Offender Rehabilitation Bill [HL] Debate
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Lord Beecham
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Offender Rehabilitation Bill [HL]
Lord Beecham Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Beecham
My Lords, as the noble Lord has made very clear, this amendment addresses issues both of form and substance. I entirely concur with his devastating and magisterial critique of the way the Government are seeking not merely to impose massive changes on a highly successful—indeed, award winning—public service but to do so without an evidence base, proper costings or any parliamentary scrutiny. The farce of the impact assessments has been compounded by the revelations of advice given to Ministers by Ministry of Justice officials on the risks attendant on the implementation of their policies and by the recently leaked document showing that the residual probation service dealing with high-risk offenders that is envisaged by the proposals will face further cuts in funding of 19% by 2017-18.
When the Government drove through their controversial, some of us would say disastrous, reorganisation of the National Health Service, they at least observed the proprieties and made the changes the subject of a Bill that was itself subject to scrutiny. In this case, as I have previously observed, the future of this service, so vital a part of our system of criminal justice and so important in maintaining the safety of the public, would not be being debated at all were it not for amendments emanating from the Opposition and Cross Benches in your Lordships’ House. It is astonishing, indeed disgraceful, that we read today that in their risk analysis Ministry of Justice officials have apparently stated that this Bill has been deliberately kept slim to “minimise the dependence of the reforms” on the passing of the legislation. I do not blame officials for this, nor do I blame the Minister in this House. The blame lies with the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State Mr Grayling, whose only reaction so far, I understand, is to have ordered a leaks inquiry.
Lord Randolph Churchill famously described Gladstone as an old man in a hurry. The Lord Chancellor is a relatively young man in a hurry, but he, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord McNally, would agree, is no Gladstone. If anything, he more closely resembles Randolph Churchill and if he continues on his present path, rushing on with eye-catching gimmicks and policies which have attracted the deep concern of the senior judiciary, such as those on criminal legal aid, judicial review and court privatisation, his political career is likely to end in the same way as Churchill’s.
It is characteristic of this Lord Chancellor that he proposes to begin to implement the changes he seeks as early as the end of August this year. What answers does he give to the questions raised by Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Probation in her response to the consultation? Many of these relate to the payment by results scheme to which we will turn when we debate the next amendment, but what is the Government’s reply to Liz Calderbank’s concern that the process of advising the court and Parole Board on sentencing and licensing conditions will require increased investment because more full pre-sentence reports will be required where cases will be referred to the private sector for supervision?
She suggests that a more mediated approach to supervising short-sentence offenders, which all of us welcome as a proposal in the Bill, would facilitate the better use of scarce resources. She is concerned that the proposed move to national commissioning instead of by 35 probation trusts,
“could be at the expense of the local perspective”,
cutting across promising developments in partnership work and disrupting successful partnerships with probation trusts. She refers to an issue raised in Committee about the position of small voluntary organisations in a commissioning framework dominated by large private sector providers, the fragmentation of responsibilities and a duplication of work. As she points out, the changes will effectively be irreversible once implemented. Do the words and warnings of this highly experienced public servant count for nothing?
The Lord Chancellor is promoting this agenda in the spirit of the promoters of the South Sea bubble, one of whom, it will be recalled, advertised a project,
“for carrying out an undertaking of great advantage but nobody to know what it is”.
Well, we know what it is, but we do not know what it will cost or whether it will work, and neither do the Government.
Under the Government’s appalling proposals for criminal legal aid a defence advocate will be paid the same fee for a guilty plea as a not guilty plea. The salary of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, I am happy to say, will be the same whatever the outcome of this debate. Nevertheless, I advise him to plead guilty, accept the amendment which would allow a proper consideration of the Government’s proposals, their benefits certainly alongside the risks and costs, and get it over with.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I share the frustration that has been expressed about this Bill not being about what we want to talk about and, indeed, diverting us from the important aspects of rehabilitation. I know we all share the objectives that have found this legislative form even if we do not all agree on the form they have taken in the Bill.
Being rather boring, I want to address the amendment as it is tabled and ask a couple of questions of the noble Lord when he comes to respond, if not of my noble friend. First, although this sounds quite counterintuitive, is there such a thing in legislation as the probation service? The Offender Management Act 2007, which is what I understand the changes which are being described are based on, talks about probation provision, probation purposes, probation service, but not the probation service. Secondly, again looking at the 2007 Act, have the proposers of this amendment taken into account the provisions within the Act for affirmative orders? Section 5(3)(c)—I know this is not the sort of speech that holds the House, certainly without me handing out programmes—provides for the purposes of a probation trust to include a purpose specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State. Those must be made, we find later in the Act, by affirmative resolution. Section 38(2)(a) is about amending, repealing or revoking an enactment and this again requires an affirmative resolution. As I said, being rather tedious, I am struggling a little with the form of the amendment and in understanding quite how it would apply in taking forward the points that have been made by the two noble Lords, given that I think we have to base what we are doing on the existing legislation.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, far from being tedious or boring, I found that an extremely interesting intervention, and I look forward to the reply of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. My noble friend is quite right to draw attention to the Offender Management Act 2007, because the plans that we have for the probation service are provided for on a legislative basis in that Act. The Bill before us is not, as we have fully acknowledged from the beginning, about the reorganisation of the probation service. As I have mentioned on a number of occasions, the powers to do that were helpfully left for us in the 2007 Act by the previous Administration.
Under the 2007 Act, the Secretary of State may contract, with a probation trust, providers from the private or voluntary sector, or he may provide probation services directly. The Secretary of State intends to use the powers conferred by that Act, together with his common law powers, to create and sell companies, and to transfer the delivery of a large proportion of the probation service to the private sector via contractual arrangements involving the formation and sale of a number of new community rehabilitation companies. That is the basis of the approach.
Of course, this has not come out of a blue sky. The department’s rehabilitation reforms, like any other major government project, are subject to additional scrutiny by the Cabinet Office and Her Majesty’s Treasury, and through the Government’s Major Projects Review Group. Her Majesty’s Treasury approval is required for projects outside Parliament’s delegated authority, and the programme team is finding this full engagement of particular use in learning from the experience of other government departments.
Therefore, I do not accept that this matter has not received very thorough preparation, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. This major piece of legislation is being managed quite properly. Ultimately, after all the rhetoric, the sting was in the tail. The noble Lord does not want this Bill to proceed and neither does the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. That is good opposition politics.
Lord Beecham
I am sorry but that is not the position. I am certainly happy that the Bill should proceed. An improved version of this Bill should proceed, and one of the improvements is contained in this amendment.
Lord McNally
One problem with piloting this Bill is that I am supposed to sit here and listen to all the aspersions about the capabilities of my department and the intentions of my Secretary of State, as well as all the other brickbats that are thrown. However, if anybody takes on board anything like the full intention behind the amendment, it will be clear that the two noble Lords want to throw a considerable spanner in the works. If that upsets them, I am very sorry but it is true. I remain committed, as I hope the House does—it gave the Bill its Second Reading and went through Committee—to what I have always seen as the deal that this Bill puts forward.
That deal is that we are putting forward a major reorganisation of probation in a way that releases the resources to provide care, guidance and support to a very important section of those who have been sentenced to fewer than 12 months—the group that is most likely to reoffend and to get into that whirligig of crime that we are trying to break. I say that each time the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, tables one of his amendments to delay the Bill. We are putting this forward with good intention, with a great deal of preparation and work, and with a clear determination to put before the House as much information as we can. We are developing a case and we will go into a certain amount of commercial negotiation but with the full acceptance that we are doing something very radical. To use the statistics from a leaked report, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, just did, is not worthy of him.
I know that the noble Lord gets upset when he is attacked, yet when one rereads his speech one sees that he is very willing to dish it out. He throws out figures of 80% of this and 60% of that when he knows as well as I do that we are talking about a specific management tool that was used and developed by the previous Labour Government inside government, not to assess definite threats or problems but to identify issues that need further work. That is what the process is.
We have had it before with other Bills—this sudden idea that somewhere inside government these risks are being hidden from the public and Parliament, when the Opposition know full well that what is being gone through is an exercise that enables those who are working on these various bits of policy to identify which particular area of policy they need to develop, do work on and make proposals in relation to. It is not, and never was, a forecast of what is going to happen. It is disingenuous to suggest to the House that that is what it is.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, was right to look at the amendment as it stands. It is very widely drafted. It states:
“No alteration or reform may be made to the structure of the probation service”,
but that would not just encompass national changes to a new framework; it would also mean that probation trusts in the current model could make no change to their set-up, however minor, without parliamentary approval. I do not want to dwell on this, but I ask the noble Lord to think carefully about whether that kind of parliamentary micromanagement is sensible in legislation.
I turn now to the detail of the changes that we are proposing. First, let me put on record that the Government recognise the excellent work that is done by the probation professionals across the country. I have said that time and again from this Dispatch Box. Our proposals for reform seek to build on those achievements, not to minimise them. We are doing that in two ways: first, by extending rehabilitation to all offenders who need it through the provisions in this Bill; and, secondly, by seeking to restructure the way in which these services are delivered by opening up the delivery of probation services to a wider market and by bringing the retained public sector probation service into a national entity. These latter elements of our reform proposals are crucial to the core aim of our proposals: to break the cycle of reoffending. We do so for three reasons. The first is that by opening up the provision of rehabilitation services to the private and voluntary sectors, we are seeking to promote additional innovation and investment. Despite the excellent work and commitment of those supporting offenders within the public sector, we are unable to achieve this fully under our current structures.
Secondly, by restructuring the public sector probation service into a national entity, we are focusing public sector resources on areas where it is most needed: on protecting the public from harm and providing clear and impartial advice to sentencers. By managing this service nationally, we are seeking to drive excellence across the country, bringing all delivery of these services up to the level of the highest performers.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, through both elements of this structural reform we are seeking to drive efficiency and savings in current practices and to provide the necessary investment to open up provision to all those who need it. I remind noble Lords that we simply cannot afford to expand rehabilitation to short-sentence offenders without these savings.
I now turn to the detail of the structural reforms that we are proposing. We are committed to maintaining a strong local delivery structure within the public sector probation service. Although current trusts have clearly built excellent relationships with other local delivery partners, much of this local working does not take place at the level of the 35 existing trusts but within the 150 local delivery units that sit beneath them. Our firm intention is to retain a strong local delivery structure based on these units, providing clear representation and involvement within both local authority and criminal justice areas.
Senior managers in the new organisation will have a strong presence within the National Offender Management Service and the Ministry of Justice, with directors for both England and Wales sitting on the NOMS board. Probation has often been viewed as the junior partner within NOMS, and this reorganisation is an opportunity to remedy that.
For probation functions that are being competed for, we are committed to retaining the skills, expertise and experience of operational staff currently within trusts. We are working closely with unions and associations representing probation providers to ensure that any process of selecting staff for the new structures is fair and minimises disruption as far as possible. We have also been engaging with interested parties to develop proposals for a professional body for the probation profession, and are strongly supportive of this idea.
We also recognise how crucial working in partnership is to the successful rehabilitation of offenders, and how probation trusts are integral to many of these excellent local partnership arrangements, including integrated offender management. The Government are determined not to disrupt this, and we are clear that contracted providers will need to demonstrate how they will engage effectively with key local partners when they are bidding for contracts.
As I set out in my earlier correspondence to noble Lords, we have already consulted extensively on the proposals in Transforming Rehabilitation: A Revolution in the Way We Manage Offenders. We received almost 600 formal responses to the consultation and held 14 consultation events that were attended by over 800 stakeholders, and the views received were invaluable in informing the reforms set out in the strategy published on 9 May. Both the transforming rehabilitation consultation document and the strategy were presented to Parliament, and we continue to welcome further interest from parliamentarians in these reforms.
I recognise the expertise that many Peers have on these issues, and I am committed to ensuring that noble Lords are kept informed of and involved in these reforms as they are taken forward. A number of other supporting documents have been and will be published that are available via the Ministry of Justice website: namely, the summary of responses to the consultation, the payment mechanism Straw Man and the prior information notice. In order to make them more easily accessible, I will place copies of these and all future documents giving further detail about the design of the new system in the House of Lords Library. I am happy to arrange an all-Peers meeting as and when we publish further documents. If it would be helpful to Peers, I will also explore through the usual channels the possibility of an opportunity for further parliamentary debate on these proposals outside the realm of this Bill.
In short, I am absolutely committed to ensuring that the Government engage with Peers and other parliamentarians as we develop the detail of our reforms. However, I stress again that the significant benefits that these changes will deliver, including the extension of rehabilitation to short-sentence offenders and the creation of “through the prison gate” resettlement services, are affordable only as part of a wider package of reforms. I hope that Peers will be able to support the Government in taking these reforms forward.
I hope that these points of detail will provide noble Lords with some reassurance as to the structural changes we have proposed, and in light of this I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Beecham
“Proposed reform of probation services
(1) Subject to subsection (2), before instituting a system of payment by results for the provision of services to supervise offenders, the Secretary of State shall prescribe by statutory instrument a scheme for such a system, which shall be laid before and approved by resolution of both Houses of Parliament.
(2) Before such system may come into existence, the Secretary of State shall undertake a pilot scheme lasting three years in duration, which shall be independently evaluated, with the evaluation report laid before Parliament and approved by resolution of both Houses of Parliament.
(3) Any payment by results pilot shall be based upon existing probation trust areas.”
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I begin by reiterating that I and colleagues on these Benches, and indeed across the whole House, are entirely supportive of the Government’s intentions in the Bill to reduce reoffending. We congratulate them on that aspiration. We want to work with them to see its fulfilment but we have legitimate questions to raise about the way in which they seek to proceed. Having said that, I repeat that we are at one with them in the objective of saving large amounts of public money and, equally importantly, helping to reshape the lives of the people and communities upon whom they have an impact.
This amendment, which I trust passes the Hamwee test, deals with payment by results. The Government’s proposals, which are of course not in the Bill, postulate a system in which for short-sentence offenders there will be supervision, from which the probation service will effectively be excluded, in respect of what have been described as low-and medium-risk offenders. That work will be carried out under contract by independent private or voluntary sector organisations, or a combination of the two. The amendment is designed to ensure that such a scheme is properly piloted. It does not rule it out, but it suggests that the scheme be properly piloted and then approved by Parliament as a radical change to the nature of the probation service.
I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Taylor and Lord McNally, for answering after a fashion several questions which I raised at Second Reading and in Committee on payment by results schemes in connection with this question of the prevention of reoffending. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, responded to my request for an explanation of why the Government abandoned pilot schemes by the Wales and the Staffordshire and West Midlands probation trusts, and why they refused an FOI request for details of the evaluation of those pilots, by a curious answer to my first question—to which I shall return—and by responding to my second by falling back on the wholly unsatisfactory defence that the information relates to the formulation and development of government policy.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister and to other noble Lords for their contributions to this short debate. I begin with the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, about the potential conflict of interest. If I may say so, it is potentially rather worse than the two instances that she gave because, in addition to the two services that she referred to, these contractors may be involved in two other areas. The first is increasing involvement with the police service and the second is the latest proposal for the privatisation of the courts. The whole spectrum of the criminal justice system could thus, in one way or another, come to be run by one of these bodies. Therefore, I think that there is real substance in the point that she made.
The noble Lord was kind enough to compare me with Lenin. Apart from the hairstyle I do not think that there is a huge resemblance. He referred to Lenin’s famous dictum about giving support to the social democrats that the rope would give to the hanging man. I would never do that, except possibly to Liberal Democrats, which is a rather different category.
However, there are more serious issues here. The noble Lord quoted with approbation the results of the Peterborough pilot—not so much the Doncaster pilot for fairly obvious reasons—and said that it has shown an improvement of 6%. That was true but it took the situation back only to the preceding year of the period. The crucial point is that the two probation trust pilots were terminated. We still do not know, because no Minister has condescended to tell us, why those two pilot schemes in Wales and Staffordshire in the West Midlands, run by the probation trusts, were terminated; not only that, Ministers will not give us the evaluation. Yet, in Peterborough and Doncaster, not yet halfway through the proposed piloting period, they disclosed results. I find that inconsistency wholly inexplicable.
On the question of payment, I am not asking for details of the eventual payment scheme, but for an indication roughly speaking of what percentage might be attributable to the results. What proportion are we talking about? Are we talking about 10% of a fee, something up to 20%, or somewhere in between? There is no indication at all of the proportions that the Government might be contemplating. It is nice to know that at some point information will be placed in the Library; it will be a little late for this House to use unless the Bill comes back from the Commons in a different form.
Moreover, in relation to piloting, I spoke in Committee of another pilot that the Government are conducting on drugs offences which will not report until 2017-18. The Government, quite rightly, have not produced evidence on that yet but they will not implement anything until those pilots are completed. That is the thrust of the amendment. I repeat that we want reoffending reduced. We like the notion very much of affording supervision to a great many more people. We are not convinced that the Government have the evidence yet on how to do it efficiently, effectively and economically. This amendment would help them to do that in a timescale that I repeat is less than the timescale of the various other pilots about which we have heard. I am afraid that the Minister has not given satisfactory answers to the questions that I and others have raised and I wish to test the opinion of the House.
Lord Beecham
“Low, medium and high risk offenders
(1) For the purpose of the provision of probation services, the definition of a low, medium and high risk provider shall be prescribed by statutory instrument, which shall be laid before Parliament and subject to the affirmative resolution procedure of both Houses.
(2) For the purpose of the provision of probation services and supervision post release, the definition of a low or medium risk offender shall not include offences of a violent or sexual nature, stalking or domestic violence.”
Lord Beecham
My Lords, noble Lords will be relieved to hear that this is not an amendment on which I propose to divide the House. Rather, it is an attempt to try to elucidate some of the issues around the question of risk, to which I have previously referred. It is a matter on which the Chief Inspector of Probation has commented. In particular, she has drawn attention to the movement between risk categories, which is generally assumed to be in the order of 25% with a significant proportion moving from a lower to a higher risk. Indeed, studies carried out by the inspectorate show that as many as 50% of offenders change category. There is a real concern that, given this binary system, the information required to transfer from a low or medium risk to a higher risk category, which would involve a change in supervisor from the organisations that are to be contracted under the payment-by-results system—assuming that they are non probation service, as the Government intend—to the probation service as the body responsible for high risk offenders is, to put it mildly, unclear.
The potential problem is that the information may not be timely, if it is available at all. That may lead to high risk offenders not receiving the degree of skilled supervision which is primarily available from the probation service. What the amendment seeks to do, quite simply, is ask the Government to work through their proposals more substantively than so far appears to be the case with a view to defining the categories more clearly. In particular there is a suggestion that the definition should exclude from the low and medium risk categories those offenders who have been convicted of offences, as the amendment states,
“of a violent or sexual nature, stalking or domestic violence”.
Those should always be regarded as potentially of high risk. The effect would be that people in those categories would be supervised by the probation service. Given the nature of the offences, that seems to be a sensible precaution that will allow the service to monitor the offender and, as I indicated in the previous debate, to relate to the victims. These victims will clearly be vulnerable individuals and usually, although not necessarily, women. It is as much the job of the probation service to protect the safety of those people as it is to promote the rehabilitation of offenders.
Even if he cannot give assurances today, I hope that the noble Lord will consider coming back at Third Reading, perhaps with some formulation that would meet the objectives here. They are not at all inconsistent with the thrust of government policy but do identify a potential problem given the split of responsibilities to which we have referred and which we debated earlier. I hope that, in that spirit, the noble Lord will look at this issue again and respond in a way that would not only be satisfactory to your Lordships’ House but would meet the concerns raised, perfectly legitimately and forcefully, by the Chief Inspector of Probation. I beg to move.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that very full explanation of the Government’s approach, and I derive a reasonable degree of comfort and assurance from it. I am not entirely convinced by the concept of the National Probation Service as an improvement on the more localised service that is currently being delivered through probation trusts at local level. I was not a great admirer of the previous Government’s decision to create the National Offender Management Service either. The Minister and I are apparently at one about that.
Lord McNally
I remember our debates on that decision. Part of the problem with the last reorganisation was what we said at the time would be the downgrading of the probation service by having no national voice. That is the real win in this reorganisation: the probation service being where it should be, at the top table and with direct access to the Secretary of State.
Lord Beecham
I can certainly see the case for an arrangement of that kind, but the operational workings of the service are better driven at a more local level, with the service being involved in the relevant areas— as I said, I think there are 35 at the moment—by engaging with the other partners, which are a necessary part of dealing with the problems of offenders. That includes magistrates, who I understand will no longer be involved in this process, and there is some concern about that among magistrates. It also includes other government departments, such as the DWP, local authorities and the voluntary sector operating at a local level.
I continue to have reservations about the nationalisation of the service, as it were, which again might differentiate me from Lenin. I am reasonably assured by the process that the Minister describes, but on the more substantive issue I still have some anxiety, which may be shared generally, about the process of identifying a change of category and the reference upward to the probation service, however constituted, particularly if there was a large jump from a lower-risk case, which might well be supervised by a contractual or voluntary organisation at a comparatively low level of skill, which might make it more difficult to detect the change. Without suggesting further pilots, since these are not in fashion at the moment, it would be helpful to hear from the Minister at some point, perhaps just informally, whether the transition will be kept under review and an effort made to collate the experience across this scheme to see how it works over a reasonable period.
The other question that arises is how this arrangement of transfer will affect the contract. I suppose it should not be assumed that a transfer of risk necessarily means that the provider has failed in their contractual obligation, because there might not be another offence. Again, I appreciate that we are talking about cohorts, but there are some significant numbers here. Given that 250,000 people are to be involved, I do not know how big the cohorts are to be. I am not asking for an answer to this now—again, perhaps it could be by letter—but if there is a change of category so that at different times you have two separate organisations with responsibility for part of the cohort, how will that impact upon the payment system? Are there any incentives, perverse or otherwise, in that context? For example, if somebody was a bit difficult at the lower level and if there are large numbers, it might be convenient to move them up to the probation service. Will that have an implication for the funding?
That is a rather separate point, I admit, and not covered by the precise terms of the amendment, but it is perhaps worth exploring. However, in the circumstances I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, the government amendments in this group make a number of minor technical changes to the Bill. In essence, they ensure that terminology is consistent within the Bill and with other legislation.
Amendments 7 and 8 relate to the new “drug appointment requirement”. The amendments replace, in two places in Schedule 1, the word “condition” with “requirement”, which is the term used with other requirements of the new supervision period and is consistent with the title of the requirement.
Amendment 10 relates to the provisions dealing with supervision default orders: that is, when an offender has failed to comply with a condition of their supervision. The amendment simply clarifies that copies of the supervision default order must be sent to the supervisor who is responsible for supervising the offender during the supervision period.
Amendments 11 to 14 relate to Clause 5 and the arrangements that exist where an offender is subject to consecutive sentences. The amendments replace the term “offender” with the more usual construction “P”. This is consistent with the terminology used in the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which Clause 5 amends.
Finally, Amendment 20 relates to Schedule 6, which deals with offenders sentenced by service courts. The amendment clarifies the position in that it ensures that the definition of “the appropriate court”, which relates only to civilian courts, does not apply to overseas community orders under the Armed Forces Act 2006. As I said, these are small clarifications and technical amendments. I beg to move.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, there comes a temptation to move that any of these riveting amendments be piloted. I am happy to concur with the Minister’s proposal.
Lord Beecham
“Veterans’ courts pilot
(1) Veterans’ courts shall be established for the purpose of assisting the rehabilitation of ex-service personnel convicted of offences for which non-custodial sentences could be imposed by the trial court.
(2) Subject to subsection (3), before instituting the provision of veterans’ courts, the Secretary of State shall prescribe by statutory instrument a scheme for such a system, which shall be laid before and approved by resolution of each House of Parliament.
(3) Before such system may come into existence, the Secretary of State shall undertake a pilot scheme lasting three years in duration, which shall be independently evaluated to include consultation with magistrates, with the evaluation report laid before Parliament and approved by resolution of both Houses of Parliament.”
Lord Beecham
My Lords, this amendment replicates the one that I moved in Committee and embodies the proposal that I made when participating in the Second Reading debate. It seeks to address the particular needs of ex-service men and women, many of whom—sadly, rather too many of whom—find themselves in difficulties with the criminal justice system from time to time.
The intention behind the amendment is consistent with the line which we have persistently adopted on these Benches and which has been consistently rejected by the Government—that of piloting a new proposal. As I understand it from the Minister, there may be a sympathetic view of this proposal in government. Whether that extends to piloting, I do not know, but it would seem to make sense to adopt that approach.
However, the main point is that, as part of the military covenant, it should be accepted that there is a case for a special forum before which offenders who have been convicted of, or pleaded guilty to, crimes that would potentially carry less than a custodial sentence can be assisted in avoiding reoffending and become rehabilitated. That is on the basis that we owe people who serve their country in, as I said, often dangerous and difficult circumstances a particular duty.
The amendment follows the precedent of the United States, in which every state now has a veterans’ court manned by a judge, who may often have been the original trial judge, and at which a veteran mentor is available, together with other agencies, to assist the ex-service personnel who has committed a crime. It has proved a remarkably successful way of preventing reoffending in this particular vulnerable group.
Many of those who have spoken in your Lordships’ House—the noble Viscount, Lord Slim, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, in particular—have expressed their support for this concept. I note, to my surprise, that even the Sunday Express—not, I confess, a paper that I would normally look to for endorsement—has embraced the concept with enthusiasm. The amendment offers a more sensitive way of dealing with a particularly important and vulnerable group as part of what ought to be a wide-ranging series of provisions in conjunction with the military covenant, which the Government have helpfully adopted. Having had a conversation with the Minister, I apprehend that some indication will be given that this proposal will be taken forward, perhaps as part of a wider-ranging series of provisions, about which we may learn something tonight or in the future. I would very much welcome that and, on that basis, I will certainly not be moving the amendment to a vote.
Recently, a report has been published, commissioned by the Howard League for Penal Reform, and it may be helpful if I address some comments to what it has produced. Incidentally, I note that the Howard League commissioned this report as long ago as Armistice Day 2009, so it has been a long time in gestation, which perhaps is an indication of the importance of the project. It has focused its attention on ex-service personnel in prison. Of course, that is an important group but it is not by any means the biggest group of ex-offenders with whom we are concerned, given that—there are various estimates—there are probably 20,000 people at any one time in the criminal justice system who have served in the Armed Forces, of which the great majority have not been serving custodial sentences. I think that rather distorts the view that the report comes out with.
However, the report makes a couple of significant points. The first is that 25% of those surveyed were convicted of sexual offences, which is well over twice the proportion of prisoners generally. A bigger proportion have been convicted of violent crime, but the figure is not hugely disproportionate in comparison to the ordinary prison population—it is something like 10% or 11% greater. Even so, it is not an insignificant number.
The Howard League makes a number of very sensible recommendations in general about ex-service personnel in the justice system, pointing to the need for a greater emphasis on identifying those personnel at risk before they get to prison, and perhaps even while they are in service. It recommends that probation service standards should be revised to ascertain the status of ex-service personnel. We will then know—or, more particularly, the Howard League and, I guess, those with whom contracts are to be made will know—who are ex-service personnel. There should generally be more research on the characteristics of ex-servicemen in custody, but I would widen that to those who have come into contact with the whole justice system.
The league points out that a wide range of charities and other organisations are involved with service personnel. That is true, but it is something of a mixed blessing. I have heard it said that some of these charities are not particularly effective and, of course, there are so many that it is somewhat confusing. Moreover, according to the Royal British Legion, some of the initiatives in the voluntary sector tend to be reactive rather than, as it would put it, proactive—or, as I would say in better English, active—in pursuing these issues.
Some interesting developments have taken place, and I have no doubt that the noble Lord is aware of them, including a veterans in custody support scheme at HM Prison Everthorpe, which has links to service charities. There is also something called the Prison In-Reach initiative. The Cheshire probation service, interestingly, has a veteran support officer in each of its six offices. I do not know whether that is one for each or whether there is somebody available in each from time to time. It is also looking at a veteran support programme. In parenthesis, I wonder whether the Minister will ensure that such initiatives will survive the very reforms that we were discussing earlier today in a rather more contentious spirit than I hope will be the position on this matter.
However the Howard League, having looked at the American experience, concludes that it is not appropriate to adopt it here. It did that on the rather superficial argument that veteran offenders should not, as a class, be treated any differently in the system from other offenders. That underestimates both the obligations that we have to this group of people and the particular characteristics that they have. I do not see that it necessarily follows that what is being proposed, which is, I repeat, not a separate court to try the issue of guilt or innocence, but one to deal with offenders who are not in prison, in a constructive way in order to avoid their reoffending. The conclusion does not necessarily follow from its analysis and I hope that it is one that the Government will not adopt.
As discussed in Committee, there are other examples of special courts, be they domestic violence courts or drugs courts. It could be argued that this proposal for a veterans’ court is an extension of that concept; it is not hugely out of kilter with the rest of the structure. In any event, I would urge that this group is important enough to warrant at the very least a piloting of what has proved to be an extremely successful process in the United States, with very substantial reductions in reoffending rates, to the extent of 100%, as I understand it, in Buffalo, which was an earlier one, and something like an 85% reduction in reoffending in Minnesota. A number of American states have passed separate laws about the treatment of their veterans. We are not suggesting that that should be the case, but a framework should be established within which their particular needs can be addressed for their benefit, and indeed for the benefit of the community.
I very much hope that the noble Lord will give his blessing to this and that we can take these matters forward in conjunction with appropriate other government departments, notably the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office Minister responsible for prisons. I hope that a conclusion can be reached that will assist these people, help society as a whole, acknowledge our debt to veterans and, at the same time, reduce the likelihood of society suffering from offences committed by this group. I beg to move.
Viscount Slim
My Lords, first, I thank the Minister for the quick conversation that we had on this subject of veterans’ courts. From that conversation I took away two points. The first was that the Minister is still not overly keen on having a trial of veterans’ courts. Secondly, but perhaps more importantly, he said that something had to be done about this subject.
I draw the noble Lord’s attention to the military covenant. The right honourable gentleman the Secretary of State for Defence has to make a report at a prescribed time on the state of the military covenant. In his meetings with various ministries to gather information, I would have thought that the Ministry of Justice would be paramount in the thinking and discussion to find out what the plan is for young veterans who do not have or need a custodial sentence but who need rehabilitation. What is the plan from the Ministry of Justice to achieve this? I also remind the Minister that, with the coalition deciding to get rid of 25,000 soldiers, this problem will get much worse. There has to be a plan. All I am asking is that if the Minister still does not wish to trial veterans’ courts, which I would be sad about and which I consider probably the best way to move forward, the Ministry of Justice must come up with a plan and a decision on how this problem will be handled. Therefore, I sit down and await the Minister’s plan.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I had hoped that there would be a clear acceptance of the notion that a trial should be made of the veterans’ court concept. I appreciate that it is probably not necessary for legislation for this purpose, but there has to be a peg on which to hang the proposal and this was a suitable example for such an exercise. Given that we are not talking about large numbers and that it would obviously be sensible but not essential to pilot such a scheme, and that the costs would be minimal, I find it difficult to understand why the Government cannot say that they will look at all the issues and give this particular concept a go to see what works. The measure would be, as has been the case elsewhere, whether it results in reductions in the reoffending rates.
As the Minister said, we are not talking about vast numbers of people, and it should be perfectly possible to mount such an exercise and for the Government to give an indication that they will do that. The Government are not slow to announce other initiatives when they choose to—in particular, the Ministry of Justice is not slow to introduce a wide range of proposals and act upon them.
I find myself, as I was in Committee, somewhat disappointed with the response.
Lord McNally
The noble Lord is being uncharacteristically churlish. I do not see how far I can go. I have already told him that the number of people is very small. Where would this court be established? What would it do? Which problem would it address? I have said that these issues can and should be discussed and that we will take them forward on an all-party basis and look for positive solutions. He must realise that I cannot go any further than that. I cannot say, “Right, we will set up a pilot in Newcastle”, and have them all sit round the room, not quite sure what they were there to do and what problem they were addressing. This needs a lot more work. It is an interesting area. We have responded as constructively as we can. The noble Lord has made progress; he should enjoy his success rather than continuing to grumble.
Lord Beecham
I am sorry that the Minister adopts that tone. I am sure he is personally warm towards this proposal. Whether that goes for other Ministers, I do not know; perhaps we will find out. I hope I have not given the impression of being churlish. We are approaching Armed Forces Day. We ought to be in a position to give a clear indication that what is ultimately a fairly simply project—the American precedent is perfectly straightforward, clear and inexpensive; the outcomes are easily measured, and it would be likely to be successful—will be undertaken. I do not ask the Minister to say definitely today that there will be a pilot project or some kind of experiment with a veterans’ court, I just find the tone less positive than perhaps our previous conversations had led me to believe it to be. Perhaps, far from being churlish, I was being a bit naive in interpreting what the noble Lord was saying.
We have a little while until Third Reading. I hope that we can make some progress, given that it is not a huge problem and that the ask in expenditure and organisation is not huge. However, I must reserve the position to bring something back at Third Reading. Of course I appreciate that it would have to be slightly different from this amendment, but I hope that is not necessary because I would like to go through the same Lobby as the noble Lord for a change on an issue of this kind, particularly given the client group that we are talking about.
I will not seek to test the opinion of the House this evening, but I do not rule that out if there is no clear indication of a positive attitude, which would not bind the Government for all time but would allow us to see whether we can learn from that American experience. I am not saying that it would necessarily be the outcome that one would hope for, but I hope that we will have an opportunity to find that out. In the mean time, I withdraw the amendment.