Offender Management Bill

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time. We have had a productive and useful debate this afternoon on Report. Despite my inability to attend all of the debate, I can assure the House that I was listening to it intently during discussions with many deeply interested Members from both sides of the House. I thank everyone who has contributed in the Chamber today and on previous occasions, and those who have contributed outside the Chamber in discussions with the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Sutcliffe), and me. The contributors and the contributions have significantly improved the Bill in several areas, some of which I will deal with tonight. However, there are also several issues to which we will wish to return in the other place. Over the past few weeks, my hon. Friend the Minister and I have met a range of parliamentary colleagues, prison and probation staff and those who assist the service, in addition to representatives of the voluntary, private and charitable sectors and the Local Government Association. Considerable consultation has occurred even as the Bill has gone through the House and I know that some of my right hon. and hon. Friends have had personal experience of that. We have listened carefully, as we are duty bound to listen on any occasion, but especially when we are dealing with such serious issues with such potentially serious consequences. In addition, we have studied the many helpful amendments that have been tabled. I wish to summarise how we have responded to those concerns and how we will continue to work to improve the Bill as it continues its passage. Before I do so, I wish to make a few general remarks about the underlying principles behind the legislation for the benefit of colleagues and for the avoidance of doubt. For the avoidance of all doubt, I wish to make it clear that this Bill is about supplementing the probation service, to reduce reoffending and to protect the public. Its primary purpose in practical terms is to protect those who send us to this House by reducing, through rehabilitation, supervision and better management, the reoffending that so often afflicts our society with individual and, sometimes, collective tragedy. It is not about privatising the probation service. The public sector already has, and will continue to have, a key role to play in the management and rehabilitation of offenders. To illustrate our commitment to that, I merely point not to our words, but to our practice over the past few years. The Government have invested massively in the public sector probation services. Since 1997, overall staff numbers in the probation service, which some hon. Members mentioned earlier, have not reduced: they have gone up by no less than 50 per cent. or 7,000 more staff. Public probation service funding has also increased by 40 per cent. in the past five years alone. We have shown a sustained commitment to the public sector and we will maintain that sustained commitment to our probation services. Moreover, the increased inputs that I have described—in resources, staffing and new methodology—have been converted into improvements in the treatment of offenders. This year, the number of offenders being taught basic skills is four times what it was only four years ago, while the number of offenders subject to accredited offending programmes is five times what it was five years ago. That shows that there has been a vast improvement in the numbers of people receiving assistance. For instance, funding for prison drug treatment has risen since 1997 by 973 per cent.—that is, a rise of almost 1,000 per cent. in the money available for treatment for drugs-related offenders. Yet, even so, the reoffending rate has remained stubbornly high, and that is one of the reasons why we are discussing these matters this evening. We can argue about the exact details of reoffending rates for different categories of offenders, but we all know that the rate has remained high in spite of all our efforts. I want to try to build on the investment that has been made already by enabling specialist providers in the voluntary, charitable and private sectors to supplement—not supplant—the public sector, where appropriate. I want to harness all the available energies in the reduction of reoffending, and that is the first point that I want to make. My second point follows on from that, and has to do with my overriding concern to provide public protection and offender rehabilitation. Both those priorities are at the heart of the Bill—and as a result much of the Bill is not contentious—but they involve huge challenges that are too intractable for any one sector to handle alone. We need to open up the reservoir of potential assistance for offenders so that all providers—be they public, voluntary, charitable or in the private sector—can play to their strengths. We will not make a real impact in reducing offending if we cannot harness the specialist skills and resources of organisations familiar to, and respected by, Members of this House. They include organisations such as the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders, Turning Point, Rainer, Crime Concern, and the St. Giles Trust. The latter organisation, which I visited last Saturday, helps offenders by providing employment opportunities: only people who have been down a hole can help others get out. We want to use all the specialist skills that are available to complement the work done by the public sector. If they are given the chance, organisations such as the ones to which I have referred have a huge amount to contribute, and all of them back the Bill. They might not agree with its every aspect, but they welcome the core approach on which it is based, and the advances that its formulation will make possible. They do not merely acquiesce in our proposals; rather, they have expressed their support both publicly and in private. I turn now to the question of targets—a matter that has been raised constantly both with me and with the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South. People are very concerned, but we already have targets determining how much work must be contracted out of the public sector. In other words, they determine the outcome for services that must be put into the non-public sector by the probation board. In future, we shall abolish the existing targets and replace them with an entirely different type of aspiration. In future, the aspirations—the targets—will not be based on the a priori assumption that there is a level of non-public sector work that must be carried out, whether or not it gives best value or is from the best provider. That would be a dogmatic approach that could unjustifiably force work out of the public sector. No a priori assumptions will be made under our approach.