Hundreds of convicted criminals in the Cambridgeshire area, many of them guilty of serious crimes including robbery, sex attacks and burglaries, could soon be supervised by G4S and Serco, as the Tory Government privatises the Probation Service -; with support from Liberal Democrats, including Cambridge MP Julian Huppert.

A Freedom of Information request has revealed the number of offenders currently being supervised by highly trained professional probation officers that will be off-loaded to private companies. In the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Trust that means that almost 1800 offenders could be in the hands of the likes of G4S and Serco.

Up to now the Government has refused to reveal how many serious and violent offenders would be put in the hands of private companies, but Labour’s Freedom of Information request has revealed the true scale of their plans in our local area.

Cambridge Labour Parliamentary Candidate Daniel Zeichner says: “You can’t take risks with public safety yet this is precisely what the Government is doing with their reckless plans to privatise the Probation Service. Handing over supervision for serious and violent offenders to the same companies that time and again let down the taxpayer is a recipe for disaster. Labour is campaigning hard to stop this -; but once again Cambridge Lib Dem MP Julian Huppert is propping up the Conservatives in their privatisation folly.”