Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords]

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I beg to move an amendment:

“That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords] because the implementation of the proposals in the Bill depends on the Government’s proposed restructuring of the Probation Service; believes that this proposed restructuring will see the abolition of local Probation Trusts, the fragmentation of supervision of offenders on the basis of their risk level and the commissioning of services direct from Whitehall; further believes that the Government has failed to provide any costings for their proposals; notes reports that suggest the Ministry of Justice’s own internal risk register warns that the Government’s proposals could result in a high risk of an unacceptable drop in operational performance; and further declines to give a Second Reading to the Bill on the grounds that none of the Government’s proposals has been piloted nor independently evaluated, potentially resulting in an unnecessary risk to the public’s safety.”

We support many of the Bill’s objectives, despite that awful speech by the Justice Secretary. The first part of the Bill, consisting of clause 1, was inserted by the other place because of its concerns about controversial plans to reform and restructure the probation service. Clause 1 requires any change to the structure of the probation service to be approved by both Houses of Parliament. We note that, so far, the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) supports clause 1, but we will see as the evening progresses and as the votes transpire how he moves his position, and whether he decides to vote with conviction or do what the Conservative Whip asks him to do. I will return to clause 1 later.

The second part of the Bill, clauses 2 to 13, deals with the supervision of offenders released from short custodial sentences. All offenders released from sentences of less than two years would be subject to at least 12 months’ mandatory supervision in the community. It has always been a ridiculous anomaly that short-sentence prisoners, the group with the highest rates of reoffending, are the ones left to their own devices when released from prison. As the Justice Secretary just read out, the previous Labour Government tried to address that with the custody plus proposals. I will come back to those later—accurately, rather than by rehashing history in the way attempted a short while ago. Nevertheless, extending supervision to those who serve less than 12 months in custody should play a part in reducing reoffending.

The Bill would also put on a statutory footing the requirement to have regard to the special needs of female offenders when making supervision arrangements. We are grateful to Lord Woolf for his important contributions on that matter in the other place. For the avoidance of doubt, we also welcome the introduction of the new drug appointment requirements and the expansion of the categories of drugs that can be tested for. The third part of the Bill, clauses 14 to 18, would amend the community sentencing framework.

As much as the Justice Secretary would like us to do so, however, we cannot read the Bill in isolation. It is a smokescreen for fundamental changes to the way in which probation works in England and Wales. The motivation that the Justice Secretary relies on in public is his frustration that reoffending rates are too high, which he says means that something bold and radical needs to be done. He is in serious danger, however, of doing something that, bold and radical as it is, might make matters worse and increase the risk to the public.

We know that probation works, as those under supervision are less likely than those who are not to go on and commit more crimes. The MOJ’s figures for the most recent full year show that among those who received a sentence of between four and 10 years who were released and supervised by probation, 30.7% reoffended; among those who received a sentence of between 12 months and four years who were released and supervised by probation, 36.2% reoffended; and among those in custody for less than 12 months who were released and not supervised by probation at all, 58.5% reoffended. By the by, it is a shame that the Justice Secretary is not suggesting payment by results for the public probation service. However, I welcome the fact that he appears, at least on this particular aspect, to want to follow the evidence and to use it to inform his policy making. Offenders who receive probation support do better than those who do not. That must be why he wants to extend probation to those who receive a custodial sentence of less than 12 months. But why does he want completely to dismantle our probation service?

We can all agree that too many people are stuck in a cycle of reoffending. Just over a week ago, on a visit to the Justice Secretary’s flagship Oakwood prison, I met one young man who had previously been in prison six times and who could not have been more than 25 years old. It is precisely that group of people whom we need to get to grips with. It is not only a waste of taxpayers’ money, although we know that on average it costs £40,000 a year to keep someone like him in prison. There is a cost to society, too, as crime is estimated to cost the country £12 billion a year as well as creating, as the Justice Secretary said, needless victims of crime, heartache and misery. It is also a waste of human potential for people to spend their time locked up behind bars when, if properly reformed, they could contribute more meaningfully to society. Nobody would disagree with the need to address the offending behaviour of those individuals, but we do disagree with dismantling probation.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Is there not a competition among various Secretaries of State to see who can privatise the most? The Secretary of State is advocating a policy that was pursued the last time the Conservatives were in government, when the solution to all problems was either privatisation or banging people up.

[Sadiq Khan]

If the Justice Secretary was saying that he had evidence that privatising probation worked or that it would save money, he would have an argument. He is saying neither, which is why we suspect that this is all about ideology rather than the evidence of what works. Although we agree with the broad objectives of the Bill—[Interruption.] I am sorry, but I can hear chuntering from the Lib Dem Whip, the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt), which is quite distracting. I am not sure whether she is trying to persuade her hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham to vote with her, or to put me off my stride—[Interruption.] She is certainly better than the Justice Secretary at trying to put me off my stride.

Although we agree with the broad objectives of the Bill, there are some major areas of difference between us and the Government and some big questions remain unanswered. Those questions are so fundamental that they cast a shadow over the Bill and call into question whether its objectives can be implemented without taking a serious gamble with public safety as a result. The Bill has been brought forward against a backdrop of upheaval and change—change that is not informed by evidence or statistics, but driven by recklessness and ideology.