THE GOVERNMENT’s decision to bail out failing private probation companies again was branded “disgusting” and dismissed as “throwing good money after bad”, by unions, MPs and charities today.

Former justice secretary Chris Grayling’s shambolic Transforming Rehabilitation privatisation agenda set up 21 community rehabilitation companies (CRCs) to manage low-risk offenders, despite widespread opposition to the plans.

The contracts, signed in 2014, were due to run until 2022, but Mr Grayling’s successor David Gauke has announced that the government’s contracts with eight CRCs will end two years early.

The bailout will cost £170 million, including £110m in fines owed by the CRCs to the Ministry of Justice for poor performance but which they will be allowed to reinvest instead.

With the extra £342m that the government has already had to dole out to the CRCs, the taxpayer is now more than £500m out of pocket.

Shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon said the decision represented “further evidence that the Conservatives’ decision to outsource whole swathes of probation to the private sector has created an unprecedented crisis in the system.”

He blasted the Tories’ “ideological experiment” as a “costly failure” and pledged that, under Labour, “there will be no more bailouts for failing private probation companies.”

Mr Burgon also described the decision to hold back the embarrassing announcement until the parliamentary recess as “a tacit admission by the government that its probation policies can’t withstand the slightest scrutiny.”

Napo general secretary Ian Lawrence dismissed the announcement as “a desperate attempt” to prop up Mr Grayling’s failed policy, and said it was “disgusting” that private companies received taxpayers’ cash “while our members wait seven years for a pay rise.”

He said the Tories remain “wedded to a failed and unworkable ideology, and cannot accept the undeniable fact that justice and public safety cannot be subject to the rule of supply and demand.”

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell observed that, after “another disaster by Grayling,” the now Transport Secretary should “never be allowed near any government office.”

Howard League for Penal Reform chief executive Frances Crook said Mr Grayling’s policy had failed and “the mess created by the public/private split of probation was foreseeable and was foreseen.”

She welcomed the government’s admission that the policy needed urgent change, but added: “Handing over more cash in the meantime to abject private companies, whose contracts are being cut short because they have failed to deliver what was promised, is throwing good money after bad.”