Offender Management Bill

I start by agreeing with the Home Secretary on one thing. Like him, I listened to much of the debate and thought that nearly all of it was serious, principled and important, even those parts I disagreed with. The only part that I would except from that is the last two minutes of his speech. I am fascinated to be lectured by this Home Secretary on credibility. The Government said that the aim of the bill is to reduce reoffending. Everyone in the House, indeed everyone in the country excepting perhaps the criminal fraternity, would applaud that aim, and we certainly do. As the Home Secretary said, we specifically support the idea of more diversity of provision. The support that we gave on Second Reading was not unconditional, and we said that clearly at the time. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) said that"““we see a Government addicted to control and centrally devised models””." He went on to say:"““Our support for the Bill is not open-ended but conditional on the Government’s responding to us… If they work with us and improve the Bill, the Government will have a new regime for the supervision of offenders that works. If they ignore us, we will…defeat this Bill on Third Reading and in another place.””—[Official Report, 11 December 2006; Vol. 454, c. 601-2.]" That was very clear and very consistent. If the Home Secretary was not listening, that is his problem. The picture that the Home Secretary paints of the progress of the Bill is hard to recognise, with the possible exception of the last 48 hours. The Opposition—both Opposition parties, it is fair to say—made every effort to secure a cross-party approach in Committee to try to achieve the best Bill possible. For example, right at the beginning we called for an evidence-taking session to get the best expert evidence on what change would really deliver practical benefits. That was under the new rules brought in by the Leader of the House. That was refused point blank by the Home Secretary. So much for consultation. But we held the session anyway. In January the Committee heard from independent experts in the field, and the few quotes that I shall now read to the House are from the House of Commons Library note on that hearing, which I take as an impartial summary record. The former chief inspector of prisons, a very principled man who has stood up for his cause over time,"““identified the principal problem facing the Probation Service as one of overload, and was sceptical that trusts, by contracting out the supervision of offenders to the private or voluntary sector, could solve the problem.””" The former head of the Prison Service and the probation service, Martin Narey, who was prayed in aid by the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Sutcliffe), earlier,"““argued in favour of both offender management and competition, but said that neither counted for much unless the right balance could be struck between sentencing and the prison population, because of the damage overcrowding does to work on rehabilitation.””" The head of the respected home affairs think-tank Civitas"““suggested that the Government’s proposals on contestability were being too dominated by central Government to allow sufficient innovation.””" Even the Home Secretary acknowledged our collaborative approach, only this week thanking my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition for our ““constructive”” engagement through the Committee stage. Those were his words—a little different from the words he used tonight. However, as the Library note makes clear, the Bill was not substantively amended at all in Committee. So much for constructive engagement with the Opposition. Although one amendment has belatedly been accepted by the Government today, that does not change the central flaw of the Bill. The Home Secretary—amazingly, in a Third Reading debate after a Committee stage and a Report stage, still proposing to amend the Bill—promised some minor changes that would not fundamentally alter the fact that the trusts, as the hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) pointed out, are, in the final analysis, appointed by and accountable to the Home Secretary, not to their communities. So much for localism. On that basis, the Home Secretary is correct: we cannot support yet another Home Office Bill. There are three principal grounds on which we shall vote against Third Reading. First, despite the Home Secretary’s claims, the Bill is about more centralised Government control over offender management. Let us be clear: over-centralisation is bad in its own right, but over-centralisation in a Department that is already in difficulty, that is struggling to cope and that may simultaneously have to cope with a massive reorganisation as the Home Office is cut in two, is a recipe for disaster—something that the present Home Secretary might recognise. In his letter of 26 February to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, the Home Secretary claimed to be championing a ““more devolved approach”” to the system, one that would be sensitive ““to local needs””. Again, those are his words. But the head of the Probation Boards Association, whom I regard as a more credible witness, described the Bill on the ““Today”” programme this morning—