Jobs For Ex-Cons Over Immigrants Justice Secretary Chris Grayling wants to see building jobs go to ex-convicts rather than Eastern Europeans. In an interview with Sky News' Dermot Murnaghan, Mr Grayling said he would prefer work to go to offenders leaving jail rather than immigrants. Speaking at Wandsworth Prison, he stressed the importance of providing inmates with skills to work in the building industry. He said: "One of the great opportunities for people when they leave prison is to get them into the construction field. If you can deliver skills development here, get the basic qualifications, it equips them for when they leave. But even when trained, they faced competiton for work when released. Mr Grayling said: "All too often you will find an East European is doing that job for you, if you are having your driveway laid. I'd actually rather we got that job for somebody who has been here (in prison), who has done something wrong, who has faced the consequences, who has been punished, but actually it's in none of our interests if they go straight back out again and reoffend. If we can get them a worthwhile trade, and then they go on to have a law-abiding life, then everybody wins. It comes after David Cameron said it is time to say "no" to immigrants taking jobs in British factories and start educating children so they have the skills to be employed instead. The Prime Minister pointed out that in some factories across the country half the work was done by migrants from Eastern Europe. But he said that they could not be blamed for seeking jobs in British factories when schools and colleges were not producing students with the required skills to do the work, and the jobs were there for the taking. Speaking on Murnaghan, Mr Grayling also defended his controversial plans to privatise most of the probation service, and ruled out slowing the pace of change, which he argued was needed to tackle re-offending. Mr Grayling also stood by changes to the probation service, despite union warnings the reforms were "dangerous," and could lead to deaths. A package of contracts worth £450m has been offered to private and voluntary sector organisations, covering the supervision of 225,000 low and medium-risk offenders each year on a payment-by-results basis. Contracts are to be split across 20 English regions and one Welsh region, while the National Probation Service (NPS), a new public sector organisation, will be formed to deal with the rehabilitation of 31,000 high-risk offenders each year. Mr Grayling said: "I want to deliver change quickly, but I don't want to deliver change rashly. This is not a money-saving exercise. It's about using the money we have got more wisely, to deal with what I think is our biggest criminal justice scandal. The fact that people who are most likely to offend, the people who go to jail for less than 12 months, who are most likely to walk back on to our streets again and do something really horrendous in our society, are getting no supervision at the moment at all.