George Osborne’s idea to bring Ken Clarke back into front-line politics, by the way. Something he may be pondering on right now as the Justice Secretary tries to fight off Treasury attempts to get him digging for deeper for cuts in his own Department to make up for the savings foregone on the policy now being trimmed or dumped.

The Prime Minister’s crime speech will also be an opportunity for the PM to update everyone on his current thinking on the wider picture: Does prison work? Does he still believe in Oliver Letwin’s “rehabilitation revolution”? Does he still – on the quiet – hug hoodies?