Airborne had little option but to cease operations

It is disappointing to find the deputy justice minister, Hugh Henry, attempting to shift blame away from himself for the abrupt cessation of the Airborne Initiative programme (Letters, 13 February). The un-comfortable truth is that since the Chancers series was shown on TV, funding suddenly and unexpectedly came under threat from the Executive.

Among the many addition-al tensions such uncertainty created, donations from other charitable bodies had to be withheld, while negotiations over future finance were re-solved. This created a potentially serious funding gap, in addition to unexpected extra costs involved in making changes to the course structure, which officials had de-manded out of the blue, following the first, relatively brief inspection of its facilities, mounted the moment adverse situations were portrayed on our TV screens.

Many weeks later, on Tuesday, the board of directors, in its meeting after the minister had effectively pulled the plug on it, had little option but to cease all operations.

As a former Airborne soldier and an advisor to the initiative, I met instructors and staff yesterday. It was heartening and humbling to find them less concerned about their imminent redundancy, than with trying to preserve as much as possible of this uniquely effective programme.

They deserve better from the minister. After all, collectively they have done so much, on behalf of the public, to help reduce crime across Scotland, these last ten years. It is important, now, after some of the weasel words that have been spoken to look forward and see what best can be retrieved from this sorry situation.

CLIVE FAIRWEATHER

Former HM Chief Inspector of Prisons

Summerfield

Haddington

Hugh Henry’s letter is more than a little disingenuous. These 11 young men are still subject to the probation orders which had a condition of at-tendance at Airborne. He side-steps the problem for the sheriffs who imposed these orders.

The youths have not breach-ed any court order.They were judged to need the intensive work involved on the Airborne Initiative. What other equivalent order does he suggest? There are very few similar schemes considered sufficiently robust by sentencers. I know of no-one in criminal justice who would agree with his view that "there is no void left by Airborne’s closure".

Are all criminal justice disposals to be measured on the same basis as Airborne? If so, may we hear when the minister intends to close down our prisons and young offenders’ institutions? I presume we may get a little more notice.

It is also disturbing to see the minister admit the Pontius Pilate response by him and the justice minister, Cathy Jamie-son, when informed by the Airborne representatives of the immediate closure of the course. He seems happy with an apparent abdication of re-sponsibility by others.

Why did he not arrange to allow this batch to be complet-ed? Can he explain the timing of the Executive’s announcement? Should we get Lord Hutton to look at it, so the BBC can be blamed again? Whoever is to blame for this legal mess it is not the young men.

We seem to be short of leadership from this Executive. If the country is to be run by the editors of the tabloids can we at least have an election?

JOHN SCOTT

Gilfedder & McInnes

Leith Walk

Edinburgh