Oral Answers to Questions

Joan Walley Excerpts

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

As we set out in the Green Paper, we are consulting on how the five pilot schemes should proceed in various sectors, in order to see how we can make payment by results work. The existing pilot, involving the Peterborough social impact bond, is also still running. Our intentions are to unlock the expertise of the independent and third sectors in order to reduce reoffending, and to examine how the public sector can participate in the schemes.

[Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

In the corner of Staffordshire and Cheshire, we have a state-of-the-art community chaplaincy scheme, which has got reoffending down to 12 %, compared with the national average of 70%. In the meeting that the Ministers have promised to have with Staffordshire Members, will they undertake when considering rehabilitation to take account of the best practice shown by that scheme in Stoke-on-Trent?

[Nick Herbert]

Those are precisely the kind of schemes whose expertise we want to unlock, and we want to engage more of them where we can. The rehabilitation revolution will provide an opportunity to do that. The key is to upscale such projects and make them more widely available, which is why payment by results offers such an important opportunity.