Offender Management Bill

On Report and Third Reading—perhaps a little late in the day—the Government began to listen, thanks to the personal interest that the then Home Secretary took in the matters that we are considering. Significant movement occurred, albeit somewhat late in the day, on contestability. The Government made a commitment to exclude the core probation services for three years from contestability, which covers report writing, supervision of serious offenders and breached proceedings. We were promised that best value would be adopted as the test of whether a contested service would be successful. The dogmatic adherence to a target budget percentage method of allocating money—that is, outsourcing 5, 10 or 20 per cent.—was abandoned. We were also promised that any changes to those matters in three or more years would be based on evidence of what was happening on the ground. The then Home Secretary undertook to ensure that the Government would establish a mechanism to learn what was happening on the ground so that future decisions would be based on evidence. As my right hon. Friend the Minister said, the other place has made welcome movement, some of which the Government will accept. Improvements have therefore been made there. Today the Minister put it on record that in practice, commissioning probation services will take place not only from a centrally driven, Secretary of State position or nationally, but regionally—as knew earlier—and, most significantly, locally. That means probation boards and trusts. That tackles a concern that has been expressed not only by hon. Members but by people who work in the probation services throughout the country—certainly in Bedfordshire, where I have listened to people. It is vital to keep as much commissioning as is appropriate local. That is especially important in the context of a revived local area agreement mechanism, which the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill introduces. Under earlier proposals in the Bill that we are considering, the chief probation officer would have been the only statutory partner in the local area agreement who was unable to agree to the delivery of services that the local area agreement partners wanted. Under those proposals, the chief probation officer was not in command of a budget. However, now that my colleagues in the Government have made an important clarification, the chief probation officer can say that the probation trust or board will contribute—including resources, when necessary—to the local area agreement. That is a significant improvement. Local commissioning is important because it is based on local knowledge. Local people should make those judgments and determinations, not a regional manager or the Secretary of State.