Offender Management Bill

My Lords, I have a very great respect for members of the Probation Service, in particular for their dedication, their professionalism and their public service ethos. They are experienced in advising the courts, and in supervising offenders after they come out of prison and offenders required to engage in community service instead of going to prison. I recall the dedication of the Probation Service and its members from my days as a young barrister appearing in adult and juvenile courts—some considerable time ago. However, I also recall somewhat later the valuable contributions made by senior probation officers as fellow members of the Parole Board for England and Wales. I am concerned to know whether the very radical changes proposed in the Bill will damage or enhance the service that probation officers have given over the years. The Government, through the mouth of my right honourable friend the Home Secretary in another place when he introduced the Bill, emphasised how rightly proud they are of the resources that they have put into the probation services and into rehabilitation programmes, including those relating to basic educational skills and drug addiction. The involvement in some way of voluntary bodies and private sector bodies in the rehabilitation of offenders and in the reduction of reoffending must surely be welcome. To use a word with which we have been familiar in the debate this afternoon, everyone would surely agree with partnerships of some sort with the private sector and the voluntary sector to rehabilitate and to prevent reoffending. That is highly desirable; but as several noble Lords have pointed out, partnerships in Scotland were devised and developed by the Scottish Executive as a way forward that is different from the way forward proposed by the Government for England and Wales in the Bill. Probation officers today in England and Wales are naturally concerned that introducing the concepts of competition and contestability may inflict damage on the Probation Service as we know it. The Probation Boards’ Association wrote to Members of your Lordships’ House that, "““the Bill could (as drafted) destroy the public probation service, leading to fragmentation of the supervision of offenders and increased expenditure on additional tiers of bureaucracy?." The letter was dated 26 March, and therefore followed various concessions that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary had introduced in another place. The trade union UNISON, which my noble friend Lady Gibson of Market Rasen mentioned, has 5,000 members in the Probation Service and is, of course, thoroughly committed to the objective of reducing reoffending. After all, that is what those members are involved with in their daily work. The union is disquieted by the introduction of a market in probation services, a concern that has not been removed by the concessions given by Ministers at Third Reading in another place. The Home Secretary emphasised in his Third Reading speech that the public sector Probation Service as we know it is not being privatised or supplanted; it is, in his words, being supplemented by voluntary and private sector services. However, specialist and other add-on services such as rehabilitation services and education services, inadequate though they may be thought to be at present, do exist, and they can be added to and increased by co-operative arrangements in the future. As I said, that, rather than the radical reorganisation proposed for England and Wales, is considered to be the way forward across the border in Scotland. The Government have conceded that the ““core offender management tasks?—I believe that that is a government phrase—such as offender report writing, offender supervision and breach proceedings, should remain in the public sector, but for three years only. Why only for three years? Presumably, the Government feel that by then they may feel more confident of what a couple of months ago they were fully confident in because it was in the Bill. I am not quite sure how that greater confidence will arise. The concession is for only three years, although I think that at one point the Home Secretary mentioned the lifetime of this Parliament. He may know more about that than I do, but there is some element of doubt as to the timing and no doubt clarification will be desired and sought in Committee. I do not see—to borrow a phrase from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester—the morale of the Probation Service being much increased by feeling that it has another few years on probation, as it were, before the axe comes down on it. No doubt, we can pursue in Committee what precisely are core offender management tasks. Because of the concern at the apparent reduction under the new system proposed in the Bill of local authority accountability, the Government have now said that local probation trusts will have elected councillors on them. But, as I understand it, probation trusts will have to bid—at any rate, after three years from now—for contracts for the provision of services. Does that mean that magistrates and judges cannot be members of the trusts? The Probation Boards’ Association tells me that if trusts are in the business of bidding for contracts, magistrates and judges would not be allowed to be members of such a body. Perhaps the Minister would indicate whether that is so. Finally, in today’s Guardian, there is a reminder of a privatisation that has in part taken place; namely, prisons. The report mentions an unfortunate manslaughter case and the judge commented that there had been a most tragic error when someone was killed in prison. The Guardian reminds us that when inspections of prisons have been held in recent times, privately-owned prisons come way down the list with all kinds of typical failures of the prisons to the inmates concerned. It is most important that we should have answers to questions about prisons because further—if I may use the word—““privatisation? is referred to in Part 2. Various things which are now not done by the private owners of prisons will be possible under Part 2. It does not seem a good time for that to happen when we are not very certain how well private prisons are working. The Bill has left the other place with some changes agreed by the Government, but there is a lot more probing that this House can do, paying attention to detail as it customarily does. I am sure that the Bill, if it survives, will be much better than it is at the moment.