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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd) for raising this important subject. The security of our citizens is the first priority of any Government, and public protection is a central responsibility of the Ministry of Justice.
I hope that I can demonstrate to my hon. Friend and the House that we take our obligations in this respect extremely seriously and that our arrangements for managing dangerous offenders in the community are robust and effective. Approved premises, including Stonnall Road, raise challenging questions about how the criminal justice system deals with its most serious offenders, but the view of successive Governments has been that such premises are an important part of those arrangements and ultimately perform a critical role in keeping communities safe.
As my hon. Friend said, it was my pleasure to meet him and Councillor Mike Flower yesterday. If my remarks do not answer in full the letter that my hon. Friend drew on in his speech, he will, of course, receive a full reply later.
I share my hon. Friend’s revulsion at the offences committed by the offender, whose case led my hon. Friend to secure the debate. However, the offender has now served the custodial part of his sentence, and our priority, as with all offenders, must be appropriately to protect the public from future offences. That can mean difficult decisions being taken by the agencies involved and overriding the wishes of those who have committed no offence, and my hon. Friend alluded to that. Tragically, it is not possible to eliminate entirely the possibility that a known offender will go on to commit further crimes—in some cases, serious ones—but the Government are committed to doing all that we can to ensure that the risk of an offender causing harm is managed effectively and robustly in the wider interests of us all.
The main topics that my hon. Friend raised were the multi-agency public protection arrangements and the approved premises in Stonnall road. MAPPA and approved premises are two of the key measures that the statutory agencies use effectively to manage offenders who are known on account of their previous offending to present an ongoing risk of harm. I was going to speak in some detail about MAPPA, but I suspect that my hon. Friend would prefer me to address more directly the issues raised by Stonnall Road in the time available. All that I would say about MAPPA is that the arrangements are being validated by studies and are at the leading edge of international practice in managing serious offenders. We will continue to make sure that we improve and develop our practices, but the United Kingdom is well served by the arrangements that we have.
I turn now to the approved premises in Stonnall road, in my hon. Friend’s constituency. I am aware, not least as a result of yesterday’s meeting, that there has been some local opposition to the approved premises over the years, and my hon. Friend laid out how long the issue has been around. However, those premises, along with others in England and Wales, must be understood in the context of a system-wide approach to the effective management of risk, so it might help if I explain briefly what approved premises do.
There are 100 approved premises in England and Wales, with a total of about 2,200 beds. They are the places that our most serious offenders go to when they are released on licence from prison, having served the custodial part of their sentences. Approved premises have 24-hour staffing and a structured regime, including overnight curfew. The principal aim of approved premises is to ensure that offenders are effectively supervised and monitored during the critical period immediately after release. During that period, the supervising agencies can best gauge how successful work in prison has been in addressing the underlying causes of an offender’s behaviour.
For certain offenders, such as child sex offenders, compliance with the restrictions in their licences, such as daytime reporting and exclusion from places such as schools or parks, can be more closely monitored in approved premises than if they are dispersed into alternative accommodation in the community. Residents in approved premises must take part in purposeful activity and in programmes designed to address their offending behaviour and to reduce reoffending. In addition, they are subject to drug and alcohol testing and are monitored on the premises by CCTV. Where the risk assessment deems it necessary, offenders can be escorted by a member of staff when they leave the approved premises.
The system is all about managing the risk posed by people who, having served their time in prison, are being returned to the community. If they remain a threat, approved premises are the best chance the system has to pick up their offending behaviour and to subject them, if necessary, to recall to prison. Staff working in approved premises are trained in risk assessment and to look for the telltale signs of risky behaviour. They work closely with offender managers and local police through MAPPA. They have daily contact with residents, so they are often the eyes and ears through which vital intelligence can be passed to other agencies. The whole idea is to monitor certain high-risk offenders much more closely than would otherwise be possible precisely, so that action can be taken promptly without the need to wait for a fresh offence to be committed.
Broadly speaking, the system is effective. Clearly, there will always be cases that slip through the net—risk can never be eliminated entirely—and each such case is one too many, but the available data show that offending rates for those held in approved premises are much better than for those who are not. In the last full year for which data are available, about 0.3% of residents were charged with a serious further offence. In addition, in many cases, prompt action is taken to recall offenders to custody before they can commit further offences.
The challenge is that communities where approved premises are situated understandably have concerns about being near offenders, especially those who have previously committed serious crimes and sexual offences. I hear and entirely understand my hon. Friend’s concerns that people are unhappy when they find they are living near somewhere where those who have done dreadful things are temporarily housed.
However, the alternative to offenders living in approved premises is not that they stay in prison. These people have been released from prison because they have served their custodial terms and they must be accommodated somewhere in the community. If they were not in approved premises, they would be somewhere else—somewhere less controlled and less suitable. The result would not be that there were no sex offenders in the community. Rather, there would still be sex offenders in the community, but not so obviously, so it would be much more difficult to provide effective supervision for them.
In the past, when we did not use approved premises as we do now, serious offenders leaving jail were much less effectively supervised. Too often, that included them being put in temporary accommodation, such as bed and breakfasts, alongside some of our most vulnerable families. Tackling that situation was the right thing to do.
My hon. Friend raised concerns about whether these approved premises are in the right place and about its history, so let me say clearly that the safety of the public is our first concern. Clearly, offenders returning to the community must go somewhere, but every offender is placed in every approved premises with a proper individual risk assessment.
Where any offender under statutory probation supervision, including one residing in an approved premises, is charged with a serious further offence, the supervising probation trust is required to undertake a rigorous review of the management of the case, but that was not the case in the circumstances that my hon. Friend raised. He told us that Walsall children’s services, no doubt prompted by his inquiry, became concerned that an individual was at risk. The director of children’s services wrote to the agencies involved and copied that letter to my hon. Friend and local councillors before there was a chance to review the case formally through MAPPA. She was clearly concerned that prompt action needed to be taken, and I am happy to look at the circumstances of the case to understand what happened. However, it is obviously of some satisfaction that necessary action was taken. The substantive result was that the offender was moved to another approved premises in the west midlands probation trust area, and no offence has been committed.
My hon. Friend may believe that the MAPPA process must have fallen short if the director had to behave in that way—
Mr Mike Hancock (in the Chair)
Order. I am sorry, Minister, but I have to interrupt you, because time has caught up with us.