Offender Management Bill

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bristol, East (Kerry McCarthy), who was a member of the Bill Committee. I am unsure whether she raised the issue under discussion in Committee, but it is certainly worth doing so now, because although unlike her I support moving the probation services away from a state monopoly—perhaps it is like her, as I am unsure of her position on this—I have concerns about whether private providers should be as qualified as those within the state sector. What the hon. Lady had to say about her new clause, and what the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) will doubtless say in support of his amendments Nos. 22 and 20, will clearly command broad support. We do not want an over-bureaucratic system or one that inhibits people’s desire to do such work; nor do we want to inhibit their desire to enter the probation services more generally. Other than those brief remarks about new clause 4 and amendments Nos. 22 and 20, I shall allow others to speak to them. I want on my behalf and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) to speak briefly in support of new clause 7. My hon. Friend would have been here, but sadly—or happily, depending on how one cares to look at it—he is chairing a debate in Westminster Hall and cannot be in two places at once. I hope that Members will find not only the new clause but my remarks to be wholly uncontroversial. In Committee on 23 January, we had a clause stand part debate on clause 20, which dealt with the provision of medical services within the prison estate. It was an uncontroversial view during that debate that mental ill health in prisons is a tremendous problem. A huge number—about 70 per cent.—of the people given custody have at least two identifiable mental illnesses. I am talking not just about people who are deeply depressed about being in prison, but about people with identifiable mental conditions. The sad thing is that about the same percentage leave prison in exactly the same condition. New clause 7 addresses itself not to mental health but to a related issue: the ability of prisoners and young offenders to communicate in a way that permits them to relate to other members of society—even authority figures such as police officers—without resorting to criminal activity. One problem that befalls many young offenders—who, sadly, are then churned into the adult criminal justice system—is that they cannot read and write and express themselves sufficiently to avoid criminal behaviour. A young man who cannot express his frustrations and deal with his anger in any way other than through violence is going to end up in prison. I, my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham and all right-thinking Members of this House want youngsters to be diverted from crime through education and the proposed form of therapy, which has identifiable and empirically provable benefits. The noble Lord Ramsbotham, the former chief inspector of prisons, frequently tells the following story, and it is a pity that he frequently has to tell it. On visiting a particular prison—I hope that I am relaying the story correctly—he was told that speech, language and communication therapy simply was not available to young offenders and adult prisoners. As a consequence, this hideous carousel of youngsters who cannot articulate and deal with their frustrations goes round and round. I am therefore urging the Government, in this brief debate on new clause 7, to take on board our concerns. I have a suspicion that the Minister’s privately shares my concerns precisely, and I want him to translate his private view into action on the part of his Department and the Government. Our previous debate, in which I played a small part, was perhaps not an occasion on which to address the question of introducing the private provision of speech and language therapists. However, now that we have passed that particular watermark—high or low depending on which side of the debate one took—we may return to a more consensual approach. I urge all right hon. and hon. Members to support new clause 7.