Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords]

Andy McDonald Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Alan Beith]

No, I will conclude because many hon. Members wish to speak.

Elements of the Bill will provide the opportunity to realise the Justice Committee’s vision of how we can reduce crime through more effective use of taxpayers’ money. Currently, we waste taxpayers’ money in not dealing effectively with reoffending. That must change. However, there are significant risks in the pace at which the Government intend to implement the programme. We must ask questions about that, and my Committee will do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Healey]

There are some useful provisions in the Bill. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) has said that the Opposition do not object to some of the Bill. Additional requirements as part of supervision orders are sensible. Extending the supervision requirement to those who are released from custody after short-term sentences is sensible. My argument is that the legislation is part of a wider programme, the policy purpose of which lacks evidence and justification, but not the ideology that drives the Justice Secretary. That purpose—that end—is the privatisation of our probation services. It is not about the means to a better probation service or better protection for the public.

Let me develop my argument. I have mentioned the first and second coalition consultation reports. To be fair, the third report—“Punishment and Reform: Effective Probation Services”—which was published in March 2012, restated the intent to open up the market for the supervision of low-risk offenders. However, it also proposed a stronger role for probation trusts and a stronger emphasis on partnership working. The report states:

“We intend that there will be a stronger role for public sector Probation Trusts as commissioners of competed probation services…We will devolve to Probation Trusts the budget for community offender services”.

At that time, the Government said:

“Trusts are best placed to work with courts and with local partners to design and commission services jointly…We will support the joint commissioning of services for offenders between probation and key partners such as local authorities, health and the police.”

[Andy McDonald]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the current proposals run the risk of dispensing with excellent services in the not-for-profit sector, which Government Members say they want to preserve? Will the proposals not leave that door open, because such charitable organisations do not have the critical mass to enable them to bid for the contracts or withstand a payment-by-results mechanism?

[John Healey]

My hon. Friend is right. One of the real worries about this so-called reform programme is that it borrows from the Work programme, which the Justice Secretary introduced when he was Minister of State for Employment. Frankly, many of the failures, flaws and potential fraud in the Work programme could be replicated in our probation service.

Returning to probation trusts, I quoted from the March 2012 consultation report. What has changed since then? The Justice Secretary has changed. He has stopped the pilots; he has added medium-risk offenders who have served a custodial sentence, and those on community sentences and suspended sentences, to the list of offenders who will be handed over to the private sector; and he has issued the invitation to contract for £450 million of services before the Bill has even had its Second reading in this House. There has been no testing, no costing, no evidence to support such sweeping changes and no backing from any serious professional probation voices.

Clause 1 was inserted by the Lords as a vote of no confidence in the case that the Justice Secretary has been making. That was not a party political move, as it was led by Cross Benchers and a former chief inspector of prisons. Clause 1 was introduced and approved because there are still too many doubts about the Bill and the programme of privatisation—doubts about the viability, accountability, affordability and safety of services under a new, largely privatised system. How much will it cost? How much will it save? How will it be more effective? How will it reduce reoffending? How great will the risk be in putting serious offenders in the hands of private companies? How much money will be offered up front? How much will be held back and paid via payment by results? How will the repeated failures of the Work programme be avoided? How will the fiasco and fraud we have seen before be avoided in the Ministry of Justice’s management of contracts?

To justify the proposed legislation, the Justice Secretary has to address those concerns, and he has not. He has to be able to demonstrate that his plans are better than building on what is already in place. He cannot do that because all 35 probation trusts in England and Wales have been independently judged either good or excellent. All 35 probation trusts are hitting all the targets they have been set. Reoffending rates for those under their supervision have been falling every year for more than a decade. Imagine the credit the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government would take if all local authority children’s services were judged good or excellent. Imagine the purring pleasure of the Secretary of State for Education if all schools were judged good or excellent. Imagine the huge relief of the Secretary of State for Health if all hospitals were judged good or excellent. No other part of the public sector performs so consistently, and to such a high professional standard, as the probation service.