Offender Management Bill

My Lords, yet again we are trying to address the crises facing our prisons—the crises of overcrowding and reoffending, and the fact that we send and return more people to prison than any other country in western Europe and that a shocking 92 per cent of young men sentenced for three months or less go on to reoffend. That is, of course, not to mention suicide rates, drug abuse, lack of education and mental health facilities to which so many of your Lordships have referred. The list is, I fear, all too familiar. We all have real sympathy with the Government as they face this huge range of problems and I believe that they are getting some things right, certainly on the early preventive side with Sure Start areas and their encouragement for single parents and carers to work flexi hours and the like, as well as their sustained search for strategies that will break that well entrenched cycle of deprivation at the earliest possible point in a child’s life. When one considers the financial cost of keeping a child in care and ultimately in prison, quite apart from the waste of talent and the misery this means for the individual and the whole family, it would frankly be madness not to devote considerable resources to that end. Of course, that approach will not succeed with all potential offenders. There will be some whom no one will identify until they commit an offence, sometimes a pretty horrible one, but it must make sense to try that route and to go on trying. I am afraid that I cannot say the same about the other side of Government policy—the side that is reflected in the Bill; the passion for hasty, ill considered legislative and institutional upheaval. Some 60—some people say 53—new law and order Bills have been introduced in 10 years, creating 3,000 new offences, almost one for every working day, is just one example of this. The starkest and most recent example was last month’s onslaught on the Home Office. The Government published their glossy, 100-page policy review, Building on progress, in which they praise the, "““programme of 29 reform projects … now underway across the Home Office?" without one word about the reckless disintegration of that office that was to take place on almost the same day. Of course, I am not against the declared objective of the Bill to reduce reoffending; I do not think that any of us is. On the contrary, it is what we all want to see. The concept of end-to-end management may make sense and be a step towards a more successful rehabilitation although it needs more explanation. But there is a fundamental reason why the Bill is ill designed to achieve that end. There is the clearest possible conflict between on the one hand the entirely desirable concept of a more seamless system for dealing with offenders as they pass through the penal process—partnership between successive managers, co-operation, continuity—and on the other, the quite different concept of ““contestability? and competition between commercially motivated contractors in constant conflict with each other. That potential clash is indeed well illustrated in the Government’s policy review, to which I have already referred. Paragraph 2.76 states that, "““reform of the National Offender Management Service … will provide stronger incentives for offender managers to reduce reoffending?." Well, will it? It will certainly not, according to the evidence given recently by the Prison Governors Association to the Commons Home Affairs Committee. It says: "““People are being automatically whisked back into custody because of a non-show or late appearance … This decision should be a judicial one and certainly not in the hands of risk-averse offender-managers, ruled by re-offending targets?." That is just one example of why I am concerned at the way in which the centralised and regional structures visualised in the Bill will threaten the real benefits that can and do flow from local accountability and local control. Like my noble friend Lord Dear, looking back on my 20 years as chairman of an inner London juvenile court, my sometime membership of the Parole Board and governorship of Cumberland Lodge remand home, my lasting memory is of the success of the partnerships between judges, magistrates, social workers, prison, probation officers and others working together in a spirit of co-operation and trust. This Bill, by contrast, visualises a centralised system run by the Secretary of State—or is it the Lord Chancellor?—and regional civil servants; one that effectively removes control from local people and centralises it in a way that in my experience will seriously threaten the effectiveness of those local partnerships. I share the concerns that have been expressed on many occasions about the effect of this legislation on the voluntary sector. I remain worried about whether ““contestability?, for all its noble aims of including the voluntary sector, has the potential to destroy the very thing for which that sector is so acclaimed: its ability to be an independent and local voice with a striking ability to reach out to people and groups like no other. As we heard, some larger third sector organisations are in favour but many voluntary and charitable organisations have expressed considerable concern about this legislation. CLINKS, which represents smaller voluntary sector organisations, is particularly concerned that regional commissioning and competition could squeeze out smaller local organisations that really make a difference at a local level. Last week I visited two training prisons, Downview, a women’s prison, and Wandsworth. In both prisons there was an impressive media training course within an equipped media unit generously made available for inmates by Media for Development—training which teaches technical knowledge and interviewing and research skills combined with a BTEC national award in media. I found myself being treated as an interviewee by trainee prisoners and being pressed among other things on disproportionate sentencing for women. I had much sympathy with that point. I can certainly vouch for the media professionalism displayed in each prison course. But of even greater importance were the wider skills that were being developed, which would be valuable in a whole range of jobs—not just in the media. These included teamwork, problem solving and project management as well as personal skills of self-esteem, confidence and a willingness to engage with others. There and at Wandsworth, as well as the media course a range of voluntary initiatives were under way despite the overcrowding, lack of finance, and other problems. There was help with personal problems and rehousing from the St Giles Trust, and help too from ““peer advisers?—offenders who are paid a little to help and advise other inmates on personal problems and to give advice to staff on the relevance of new projects that they are thinking about. Local work opportunities were also being negotiated and were increasingly popular with inmates. One new course, the family man training course, stressed the important role of fathers in keeping families together: at last an excellent recognition of that vitally important role. That was but a tiny taste of what I saw of how local needs and local people are increasingly working together even though many potential employers and others who could help still apparently shy away from contact with offenders who have been ““inside?. That is an area where Government really could influence and incentivise employers to do rather more. These are surely the things to concentrate on, not structures for penal reform that vest power at the top with the Secretary of State and are in direct contradiction with every other pattern for local working together that has rightly been the policy and priority of this Government in education, local authority social services and the NHS. How can it make sense now to impose still further fragmentation—in reality, destruction—on the Probation Service in legislation that ultimately sounds the death knell for it by quietly replacing it with a list of ““functions? that can be undertaken by anyone? And all this is occurring without any clear justification or rationale. Very little business case, if any, has ever been made for these reforms; reforms which I hasten to add are costing huge sums of money. I shall not repeat them because they have already been mentioned several times but the huge sums being spent on NOMS headquarters make one rather ashamed given the very many projects that we know would benefit from increased funding. How, too, will it make sense to pre-empt consideration of the excellent and insightful report by the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, on the treatment of women in the criminal justice system? What plans do the Government have for her proposals? Will the Government introduce amendments that will enable the Corston report to be implemented? Happily, thanks to my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham, your Lordships will have an opportunity to debate the report in just three weeks’ time, so maybe we will hear some more at that point. It will hardly surprise your Lordships that I am likely to support amendments to preserve the highly specialised training and professionalism and crucial duties to the courts, to the community and to offenders’ rehabilitation for which the Probation Service has responsibility. We owe it a huge debt of gratitude over the 100 years of its existence. The fact is that it is still doing valuable work, and it is a service working better now than ever, as has been pointed out and was recognised also by the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland. Do we really need the Bill? I am saying what half the people who have spoken today have said. Scotland does not need it, so why do we? What the Government want and what we all want are successful strategies to reduce reoffending, which can surely—we have all said it—be organised, provided they receive priority resources and funding, on a local partnership basis through the existing probation boards that the Bill intends to abolish. Please give further consideration and think again about the Bill.