Offender Management Bill

Briefly, I did not have the privilege of serving on Committee, so I shall rely on local comments that are relevant to the Government amendment. I endorse the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) about responsibility for victims. Some of the complaints that I receive about the performance of the probation service concern its communication with victims when carrying out its responsibilities, so a clear and explicit responsibility in that regard would be helpful in giving due weight to the role of victims in the criminal justice system. I wish to concentrate, however, on the clause 2—the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) rightly identified its strange construction—as I could not find a clear requirement for the Secretary of State to manage the enhancement of the quality of all those functions as part of his responsibilities. I did not want to participate in earlier debates about the voluntary sector, because I am a committed supporter of its role in delivering such services, and I did not wish to add to the weight of opinion on the subject. My purpose in speaking now, however, is to address the subject of enhancing quality and the Secretary of State’s role in ensuring that quality is delivered. Quality is achieved not by insisting on uniformity of service provision but by designing services around individual needs, including the needs of prisoners, individuals on probation and other people who have direct relationships with the probation service. That requires diversity, so we must consider—and I have raised this doubt with my hon. Friend the Minister—how to ensure the correct reflection of local knowledge and intelligence in determining individual service provision in a particular area. I do not have any particular anxieties about the generic use of private and voluntary sector contractors in the delivery of any of the aims to which the clause refers, but I am anxious about the loss of innovative edge of small contractors that may deliver excellence at a local level. The reason for my anxiety is the tendency of larger entities to try and simplify their contracting functions by saying, ““Wouldn’t it be easier if we had an overall contractor delivering this range of services across the area?”” Yes, it would be easier, it would certainly be more efficient in contracting terms, but it would not deliver the innovative edge that allows others to learn from someone doing something new—that novelty can start small—and it would not necessarily be attuned to local capability to deliver the services that we want. I shall give a couple of examples from my area to illustrate my point. There is an excellent footpaths group, as it describes itself, in the village where I live. It carries out a wide range of other environmental projects as well. For a long time the group has had a relationship with the local probation service, with prisoners coming to assist with some of the work that the group carries out. It has been a tremendously positive relationship. I have asked both the probation service and the group whether there have been any problems in delivering such services. Both sides say no, the relationship has been excellent. The prisoners have gained greatly from exposure to carrying out various tasks in the countryside and dealing with well intentioned voluntary workers, and the village has gained from some works carried out. My anxiety is that those little projects and the little voluntary contractor who has been able to deliver something of tremendous value may be lost. There is another example, which has always struggled. A farmer who produces eggs has young offenders in particular coming to assist him on his farm. One of the Minister’s predecessors, who is now the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale, East (Paul Goggins), visited both projects and was extraordinarily positive about what he saw there. I do not want to lose those little local initiatives to a big brother contracting function, albeit one that embraces the voluntary sector and the private sector. I would welcome my hon. Friend’s assurances about that. Some reassurance would come from scrutiny by local entities such as local authorities and the local police service, who very often know those links and can exploit them and help in using them in future. I hope that my hon. Friend can give a little reassurance about managing the quality function within the aims, delivering innovation and testing new ideas, which is often done on a smaller scale.