Offender Management Bill

moved Amendment No. 112B: 112B: After Clause 23, insert the following new Clause— ““Offender Management Board (1) There shall be a board to be known as the Offender Management Board (““the Board””). (2) The Board shall be based within the Ministry of Justice. (3) The members of the Board shall include— (a) the Secretary of State who shall act as chairman, (b) the Director-General of the Prison Service, (c) the Director of the National Probation Service, (d) the chairman of the Youth Justice Board, and (e) other persons who the Secretary of State may nominate. (4) The Board shall be responsible for— (a) disseminating policy to, and (b) establishing good practice with respect to, all organisations involved in the operation of the offender management system. (5) In carrying out its functions, the Board shall comply with any directions given by the Secretary of State and act in accordance with any guidance given by him.”” The noble Lord said: I can almost anticipate the words with which this amendment will be greeted. I was moved to table it after reading two separate documents. One was the Bill itself—Clauses 2 to6 are all about the functions of the Secretary of State. The second document had the most confused cover I have ever come across in my life; it is called nomsheadquartersspecial, with a description inside of NOMS headquarters. As we are talking about how the Secretary of State functions and runs the National Offender Manager Service, I would have expected this document to show how direction comes from the top down to the various parts of the system. In vain did I look; there is no mention of the director-general of the Prison Service anywhere; the Director of Probation comes under the management of someone called the Director of Performance and Improvement; and I could not find the chairman of the Youth Justice Board. We look forward to debating the recent report from the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, and hope that out of it will come something like a women’s justice board or a women’s commission. But, in view of that, what seemed to be missing was some overarching body through which the Secretary of State directed the affairs and policy in the whole system. It seems that NOMS is really all about commissioning. There are masses of policies on this, that and the other, with boards all over the place and commissioning and contestability programmes and so on, but the people responsible for the management of offenders do not seem to feature in it. I am concerned that the Director of the Probation Service—we spent three days discussing probation—is subsumed under a Director of Performance and Improvement rather than being the leader of an important service in his or her own right. I included in my amendment certain things that, ever since becoming involved with the criminal justice system, I have felt are missing in the overall delivery of the services that the system is required to produce. One of those is disseminating policy. What I feel is missing—I make no apologies for referring to it now—is a structure in which responsibility and accountability go very clearly from the top to the bottom. I have mentioned in this House before my concern that within the Prison Service, for example, there is not somebody in charge of women, children or young offenders, other than in high-security prisons. There are policy people but no one is responsible for seeing that things are done consistently in every prison of a particular type throughout the United Kingdom. When I look at examples of good practice, I am desperately concerned that they are not spread. They are not spread because there is no one responsible and accountable for seeing that the overall performance in each prison of that type develops according to practice that they can spread within it. At the same time, there is the frightful problem of prison governors changing. Immediately there is a change of governor, everything in the prison changes rather than the new governor picking up where things have been left off and carrying on consistently with policies, which results in improvements being made and staff knowing where they are. If we are talking about a commissioning and contestability environment, with other people coming in, it is desperately important that leadership on what they are meant to do is clear, consistent and well known. I am concerned that, however this is done—no doubt I shall be told that such a board already exists and what I am suggesting is already happening—the evidence is not there on the ground. The end-to-end offender management and partnership that everyone wants needs a structure with people to make it work. Therefore, fully expecting to hear that the Minister does not feel that this should form part of the Bill, I nevertheless feel that it should form part of the discussion on it so that when consideration is given to how it might be processed and how the issues I have raised will be included in how offender management is conducted, it is there for people to see and examine. I think that this is a helpful amendment and I beg to move.