Offender Management Bill

My Lords, the Government claim that the aim of the Bill is to reduce reoffending. Everyone in the House would support that aim; we on these Benches certainly do. However, the Government’s Bill is deeply flawed in both its underlying structure and its assumptions. Its real objective is to secure more centralised government control over the commissioning of offender management services. It centralises everything on the Home Office and removes responsibility from local people who govern the Probation Service. If anyone doubts that, they need only to read Part 1 to have those doubts dispelled. The Secretary of State’s powers run like a rod of iron throughout Part 1. The Minister has confirmed officially on the Floor of the House today that the Bill, although launched in the Home Office, is soon to be cast adrift as the Home Office is emasculated and this work is transferred to the Ministry of Justice. One therefore assumes that, when the Bill reaches Committee after 9 May, the Government will table amendments to replace references to the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State with references to the Lord Chancellor. The Government claim that the Bill is about contestability—opening up the provision of offender management services to the private and voluntary sectors. We support the idea of more diversity of provision. Voluntary and private organisations have so much of value to offer in the management of offenders. We welcome wider involvement and greater competition in the delivery of public services. We have no political or philosophical objection to the private or voluntary sectors carrying out the supervisory services that are currently carried out by the probation services. We welcome the involvement of the private and voluntary sectors and the innovation that they can bring to probation services. There are many examples of excellent work that assists in rehabilitating offenders both in prisons run by the Prison Service and in prisons that are privately run. I have been fortunate to visit many successful projects during my years both as a magistrate and as a Member of this House. My most recent visit was to the Community Family Trust at Brixton prison, and I am very grateful to the Nehemiah project for its invitation, which I received last week. I look forward to taking advantage of it. The Government’s repeated refrain has been that the Bill will engage the services of charities and the not-for-profit sector in ways that are simply impossible at present, but they have never proved what the barriers are to engaging those services under current legislation. The Government have offered no compelling reason why we need yet another piece of legislation to increase what is their own self-imposed level of 3 per cent of expenditure that is currently outsourced. The level of private and voluntary sector provision was at least twice as much as that before the Home Office, under this Government, decided that the money was not well spent and halved it. It is clearly possible to double, treble or quadruple the quantity of service provision from the private and voluntary sectors without any new legislation. I am also concerned that the centralising model of commissioning chosen by the Government could squeeze out the contribution of smaller charities and give preference to the largest national charities and companies. They can and do provide excellent services, but they may not be the only appropriate providers of services to meet local needs. We believe that there should be local commissioning to meet local needs and we shall table amendments to achieve that. The second major defect in the Bill is that the proposals focus on yet another organisational restructuring, which would be the third Probation Service reorganisation in just six years. It really is impossible to improve service delivery in that way. In April 2001, the Probation Service was restructured to create a National Probation Service with 42 local probation boards. Less than three years later in January 2004, the Home Secretary announced the merger of the Prison Service and the Probation Service to form the still uncompleted National Offender Management Service. As the noble Baroness reminded us, in 2005, the Home Office published its consultation document, Restructuring Probation to Reduce Re-offending. I note that she said today—I hope I wrote down her comment correctly—that ““that did not find favour with all those involved?. What was the result of that consultation? There were 748 submissions. Ten were in favour of the Government’s proposals. Did the Government listen to the advice of the overwhelming majority? The noble Baroness says yes, but it appears not, because they ploughed on regardless and in early January 2005 the NOMS Bill had its First Reading in this House. It was ditched as the general election loomed and now it comes to haunt us again in slightly different livery, but mainly the same. This constant bureaucratic restructuring has been ridiculously expensive. So what do we on these Benches want from offender management policy? First, we want effective offender management from end to end, just as the Government claim they want. Secondly, we want rigorous and effective supervision of those sentenced to community sentences. Thirdly, we want judges and magistrates to be provided with accurate and relevant pre-sentence reports in good time. The noble Baroness referred to the amendment that the Home Secretary agreed to at the very last minute on Report in another place. It will ensure that the core offender management work, such as writing reports for courts and supervising individual cases, will remain in the public sector for the next three years. But we shall need clarification in Committee on exactly which proceedings will remain in the public sector. Statements in the Commons after Third Reading are less than clear on that matter. The noble Baroness referred to the mechanism by which that protection can be withdrawn. We consider the limitation in Clause 4 to be fundamental to the Bill. We therefore find it strange that the Government have also inserted the means for removing the safeguard in that clause by statutory instrument in Clause 12. We will therefore need to look very carefully at that in Committee to see whether it is appropriate. Fourthly, we want those who are subject to drug rehabilitation requirements, curfews, residential requirements, alcohol treatment requirements or attendance centre requirements imposed under community orders to be positively supervised and encouraged to comply and reform. Finally, we want the public’s confidence in community sentencing to grow rather than remain at a low ebb. If the Government persist in managing a system that means that probation staff feel undervalued and cannot perform to the standard that we all have a right to expect, the public’s confidence in non-custodial sentences will diminish even further. I join the noble Baroness in, quite rightly, congratulating the Probation Service on its centenary of achievement and success. During the passage of this Bill, we must ensure that it has another century of success. The Bill is a real distraction from the problems at hand. There have been more than 60 Home Office Bills in 10 years, during which time reoffending rates rose by nearly 10 per cent. But the Government have still not learnt the one self-evident truth: one cannot legislate out of law and order failings. It is not the way to success. The reason for the soaring prison reoffending rate is the failure to retrain and rehabilitate in prison, and the reason for that is quite simply the chaos and disruption caused by the Government’s failure to provide enough prison places. The Bill will not do anything to solve that. The benefits claimed for this Bill do not in fact require legislation, but the harmful aspects will be a direct result of it. That is why my right honourable and honourable friends voted against the Bill at Third Reading in another place and why we will seek to amend it to remove the massive overcentralisation it entails. I believe that it is right to give the Government every opportunity to reflect further on the Bill and to improve it significantly in this House. Unlike the Fraud (Trials Without a Jury) Bill, it is capable of amendment. The Minister has already recognised that the Home Office is committed to making further improvements in this place. She mentioned in particular giving statutory backing to the requirement that national standards should apply to all providers of probation services, but she seemed to give only half an assurance about the core issue of best value in the placing of contracts. We will need to look at that carefully. So far as I am concerned, she also seemed to give only a half reassurance that local accountability will involve councillors having a statutory right to membership of probation trusts. That is welcome, but it is only a half welcome from me because I must ask: why not magistrates too? We shall return to our debate on the Police and Justice Act 2006 on those matters. Two items are missing from that list, which has somewhat alarmed me. Dr Reid said that he would look sympathetically at the amendment of my right honourable friends under which the Government would require probation trusts to publish annual plans, along with a further requirement for the Secretary of State to consult local trusts about national and regional offender management plans. Further, I understood that Dr Reid had agreed to table an amendment to ensure the compliance of the probation trusts with the duties of the Children Act 2004, although of course I realise that several other child welfare-related amendments would also be required. We shall give the Government the opportunity to amend the Bill by making sure that we table amendments even if they do not. We shall address the issues raised by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in its robust report and table amendments to reflect those concerns. It is right that we should address in some detail Part 2 because there was little time to do so in another place. My noble friend Lord Bridgeman will lead for us in that endeavour. It is also right to give the Government the opportunity to hear in detail the views of Members of this House throughout our consideration of the Bill. We are going to do everything we can on these Benches to persuade the Government that their proposals to centralise power in the hands of the Secretary of State, now the Lord Chancellor, is not the way dramatically to reduce reoffending rates. We agree with the Government’s objective of reducing reoffending. That is right, but it is the route that is wrong. It is time they turned off the Blair sat-nav and avoided the plunge into the abyss. Let us find a better way of reducing reoffending rates than the proposals in this Bill.