Cowardice, betrayal and the Lib Dems

CHARLES Kennedy was very clear in his 2004 New Year Resolution to the British people.

With all this in mind, we await with interest what Charles Kennedy will say about the cowardly decision of the Lib Dem group in the Scottish Parliament to spit on their explicit Holyrood election manifesto commitment of last year and cravenly vote with the Executive to close down the Airborne Initiative for young offenders. For the record, the Lib Dem manifesto - which is still proudly extant on the party’s website - says the following:

"[We will] increase support for schemes aimed at persistent offenders that have proved more effective at reducing reoffending than traditional methods, in the way that Freagarrach and the Airborne project have."

For any ordinary voter, the commitment is very clear.

Support for non-traditional methods

First, there is an unequivocal emphasis on supporting non-traditional - and therefore risky - methods of dealing with persistent offenders. That is clearly stated to include the Airborne project, which the Executive has axed because it proved a mite too risky for the local Labour politicians in Lanarkshire, where it is based. A BBC fly-on-the-wall documentary exposed the fact that the hardened young criminals on the scheme swear and take drugs. Shock. Horror. Common sense might suggest that most teenage tearaways swear and take drugs. They will continue to do so in prison, now that Airborne is no more. All that closing Airborne has done is excuse the ultra-conservative Labour machine in Lanarkshire from the task of actually explaining to its constituents what the Airborne project was all about - courtesy of the Lib Dems’ Airborne "shabby compromise", to quote Mr Kennedy on another occasion.

If, last May, the Lib Dems were prepared to experiment with non-custodial sentences, why not today?

Second, the Lib Dem manifesto support for Airborne clearly singles out Airborne as a success story. So it is. The project was established a decade ago by ex-paratroopers (who have heard a lot of swearing in their day). It takes young men between the ages of 18 and 24 who are habitual offenders and uses outward-bound techniques to instil character and responsibility. Not just anyone can join - there is a stringent vetting procedure. There is aftercare support, aimed at getting participants a regular job or vocational training. The cost of a place on the Airborne course is 6,000. The alternative is a prison sentence, which costs the taxpayer nearly 30,000 a year. Some 50 per cent complete the course (the rest opt for the easy life back in jail). Of those who completed Airborne, studies show that the course reduced re-conviction rates by 21 per cent, compared to offenders who received alternative disposals. Perhaps because it is tough, the numbers on the initiative have dropped in recent years, though they are now rising again.

If, last May, the Lib Dems thought Airborne was a worthy example, why not today?

Reneging on their own manifesto

The Scottish Lib Dem MSPs have a formal answer to why they reneged on their own manifesto. They say the mention of Airborne was "exemplary". No-one reading their manifesto will believe that that is anything other than the kind of spin the Lib Dems allegedly abhor. If Airborne is no longer "exemplary", tell us why not. Indeed, the Lib Dems will have to tell the signatories of an open letter calling on the Executive to retain the Airborne project - signatories from an extraordinary cross-section of Scottish life, including Lord MacFarlane, Lord Prosser, Magnus Linklater, Ian Rankin and Clive Fairweather (the former HM Chief Inspector of Prisons for Scotland).

Alas, we are left to conclude that Jim Wallace and his band have capitulated to Labour for other reasons. It might be they felt that forcing a rethink on Airborne might prejudice today’s vote at the Scottish Labour Party conference on introducing proportional representation in local government (from which the Lib Dems hope to profit in electoral terms). For the Lib Dems to be seen as untrustworthy coalition partners might be ammunition for those Labour dinosaurs who oppose PR. If this was Mr Wallace’s calculation, he is very wrong. The Labour dinosaurs will oppose PR no matter how craven the Lib Dems prove. Indeed, the more supine is Mr Wallace, the more the Stalinists in Labour will say they can rule without him. In addition, to dump principles and the trust of the voters in order to get PR is, as Mr Kennedy would say, "a dodgy deal" that will come unstuck at the ballot box.

All this leaves Labour smirking. Once again, the Lib Dems have done Labour’s dirty work. The puzzle is, why did Mr McConnell - who in private is rumoured to be less than happy with the way Airborne has been closed - fail to take the olive branch offered by the SNP motion for funding to continue pending a review of the project? Perhaps Mr McConnell did not want the loss of face, though the huge public support for Airborne has made it a non-partisan issue, and he could have garnered plaudits for a statesman-like tactical retreat. Certainly, he won no friends by reiterating the ostensible reason for axing Airborne, namely that there are other non-custodial schemes that are better.

The point is that we are in territory where no one fix will work. It is much better to try a range of options rather than play one off against another. Given the low cost of the Airborne venture relative to the lifetime savings to society (and victims) from even a few young men returned to a normal life, the decision to close the project looks - and is - petty.