My Lords,
“the Government claim that the aim of the Bill is to reduce reoffending ... Its real objective is to secure more centralised … control over the commissioning of offender management services. It centralises everything on the Home Office and removes responsibility from local people who govern the Probation Service”.—[Official Report, 17/4/07; col. 126.]
Those words were uttered from the Opposition Front Bench by no less a person than the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, in a previous incarnation, when the House was debating the Offender Management Bill.
Nor was she the only opposition spokesman to criticise that measure on similar grounds. David Davis, who in the words of a famous movie character was “once a contender”, said that that Bill was,
“about more centralised Government control over offender management … a recipe for disaster”.—[Official Report, Commons, 28/2/07; col. 1027.]
A second reason for opposing that Bill was that it focused on “yet another organisational restructuring”. Those are interesting observations because, in a characteristically cavalier and disingenuous way, Ministers—until now not yet including the noble Lord, Lord Faulks—are now seeking to rely on provisions which they opposed and which they now deliberately misrepresent.
The Government chose to undertake this massive and highly controversial reorganisation of the award-winning probation service without seeking any degree of parliamentary approval. If it had not been, as my noble friend Lord Ponsonby remarked, for the efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and, if I may say so, my efforts, there would have been no debate about the issue before the noble Lord, Lord McNally, who is continuing to promote the cause from the Back Benches in his new capacity. The whole House will join me in wishing him well in his new role, and I have every confidence that he will carry out that role very satisfactorily.
The Government pretend that the Labour Government’s intention—and the noble Lord, Lord McNally, has hinted as much today—was quite consistent
with what the present Government are doing. Yet the then Home Secretary, who is now my noble friend Lord Reid, said explicitly:
“If, at some future point, any Government were to decide that the time was right to open up that area of work”—
that is, offender management—
“they would have to make the case to Parliament, and Parliament would have the final say”.
He went on to describe it as a,
“double lock meaning that any movement after that will require a vote of both Houses”—[Official Report, Commons, 28/2/07; col. 1024.]
That is something that the present Government have been at pains to avoid .
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In addition to this critical procedural issue, my noble friend Lord Reid was also clear about the policy. He said that the 2006 Bill was about “supplementing” the public sector. He said:
“The public sector already has, and will continue to have, a key role to play in the management and rehabilitation of offenders”.
He pledged that the then Government would maintain their,
“sustained commitment to our probation services”,
and would enable,
“specialist providers in the voluntary, charitable and private sectors to supplement—not supplant—the public sector, where appropriate”.—[Official Report, Commons, 28/2/07; col. 1018.]
The Government wanted to increase, not reduce, local accountability.
By no stretch of even a vivid ministerial imagination could these words, or the legislation which they describe justify the interpretation that has been deliberately and misleadingly applied to them. Caliban’s explanation, if I might revert to “The Tempest”, as the Minister has done, slightly modified, could be applied: “O brave new world that has such legislation in’t”.
We should not be surprised. The Lord Chancellor, like his predecessor never knowingly understated, but without Ken Clarke’s knowledge, understanding or respect for the legal system or questions of justice, frequently implicitly criticises the probation service for high rates of reoffending. In the Second Reading debate in the House of Commons, he acknowledged:
“The probation trusts are currently hitting many targets, but there is one simple reality at the heart of all this: reoffending is currently increasing”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/11/13; col. 665.]
Of course, he chooses, either deliberately or carelessly, to ignore the fact that this is true of those offenders who are not supervised by the probation service—notably those serving short sentences. We applaud the determination to extend supervision to such offenders, but we are deeply concerned at the way in which the Government propose to tackle the problem—a concern made the more profound by the procedure that they have adopted. They have repeatedly refused to disclose the risk register, but have not denied a leak which asserted that there was an 80% risk of an unacceptable drop in operational performance, nor have they contradicted HM Chief Inspector of Probation’s warning of,
“an increased risk to the public”.
This is no way to treat a matter of high political salience and public concern, a professional and dedicated workforce, or indeed, Parliament itself.
We are now in a position in which the Government have for months been pressing ahead with their ideologically driven agenda, having made it clear that they have no intention of listening to the views of this House, as expressed in the amendment carried last year. They have ignored the criticisms and reservations expressed by a wide range of bodies, from the service itself to the inspectorate and the Justice Select Committee. The original timetable has been extended because of the difficulties encountered. The Government continue to rely on assertion rather than evidence, and they have signally failed to answer many of the questions their policy has provoked, including 50 posed by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham.
The most telling of their failures is that they have failed to pilot the changes—notably the introduction of the payment by results system. Indeed, they chose instead to halt the pilot in the West Midlands and Staffordshire which involved the probation trust commissioning services and working with external providers. Instead they put their faith and public money into organisations with pretensions of having the capability of delivering any kind of service, from welfare administration to prisons, health to IT, despite repeated evidence of their shortcomings and in some cases highly dubious practices, not least in relation to financial matters. It is to those organisations that the Government wish to consign the management of a service, or more accurately 70% of a service, which has to address the needs of hundreds of thousands of individuals every year as well as the wider community, and which has to measure and deal with the risk to public safety that a fluctuating proportion of offenders represents.
It is this very issue of risk, and the change in risk category that has raised such profound concerns. It is still unclear how the binary system which the Government are hell-bent on creating will work in practice—the more so especially since it would appear there will be no requirement for the community rehabilitation companies to train their staff to the standard of the probation qualifications framework, although the Minister said they might do so if they wish, or indeed to any other specific standard.
Major questions arise about the handling of domestic violence issues, work within prisons and how the system of court reports will work, given that this will remain the responsibility of the probation service although, by definition, many of the 250,000 court reports required every year will be for offenders managed by CRCs, not by the probation service itself.
There is also the question of accountability. In the sphere of offender management, we are seeing the development of the same massive, top-down reorganisation which the Prime Minister promised would not be inflicted on the NHS but which the Government nevertheless imposed. Like the nine massive regions of NHS England, we will have six regions for probation and supervision in England and another in Wales, with 21 CRCs, and little or no co-terminosity with other agencies, notably local government and the
police. I hope that Liberal Democrat Peers, who thought they had moderated their partners’ proposals for the NHS, will not allow themselves to be taken for a ride for a second time.
In particular, will the service be subject to local authority scrutiny, like the NHS, at local level, or that of combined authorities where these exist? We need to know just how the tendering process is going, how many areas will have competitive, or any, bidders, how many organisations will be allowed more than one contract and precisely how payment by results will work, both in terms of the percentage of the contract price and the timeframe over which results will be measured, as well as what would constitute a failure in terms of the character and number of repeat offences.
We also need to know what is happening to the current staff. How many do the Government think will opt for redundancy—or have already done so—or fail to secure appointments either to the residual service or to CRCs? Is it correct that the Government announced in the week before last a voluntary redundancy scheme with a budget of £35 million, only to withdraw it last Thursday on the grounds that the money is not available?
The whole House will share, indeed applaud, the Government’s objectives in seeking to reduce reoffending and close the gap into which short-sentence offenders currently fall. The noble Baroness, Lady Browning, was speaking to a House which fully supports everything she said about the desiderata in that respect. I invite the House to support the noble Lord’s amendment in seeking to ensure that this important goal is achieved safely, within a measured—not rushed—timescale, properly costed, in a way which recognises the strengths of the existing service and its staff and preserves a significant element of local accountability. The only way to ensure this outcome is to require parliamentary approval for the changes which the Lord Chancellor has been at such pains to avoid and not accept a government fait accompli.