Offender Management Bill

My Lords, usually I am very careful never to begin any statement with ““I remember when? or ““There was a time when?, because, as we all recognise, those journeys down memory lane are almost always seen through rose-coloured spectacles and in any case, with the passage of time, past experiences are rarely directly relevant to the present day. But I want to break that rule today, for I believe that, in short, what I have to say is directly relevant to the content of the Bill, and an examination of the past may assist us in the current debate. Like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, I shall not repeat much of what was said from the opposition Front Benches. Suffice to say that I agreed with much of it and share in both the congratulatory remarks that were made and the doubts that were raised. I begin with ““I remember when? because I can remember when, from the very end of the 1950s until the middle of the 1970s, the Probation Service commanded great and widespread respect and support. Importantly, in those days probation officers were seen very clearly as officers of the court. That is an important point. They were often mature in years, they were almost always mature in their approach and they were highly professional. They were trusted implicitly by the courts to which they reported; they were trusted and respected by the police, with whom they enjoyed a very good working relationship; and they were trusted and respected by other social agencies with whom they came into contact. At a working level, for example, there was often a helpful flow of intelligence from police to probation officer about the conduct of an offender, about which the probation officer could not reasonably have been aware. Behaviour late at night is one example; keeping bad company is another. Probation officers exercised close supervision. They could, on occasions, argue very persuasively for the offender. They could interpose when necessary to the offender's advantage and they could be objectively critical of the offender when necessary. Overall, they ensured compliance with the terms of the probation order. However, it seems to me that somewhere in the mid-1970s things began to change. The workload began to increase, supervision orders began to proliferate, probation officers more and more shifted their position towards that of social workers—I do not use that term pejoratively towards social workers—and increasingly they saw their role as something of a shield between the offender and the legal system as a whole. They often lost control. Respect was diminished on all fronts. Now, it seems that that situation has worsened to the point where the Probation Service is yet another once proud and efficient service that has been labelled unfit for purpose. Despite the platitudes that have been showered on it, I believe that it is trapped in a bureaucratic morass. We have heard that it is often described as the glue in the system. If glue it is, perhaps probation officers are trapped in a glue pot with little chance of escape. I speak with some prior knowledge of the subject. I was a serving police officer during the periods that I have just described. Afterwards, in 1997 and 1998, for a continuous period of 14 months I accompanied Lord Justice Glidewell in his review of the Crown Prosecution Service. Although, for obvious reasons, we focused on the CPS itself, we also took account of much of the wider courts system. Time and again, magistrates and judges told us how they wished that the Probation Service could recapture the best of the old system. Since then, I have been involved in several major reviews within the criminal justice system, independent of the Glidewell review, and continually—up to the present day—I hear over and again the same message from police and judiciary alike: that society needs a probation service which it can respect and trust, and which operates locally as officials of the court to the advantage of both the offender and society as a whole. I agree with that, and I doubt whether many in your Lordships’ House would disagree either. The old working environment to which I have referred had local police and local courts as integral and essential parts of the system. As many of your Lordships have said already in this debate, local identity is seen by many to be one of the keys to the problem that we now address. We hear much these days about the importance of local systems—an approach that I, too, endorse. But confusingly, in practice, we see so much of increasing and overbearing central controls, almost as if central Government are unwillingly to relinquish control despite their stated ideology. I think that local police and local courts should be the subject of other debates in your Lordships’ House on other days, but today we are considering the future of the Probation Service. I do not believe that we need all of this Bill in its current form. I see it more as something of a legal curate’s egg. We should be foolhardy to stand by and watch the demise of the Probation Service as we know it. Of course that service, as many have said before me, requires urgent and radical reform, but only to put it back in the position that it once occupied to such great advantage. Given current demands and the proliferation of orders requiring supervision, there is clearly ample scope now for partnership. The point has already been made by a number of noble Lords, perhaps most eloquently by the noble Lord, Lord Adebowale. There is a need for a new and vibrant involvement by the private, voluntary and charitable sectors. All of those can contribute by taking much of the load of supervision from the shoulders of the Probation Service. They can take much of the load of education; they can take much of the load of ensuring compliance and mentoring. The noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, graphically described the way in which community service orders are often seen as tantamount to an acquittal. That is something that we cannot and should not pass by. There is a ““but?, and it is the one big ““but? in my short address today. The assistance from the voluntary and private sectors should be under the direction and control of a properly funded Probation Service—a service that is professionally trained and qualified, sensibly empowered, which works to national standards, but which is locally accountable to local courts and committees, and which is not hampered by the massive and growing centralised bureaucracy that we see at present.