Offender Management Bill

I congratulate the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) on his work to bring about the previous group of amendments. I also thank the Minister for his acceptance, via the Government new clauses, of the ideas that came forward from the hon. Gentleman. I will be as brief as I can because we are very short of time, given that this group has to be dealt with by about 2.15 pm. I hope that truncating my remarks will not cause the House to misunderstand my enthusiasm for the arguments that I am advancing or their validity. I want to start by correcting something that I got wrong in a Westminster Hall debate on 6 February. I misattributed a quotation by Mr. Erwin James, The Guardian journalist, who had written a foreword to a Prison Reform Trust report on mental health among adult male prisoners, to my close friend, Jonathan Aitken. I thus wish to apologise to Mr. Erwin James. I wish to speak to new clause 2 and amendment No. 9, which I tabled. I will leave it to the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) to speak to amendments Nos. 4 and 5, which he tabled. If I may, however, I will comment briefly on amendment No. 18, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath). The amendment would insert a provision in schedule 1 about the need for local government to have a presence on probation trusts. The idea is sensible, but I am not quite sure that the amendment goes far enough. I ask him to consider whether one councillor is sufficient to act as the representative of the electorate of big population areas, such as Greater London, and counties with big populations, such as Kent. I think that he probably agrees that that is not the case, but nevertheless I applaud him at least for raising that flag up the mast. We will hear a little more about the amendment from him. Let me concentrate on my party’s new clause and amendment. I will not take long over this because the difference between our position and that of the Government is clear—or at least it ought to be by now. Our new clause and amendment would overturn the top-down management of the commissioning and procurement of probation services, whether they are provided through the state sector, the private and commercial sector, the third sector—charitable agencies—or the not-for-profit sector. We want to bed down involvement in the communities, which is why we think that each probation trust should"““provide a plan for the forthcoming financial year at least four months before the commencement of that year””" and that each trust should set out in its plan"““its anticipated probation services needs””." A trust would have to set out in the plan who needed to receive probation services and the sort of services that would be required. A trust would have to think about young offenders and adult offenders—male and female. It would also have to consider offenders whom the courts would probably not send into custody and those who would need supervision following their release from custody. Some 500 prisoners leave the prison estate lawfully on every working day of the week, so an enormous number of people will need supervision following their release from custody. Some will be serious offenders. Some will be on parole, while others will be on licence as life sentence defendants. However, all will need care and supervision from the probation services, and it is our contention that a trust should set out in its plan the anticipated needs of the probation services. Equally importantly, the trust should tell us and the Home Secretary"““from whom it proposes to commission services””." Although we are at one with the Government on this matter, there is a clear distinction between the view of some hon. Members and that of us and the Government about the source of probation services. We do not have a philosophical or political objection to probation services being provided from outside the existing probation service—the body itself. However, we think that it should be up to the trust to identify the sources of its probation services. The engine room—the directing mind—for the identification of the types of services required and the people and agencies from whom those services will be required should be in the locality, rather than at the top. Under the Bill, it will be for the Home Secretary, via his agents—the regional offender managers—to decide what is appropriate. We say that that is the wrong way round. In a conference at Local Government House just before Christmas, the Minister and I had a question and answer session—I asked the questions and he gave the answers. I asked him to whom a regional offender manager would be accountable. I had hoped that he would say, ““To the people of the locality.”” His answer came: no, he or she will be accountable and responsible to the chief executive of the offender management service and, through him or her, to the Home Secretary. That neatly describes the difference between the Government and us and illustrates why we believe that new clause 2 is necessary.