It is a great pleasure to respond to the debate. It has been a good and wide-ranging debate, but it is about to reach a very strange conclusion, because
there is no real disagreement on the Bill’s contents. All hon. Members I have listened to this evening agree—[Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) mentions clause 1. He is in favour of it, but he is about to vote against it. I am not sure he realises that, or that the effect of the amendment is to decline to give the Bill a Second Reading, including clause 1. I do not believe that the Opposition understand the effect of their reasoned amendment.
There is good reason for the consensus we have managed to achieve: it is vital that we extend rehabilitation to those sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment or less, who currently receive none. As my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) has put it, the status quo is unacceptable.
The debate has concentrated not on the contents of the Bill, but on the wider reforms that the Government propose. I accept that we must get important aspects of the reforms right. It is important to have quality standards and to ensure that those who provide the work have properly trained staff. We will ensure that they do. As my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) has said, it is important that there is inspection of all providers, from whatever sector. That, too, will be done.
It is right to say, as my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) has said, that risk is dynamic. She is right too that assessments of risk will continue to be done by probation officers in the public sector. There will be contractual obligations on all providing those services to refer back to the public sector if they believe there to be a change in risk.
Hon. Members on both sides of the House have said that it is important to maintain local partnerships in the criminal justice system. They are right. Included among those relationships is the relationship with police and crime commissioners. We will have contractual obligations for all providing those services to participate in statutory partnerships. We will expect more than that. We will expect providers to show us, in the course of the bidding process, how they will engage with all appropriate partnerships.
Opposition Members have expressed concern that the public bodies, such as the police, will not share information with private sector organisations. I do not know how they think private sector prisons operate currently—institutions that were in place throughout the 13 years of the Labour Government. Exactly those interactions have continued to take place.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) made a number of points. He is right that contract management is important. As I said a moment or so ago, and on exactly the point made by the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) on the so-called “bid candy” problem, bid assessment is important. It is vital that, when we assess bids, we do so properly for the sustainability of relationships between larger organisations and smaller ones, particularly those in the voluntary sector.
Hon. Members have made a great many comments on the pace of the reforms, which we discussed two weeks ago in the Opposition day debate. I repeat that I make no apology for proceeding at pace with the reforms because, for as long as we wait, victims will continue to be created as a result of the reoffending that we could otherwise prevent. I do not believe that that is sustainable.
In answer to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed, it is important that we get on with the reforms so that we can give probation officers certainty on their personal futures. On the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull, we fully expect that transfers to the NPS and to community rehabilitation companies in April will be made without any compulsory redundancies and on terms directly comparable with TUPE.
The right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) raised understandable concerns about sentencer behaviour. As he would expect, we have spoken to senior sentencers. A number of points are relevant, a couple of which were made by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys. First, sentencing guidelines remain in place. All sentencers are expected to follow them and sentence to custody only when they believe it is appropriate. Secondly, the same level of supervision will be provided from the same provider whether someone receives a community order or a custodial sentence. There is no distinction and it is important to bear that in mind.
The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston was right to focus on through-the-gate provision. A broader part of our reforms is to institute what we call resettlement prisons, to enable all prisoners to be met by a rehabilitation provider in the closing stages of the custodial part of their sentence, and then be supported by that same provider through the gate and out into the community. That will provide the continuity she is looking for.
My hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) made the point that it is important to design a payment-by-results system that does not involve cherry-picking. We will do that through a combination of mechanisms that will reward those who stop reoffending altogether, but reflect an element of reward for reducing the amount of reoffending in the cohort—that is crucial. It is right that we pick up on the specific needs of women. As I think has been recognised, that is already covered in the Bill.
There seems to be broad agreement that we need to act, but action has a cost and that cost was too high for custody plus—the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East was straightforward in saying that. We propose a simpler system. We propose not just the opportunity for innovation to be brought into the management of offenders—by the voluntary sector, and, yes, the private sector—but, crucially, the opportunity to make the savings necessary to provide for looking after the 50,000 offenders a year who everyone who has spoken agrees should be looked after.
If not by that method, how should that be done? Those who speak from the Opposition Front Bench have criticised our approach, but offered no alternative. Under pressure, the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) tells us that there may be savings to be found in the estates part of the probation budget. I hope she appreciates that that part of the probation budget involves the provision of probation facilities and premises. If she is suggesting closing some, I look forward to seeing a list. I am sure she will explain to the probation service why it is right to close them. The Opposition say this can be done without competition, but they do not say how. They sign up to a reasoned amendment that declines to give the Bill a Second Reading
“because the implementation of the proposals in the Bill”—
which I remind the House they entirely agree with—
“depends on the Government’s proposed restructuring of the Probation Service”.
If we cannot do it by means of restructuring the probation service, how are we to do it? There is no answer.
There is, of course, good work being done by the probation service and by probation officers up and down the country. Every time I speak on this subject I say so, and I am happy to do so again. That will still be in the system we are designing, but my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) is right that it is not true that state sector probation officers are the only ones who can do the job well. That is what is really behind the majority of the opposition to the reforms that we have heard today. It is not, as the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) said, that the reforms are a triumph of dogma over common sense. It is the other way around: it is the opposition that is a triumph of dogma over common sense—the view that the private sector can never do a good job, regardless of how good the offer may be.
Serco and G4S have been mentioned many times. I can offer the House this assurance: if Serco and G4S do not come out satisfactorily from the audit processes, which this Government instituted, they will not receive any contracts. Their apparent abuses relate to contracts negotiated by the previous Labour Government, and they took place under their regime. We are the ones sorting that out. The Offender Management Act 2007, passed by the previous Government, is clear: it gives us the authority to pursue the line we are pursuing. They would rather forget that, but they passed the 2007 Act and should know what it says and understand its consequences.
The Opposition support an amendment they never wrote; they support it in preference to an Act they passed; and they do all of that so that they can vote against a Bill that, broadly speaking, they agree with. What a mess. They should support this Bill.
Question put, That the amendment be made.