My Lords, as I have said on a number of occasions, this is a curious Bill. While the whole House welcomes its intentions, many of us are deeply alarmed at the absence of detail about their cost and how and whether they can be implemented in the timeframe depicted on page 34 of the so far undiscussed Transforming Rehabilitation White Paper. I have received many letters of concern about this, including a number from serving members of the National Probation Service, who are understandably worried about what is being done to them and their service, 31 of whose 35 trusts are adjudged to be performing well, with the remaining four performing exceptionally well.
Last Thursday, the Minister was kind enough to e-mail me a copy of the revised impact assessment, which I have to admit I find as disappointing as its predecessor, because it is still so thin on analysis of impact, cost or risk. I note that, yet again, the Government’s justification for not releasing more details is that to publish estimates would put contractual negotiations at risk and so prejudice the effectiveness of the competition for delivery of offender services. Indeed, compared with what has been put to Ministers, as disclosed in articles in the Times and Guardian today, it feels rather more like a ministerial pat on the head of a recalcitrant child.
In drawing the attention of the House to the inadequacy of the initial impact assessment, I questioned whether, because it was published on the same day as the Bill and the White Paper to which it referred, it had been available to Ministers during their analysis of risk, or added later. I have to ask the same about the draft strategic risk register, prepared for a rehabilitation programme board on 21 May, referred to in the articles. If a board saw a draft only 12 days after the Bill was published, when were the risks that it assessed seen and discussed by Ministers?
I presume that the impact of these risks was excluded from the impact assessment, because it refers only to the Bill, not to the whole programme—a clever piece of parliamentary games playing. In asking the Minister when he and his colleagues considered these risks, I also ask whether a proper business plan for the implementation of their ambitious proposals has been drawn up, telling Ministers—and so the public, whom it is their duty to protect—exactly how, when and by whom they are to be implemented.
That leads on to the question of why, throughout this Bill’s progress, I have felt so deeply uneasy about the way in which this House is being used. We all want reoffending to be reduced, but we do not want to see any programme with that end fall flat on its face because understandable concerns about the viability of untried theories, in the uncertain world in which many offenders live what can only be described as chaotic and dysfunctional lives, have been ridden over roughshod in the desire to satisfy a party politically directed timetable that pays no attention to practical reality.
There is also the importance of taking people with you, particularly those whom you employ. Loyalty, like responsibility and accountability, is a two-way process. You cannot expect people to be loyal to you
unless they know that they can rely on your loyalty to them. The loyalty of the probation service is being pressed to limits that would make every soldier shudder. Indeed, since 9 May, they, I and others who have asked questions have felt rather like that Chinese student who, trying to stop something relentless, climbed on to a tank in Tiananmen Square, whose crew could appreciate what he wanted but were not be deflected from their directed purpose.
I wonder whether the real reason why the Secretary of State is unwilling to reveal an objective assessment of the impact of his proposals is that he dare not, because they are so undermined by the sheer scale of the risks as assessed by his own officials in the Ministry of Justice. He cannot have welcomed the chairman of the Justice Select Committee in the other place saying last week that the Ministry of Justice, responsible for carrying out his ambitious plans, displayed naivety about the contracting out of key services and lacked the capacity to know what it was doing.
In Committee I tried to encourage the Minister to delay further consideration of the Bill until we had had a more satisfactory impact assessment, and answers to the many questions raised at Second Reading, many of which matched risks raised by officials, who described the whole process of transforming the National Probation Service as a,
“complex, large-scale change programme to be completed within an aggressive timetable”.
As I have long suspected, the change programme that has been laid before us is far from complete, because officials say, in a document issued only this month:
“We are undertaking further work on statutory responsibilities, to determine if there is an obvious split between the public sector probation service and competed Providers, and will come back with further advice on this, including on how we ensure that providers meet these obligations”.
Surely it is a bit late for that, when work on the Bill is so far advanced.
Officials spell out a breathtakingly long list of details of what this complex unresearched change programme entails, which, according to the White Paper timetable, have to be completed in little over a year. Those include the implementation and testing of the new operational model, but not payment by results, by three probation trusts; the establishment of the so-called new probation service; the establishment of 21 government companies; the recruitment and appointment of new senior management teams for the National Probation Service and the government companies; the allocation of staff into roles in the new organisation; and the transfer of 18,000 staff to new employers. Probation trusts are to have agreed the national and competed functional split, and identified the proportion of staff and assets to be allocated to the public sector or government companies, by the end of August, and to have implemented the new operating model, while remaining contractually responsible for delivery by public sector and competed functions, serviced by a single corporate support, by next April. Trusts are to cease responsibility for delivery, and all staff and other assets are to be transferred to the public sector, or government companies, by next August. Ownership of the government companies is to be transferred to successful bidders from October.
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In addition, officials have to allocate around 500 premises in whole or part to the National Probation Service or government companies; establish corporate support functions for all 21 new entities; reallocate up to 250,000 offender cases; and introduce new, or terminate all, contracts and partnerships and re-engineer in the region of 2,000 IT packages to enable operation of new entities. Neither the Ministry of Justice nor government have very good track records as far as IT packages are concerned—including having experienced major problems with the current probation programmes—which does not fill one with confidence about their ability to co-ordinate so many in such a short space of time. Indeed, Ministry of Justice officials admit that the complexity of closing down all these systems and moving to a shared-systems approach will present a considerable challenge. However, the sting is in the tail, because, having listed all these requirements, the restructuring document reminds Ministers that they must be delivered without materially impacting on business as usual.
Of the 17 areas of risk mentioned in the articles, some belong to the Ministry of Justice and some are subject to other influences. Some mention the reputation of the Ministry of Justice and some the response to the proposals of existing probation staff, which I confess to finding unattractive because they sniff of the blame culture.
Levels of concern were arrived at by multiplying an impact rating on a scale of one to five by a similarly scaled likelihood rating, any result of 15 or above being regarded as problematic. I shall not go through all 17, but highlight the eight most problematic and one other that is of particular interest because of its relevance to the impact assessment. The impact of all the eight is said to be having “significant detrimental effect” and the first “could prevent achievement”. There is a more than 80% likelihood that an unacceptable drop in operational performance during the programme leads to delivery failures and reputational damage. There is a 51% to 80% likelihood that affordability objectives for the reforms cannot be demonstrated or met, leading to failure to secure approvals during the programme, or financial and operational risk and reputational damage to the department after implementation.
It is stated that insufficient support for the reforms by probation management, staff and staff associations leads to failure to progress design and implementation to time and quality; that it is not possible to design the programme to a timescale that meets ministerial expectations and/or the coalition’s commitment to roll out payment by results by 2015; that insufficient participation by the market in competition leads to failure to secure value-for-money bids or at-risk elements of reforms; that new service and market models implemented as a result of the programme are ineffective and/or inefficient, leading to operational, financial and reputational impacts and failure to realise the planned benefits of the reforms; that services following competitions do not meet required quality, leading to operational failures and loss of public confidence; and that programme delivery cannot or does not meet the timescale set by the programme because it is dependent on wider government.
Finally, because it is so pertinent to both my amendment and the lack of detail in the impact assessment, there is a risk that the programme does not deliver to the agreed time, quality and cost, and neither impact nor likelihood have been worked out for this apocalyptic outcome because risk will be rated only once planned budget and products are baselined, which suggests that the cost has not yet been worked out.
During my professional career I have been involved in a number of change programmes involving people and functions with a non-operational service, including having to reduce the size of the Army by a third over three years following the end of the Cold War, but never before have I come across a detailed assessment of risks being drafted only after a plan has been agreed and announced, let alone begun its passage through Parliament. I know that I am not alone in doubting whether the Ministry of Justice has the capacity to deliver such a complex public protection programme within the aggressive timetable imposed by its tough Secretary of State. I believe that the most responsible thing that the Government can now do is to admit that they have been trying to go too far too fast and that following careful analysis of all the factors, including the Chancellor’s spending review, they have decided temporarily to withdraw the Bill while they reassess what can realistically be achieved using available resources, which include the public, private and voluntary sectors as well as related programmes commissioned by other ministries. However, because the protection of the public is at stake, this reassessment must be conducted in such a way that satisfies full and detailed scrutiny by both Houses of Parliament.
To expect this House, denied a veto, to rubber-stamp the Bill at this stage is to treat it with contempt because there are far too many doubts about the viability and affordability of the method the Government have chosen to achieve the proposals to which it is related, and the impact of destroying what is in place before proper evaluation of the ability of what is proposed in its stead to do better. I therefore ask the Minister to suspend further discussion until my request has been referred not just to the Secretary of State but to the Prime Minister because so many other ministries are involved.