There are ample effective and pragmatic candidates who could fill his place, yet bizarrely each failing is simply followed by an appointment elsewhere. It's as though we are living in a permanent state of anticlimax; like Druids who may dare to dream that this time, maybe, finally, the world may end, the Government believes with each successive reappointment of Mr Grayling that perhaps, this time, his tenure will not end in shame.
The warning signs came before the Conservative Government of 2010. Between 2001 and 2009, he was widely criticised for claiming expenses for his flat in Pimlico, despite having a constituency home less than 17 miles away (2). As Shadow Home Secretary, he was responsible for the publication of statistics on crime levels that the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority said were 'likely to mislead the public' and 'likely to damage public trust in official statistics' (3). He was also largely excluded from the 2010 Conservative election campaign following his comments on gay couples in B&Bs (4).
Of course, before 2010, Grayling did have some successes - particularly, for instance, his questioning of David Blunkett, the then Work & Pensions Secretary, over his business affairs, leading to Blunkett's resignation (5). Nevertheless, this article will seek to demonstrate that his considerable failings are, irrespective of his achievements (to every reasonable extent) sufficient to make us question why is still a minister.
As a Minister at the DWP, he left 100,000 job-centre staff redundant (6), at the same time as criticising families for being habitually unemployed for generation after generation. As Justice Minister, he reduced Prison Officer numbers in prisons by 5,000 from 2012 to 2015 (7); subsequently, the Institute for Fiscal Studies warned that underfunding in prisoners led to 'safety... being compromised'.
In 2014 he was condemned by both prison reformers and writers such as Philip Pullman for banning books in prisons. He introduced court fees which required defendants who pleaded guilty to pay £150. He sold expertise in prisons and probation to Saudi Arabia, a move that attracted criticism from both main parties; he cut legal aid for prisoners, a move condemned by the Howard League and which to the first strike in British history by barristers and solicitors (8).
His reforms can be objected to on both an ideological and an objective level. On the latter, the utter failure of his tenure was shown when Michael Gove reversed every single policy listed above (8). They had become so politically toxic and impractical that it was not possible for them to continue. On a subjective ideological level, the aspects of Grayling's tenure as Justice Secretary saw the erosion of human rights and a blinkered view of crime and its causes. His toughening of sentences and banning of books for prisoners were utterly wrongheaded in that they tackled the symptoms of crime, and not the cause. This stems from an ideology that places blind faith in responsibility to the point that it becomes absurd; criminals, disproportionately poor and badly educated, should be seen as the victims of terrible upbringings that no one should have to endure, rather than intrinsically 'bad' people.
So perhaps, after a tenure as Justice Secretary widely derided by figures from across the political spectrum, Grayling could be vilified by a pragmatic, cross-party approach when he was appointed Transport Secretary in 2016? Alas, within a few months, he was criticised for putting his party interests ahead of commuters when a leaked letter to Boris Johnson justified his opposition to the provision of the metro services to TfL on the grounds that it would put the services 'in the clutches of a Labour mayor' (9).
Shortly after, he faced a vote of no-confidence in the House of Commons after criticism of a major rail timetable change. He only narrowly won it, by 305-285 (10). Train punctuality has sunk to a 13-year low, while rail fares have again been raised in an era in which British workers have suffered the worst stagnation in wages since the Napoleonic wars (11). Since 2010, local authority funding for bus routes in England and Wales has been cut by 45% (12), depriving local communities of important sources of mobility.
Given his terrible record, the most recent piece of news is hardly surprising. He awarded a £13.8m contract to charter extra ferries in a no-deal Brexit scenario to a company that doesn't have any ferries, and has never run a ferry service (13).
Despite all of this, though, Grayling is probably not responsible for most of the woes of our transport and criminal justice systems. Instead, he is merely symptomatic of a belief system that takes social conservatism and a free market model to absurd lengths. Far from the belief that imposing tougher sentences will improve recidivism rates, countries that have rehabilitative justice systems that put compassion ahead of a belief that people just need to be 'taught a lesson' are safer and don't need as many prisons in the very first place (14). The privatisation of the railway system, indeed, is one of the best examples of how attempts to introduce competition can cause breakdowns in accountability and errors in communication. Grayling, like the rainy, cold weather, and the hours stood on bus and railway stations, has become a fixture of national life; staggering from crisis to crisis, his ability to make terrible policy decisions and remain a minister is a strangely impressive feat of endurance.
1) https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/02/chris-grayling-cabinet-minister-rail-fare-hikes-transport
2) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/5305242/Chris-Grayling-claimed-for-London-flat-despite-nearby-constituency-home-MPs-expenses.html
3) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/7402232/Full-scale-of-violent-crime-revealed.html
4) https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/apr/11/chris-gayling-gays-bb
5) https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/blunkett-clings-on-for-survival-1-1102680
6) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Grayling#cite_note-6
7) https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/dec/05/prison-book-ban-unlawful-court-chris-grayling
8)https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37854358
9) https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/dec/07/chris-grayling-accused-of-putting-politics-over-people-in-rail-letter-leak
10) https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2018-06-19/debates/BEAD9CD9-195A-49EB-B333-60987BF95E6A/ConfidenceInTheSecretaryOfStateForTransport
11) https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/jan/02/rail-fare-increases-prompt-protests-at-stations-across-uk
12) https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jul/10/local-bus-services-council-routes-jobs-hospitals-gps
13) https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/01/chris-graylings-ferry-company-fails-to-deliver/
14) https://www.businessinsider.com/why-norways-prison-system-is-so-successful-2014-12?r=UK&IR=T
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