Offender Management Bill

I support this important amendment which seeks to address the conflicts of interest which may arise from introducing contestability into the process of providing probation services. Specifically, if the providers come from the private sector, their services will be related to the profitability of the organisation and their need to justify their effectiveness and financial management to their shareholders. As professional providers of a service, it is fundamental that the advice they give should be absolutely impartial and disinterested. There should not be the faintest suggestion or implication that such advice is driven primarily or in part by any financial interest to them. Profitability is clearly a key driver in the management and administration of any private company. The integrity of the organisation must be beyond question and at all times their services must have the best interest of the client groups as the central focus. Their profitability should not be seen to be at the expense of professional standards and best practice. We have just heard about the risk of a potential conflict of interest that exists if advice is given to a court by a private provider whose business will benefit if it is taken, or if a probation trust signs a contract with a private company for its services and has a judge or a magistrate as a member. Will the Minister clarify this issue? Where contestability is part of a bidding process for the provision of services, the providers will seek to demonstrate that they can provide better services at a better rate and represent better value for money than other bidders. To many people, this bidding process does not lie easily with putting the needs of beneficiaries of a service first, be they victims, offenders or the community. Clearly, there has to be some guarantee of high standards where best practice can be demonstrated first. There is a delicate and often difficult balance to be struck here, and it is uncharted territory where criminal justice issues are concerned. In their document, Reducing Crime, Changing Lives, the Government stated that their interest in the process of contestability lay in getting, "““the most cost-effective custodial and community sentences, no matter who delivers them””." This process has been in operation in the private prison sector, where four different companies run nine prisons. The process has been perceived to have had the effect of forcing the public sector prisons to raise their game, reduce their costs and win contracts from their private sector competitors. While this was seen to be true in the early days, some private prisons have in the recent past received seriously critical inspection reports. Indeed, one of them was the subject of a truly shocking television programme. It has been stated that contestability has reduced costs in prisons by worsening terms and conditions for staff and increasing workloads and hours worked. Those which were performing badly were found by Her Majesty’s inspectors to have dangerously low staffing levels. It is axiomatic that best practice requires that staff work on a one-to-one basis to achieve the best outcomes. To cut down staff will inevitably lead to poorer outcomes. As we now know, salaries are generally lower, the level of training poorer and the changeover of staff higher than in the public sector. I would therefore suggest that they are no longer necessarily the best comparators. The Government’s contestability prospectus cited six different types of contestability programmes which could be used: contests held to commission alternative provision if existing providers fail to provide or deliver a satisfactory improvement plan; market testing; extension of partnership working and sub-contracting; competitions to run new businesses; pathfinder projects to find new solutions; and new competitions for previously competed services. Historically, the Probation Service has always worked in partnership with the voluntary sector and the private sector. The target set by the Home Secretary for contracted-out services to increase to 10 per cent will only take us back to the situation that prevailed before 2001. It is not seen as a problem; nor do we on these Benches have a problem with the idea that we should tap into as wide a range of probation providers as possible, including the voluntary and private sectors, to enhance and develop standards and the ways in which we can reduce reoffending and make our society safer. More effective case management and better-targeted interventions should be a constant goal for providers. However, as we have argued elsewhere, this is not a conventional market as it is understood by the private sector. Evidence—we have been talking a lot about evidence today—that contestability achieves the desired results is thin on the ground to say the least. We therefore have strong reservations about the idea that contestability and the sometimes crude battles of the market place are an entirely appropriate means of meeting the needs of often very vulnerable people. We entirely accept that it is essential that all players in the field are encouraged to raise their game and the standards of practice as well as principle, which is why we have consistently argued for the development of partnerships in the provision of probation services. I have cited how the Scottish model has worked and argued for the duty to co-operate between agencies in England and Wales. We have heard how such an ethos exists in children’s services and issues of racial equality. It applies in youth offending teams and MAPPA. It is an approach that sits more comfortably with the nature of the work in which all these agencies are engaged. A client needs best practice in achieving the highest standards, which are not necessarily achieved by pitting organisations against each other—especially when a multiplicity of bodies is engaged in the process. We cannot risk losing all that we think is best or, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said, throwing the baby out with the bathwater.