Probation Services

Rachel Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 11th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. I pay tribute to the work he did as a Minister in the Department. I can reassure him that this is not a return—a “back to the future”—but a new departure. He is right that I will focus relentlessly on the need to harness the smaller organisations; we are going to do that. At force level, we will do it by working with PCCs. I have already engaged with them on several occasions about the need for co-commissioning. Where we have PCCs working together in reducing reoffending boards, I see that as another vehicle for the commissioning of truly localised services. I hear my hon. Friend, and we are going to act on it.

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)]

I am pleased that the Government are recognising what Labour Members and many others have known—that privatised probation is a flawed system that enables companies to put profit before people. I would like to thank my trade union, the Public and Commercial Services Union, as well as Napo and Unison, and their members, for highlighting the failures of privatisation. How will the Secretary of State improve morale in the profession, particularly after many experienced and highly skilled probation staff were lost as probation services were part-privatised?

[Robert Buckland]

I am sure that the hon. Lady would seek to qualify her remarks by paying tribute to the ethos that I have seen among the CRCs and their teams in terms of their dedication to the public service approach to probation that we all believe in. I do not want to ignore that for one moment, and I pay tribute to them for their work. With regard to morale, she will be encouraged to know that it is my aim, as a result of the increased funding we are providing, to reduce the workload of individual probation officers by about 20%, and to mix that workload so that they are able to manage it in an even more effective way. That will, I believe, help to increase morale and a sense of value. I hope very much that we can attract new talent, and indeed bring back talent that has left the service. That is something that I am very, very focused on.