£10k bonus for parole chief in Worboys row

THE head of the Parole Board was given bonuses of up to £20,000 while the panel was freeing some of Britain’s most evil criminals.

Martin Jones picked up £5,000 to £10,000 on top of his £85,000£90,000 salary in each of the past two financial years.

One of the payouts covers the year the board decided to release black cab rapist John Worboys – a decision it was later forced to overturn. A second official document covering the financial year 2020-21 showed another bonus, also of up to £10,000.

This was when the board staged a hearing that led to the freeing of child killer Colin Pitchfork. A board spokesman insisted that payment related to the chief executive’s income the previous year. But the mother of one of Pitchfork’s teenage victims said the bonuses were ‘obscene’.

Barbara Ashworth, 75, whose daughter Dawn was murdered in 1986, said: ‘They are rewarding themselves for failure.

‘I expect they shall one day pin a medal to his lapel.’

The decision to free Worboys, who was convicted of rape and a host of sex crimes in 2009, led to board chairman Nick Hardwick being forced to resign.

After a legal challenge the order to release the rapist in 2018 was quashed and Worboys stayed in jail. He was then handed further sentences for other sex attacks.

The outcome of the Pitchfork hearing, announced in June, was that the double killer was suitable for release. The then justice secretary Robert Buckland asked the board to reconsider its decision – but it declined.

Alberto Costa, MP for South Leicestershire where Pitchfork carried out his crimes, said: ‘I will certainly raise concerns about whether such high rewards should be offered to those that manage this system.’

A Parole Board spokesman said bonuses were approved by a remuneration committee and were in line with those paid across the Civil Service.