
These include the ‘recognition that the cuts have bitten too far’ into the department, leading to poorly considered actions which later had to be reversed, for example, privatising then re-nationalising the Probation Service.
Smith notes that, despite the former minister’s recognition of the problem, ‘observers might note that Mr Stewart seems to have been paying little attention to the major rows about such cuts which dominated his first years in Parliament. And for which he must have voted’.