Offender Management Bill

I shall speak to my Amendment No. 82 in this group. I thank the Minister for his exposition of the Government’s amendment that puts national standards into the Bill. It is welcome, although I suspect that many noble Lords will see it only as a first step. I am grateful for the noble Lord’s assurance regarding subsection (2) of my amendment. I had wished to ensure that the standards to be achieved should include the provision of reports to courts and the Parole Board. The Minister assured me that those would be covered and I am grateful to him. I understand why subsection (3) of the Government’s amendment is not prescriptive on standards across the different providers and uses the term, ““so far as practicable””. I realise that that may meet some resistance by noble Lords, but I can understand the legal and practical context in which the Government are working and why they have adopted that terminology. That subsection is a great step forward from the current position whereby the Bill is silent on the importance of training, and because the Government are covering all providers. The more the Government talk about using a similar approach to all providers, the more reassurance they may convey—although we have some way to go. My Amendment No. 82 ensures that national standards must be met in the provision of reports to courts and the Parole Board. The Government dealt with that. Subsection (3) would require that those who fail to meet proper standards of probation provision should pay a financial penalty. I was very interested to hear what the Minister said. I listened most carefully when he talked about incentives and sanctions being part of the process. I agree with him entirely. One wants to provide incentives in the contract to ensure that people want to bid and to make them feel proud of the work that they are doing and that there is a can-do mentality. One wants voluntary organisations, in particular, to offer their services in the expectation that they will be able to make a real contribution to outcomes in the probation world. Equally, I am certainly aware that if there is to be any kind of contestability with any meaning, there must be sanctions. When I tabled my amendment, I was contacted by Third Sector magazine, which asked me to comment on why I had done so. I was asked to provide a quick response as there were only 24 hours to go before the magazine was due to be published. At the time, I was working on the Serious Crime Bill—noble Lords will be able to hear the violins. I tried to turn round a story but then the magazine did not reply, so unfortunately the article appeared in Third Sector magazine without the benefit of my contribution. I tried to explain in an e-mail that my views could be read in Hansard, and of course my honourable and right honourable friends in another place had given their views. I understand that voluntary organisations may fear that penalties—financial or otherwise, such as the curtailment of their activities—might damage their standing. I refer not just to their professional standing among their peers but also their financial standing, and I was certainly told that charities were concerned that their financial position could be endangered. I was also told that some charitable providers felt that they would become risk-averse and would not be as flexible and willing to enter the arena in the first place. I was concerned about people worrying that they would become risk-averse because I do not see probation providers being risk-friendly. All probation work carries some risk but one weighs that up against the outcome that one is going to achieve and the kind of people one is using. Anyone who hopes to win a contract to provide probation services will not be taking risks at all. They will have gone through a very careful evaluation, and the work that I have done with charities has shown that that is what they do if they are to enter a commercial relationship. Therefore, I was not concerned that my amendment would be a threat to charities or in any way undermine their flexibility and their ability to respond. However—I have had conversations around the House about this—I believe that charities may have misunderstood the implications of contestability for them, and that is what lies beneath my tabling the amendment. Charities have been enthusiastic about contestability because they have seen the income stream that it will guarantee them. Their views have been jaundiced when trying to get money from the Home Office in the past, or perhaps when their contracts have not been renewed or they have not been paid the full amount. They see this as some kind of security for the future but it is not all going to be like that, and I think that small charities, in particular, may find that they are not quite in the position that they had hoped for. I have worked in a local part of a national charity. We changed it into a company limited by guarantee and bid very successfully for a series of contracts under what would have been contestability by any other name—not in probation but in a related field. I have seen the success of that operation but it has changed the way that the charity is operated—as it had to. The range and remit of the charity changed, although its core principles did not change, but it had to accept penalties if it entered into the arena.