Offender Management Bill

My Lords, I remind the House that I chair the All-Party Group on Penal Affairs. Perhaps I should begin by saying, as the last Back-Bench Peer in for this interesting Second Reading debate, that I anticipate that your Lordships are not looking for a large number of runs and probably even fewer wickets. I do not intend to delay the House unduly. In her letter to noble Lords yesterday, the Minister said that ““change is difficult?, but as she will know from her own experience, if it is planned with care, with genuine listening and responding, it all becomes easier. That is what has happened with important parts of this Bill. I am very happy to congratulate her on that. It argues the case for more pre-legislative scrutiny, with the ability to call witnesses, and I hope that this House will find ways of doing more of that. The Prison Reform Trust helpfully reminds us that the prison population has increased by almost 25,000 in the past 10 years, to 80,000. It took the four decades between 1958 and 1995 for the prison population to rise by a similar amount. Despite support from all around the criminal justice system for the notion that custody should be reserved, as the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, said in his report, "““for the most serious, dangerous and highly persistent offenders?," more and more people are sent to prison, often for very short periods, when a range of community sentences would offer a better prospect of reducing reoffending. At a cost of at least £40,000 a year for each prisoner, and when around seven in every 10 will be back inside within 24 months—for those aged 18 to 21 the failure rate is eight in every 10—the present system is an expensive failure. We know that reoffending costs around £11 billion a year. Those are the outcomes—the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, was right to concentrate on outcomes—from the present system, and they signal failure. I welcome the new emphasis in the Bill on reducing reoffending, and all noble Lords who have spoken today have signed up to that. That means strategies to deal with the known needs of individual prisoners when they are in prison and following their release. We all know the figures; you could wake us up at four in the morning and we could recite them. Around six in every 10 prisoners have mental health problems. Does anyone believe that, other than for those who are a danger to themselves or to others, prison is the most appropriate place in which to offer and provide the help needed to deal with those prisoners? I cannot believe it. It is the same with high levels of drug and alcohol abuse. Experience has shown us that prison officers do not have the skills, training or time in our overcrowded jails properly to attend to those needs. Sentencers need to be reminded of the cost of failing to tackle those underlying causes of offending and reoffending. There is an urgent need for investment in a range of secure health and social care facilities, which could result in a substantial decrease in reoffending, along with other measures. I have shared the concerns of many in this House and elsewhere about the Bill’s impact on the Probation Service. As the Prison Reform Trust argues, we need to play to the strengths of the Probation Service and to put the emphasis on local solutions. As the CBI points out, since 2001-02 Probation Service funding has risen by about 40 per cent in real terms. Staff numbers have risen by 50 per cent since 1997. That is an extra 7,000 probation officers. I am not pointing the finger of failure at the Probation Service. That makes the point that the Probation Service on its own cannot provide us with all of the answers to reducing reoffending. As was said by the noble Lord, Lord Laming, the failure that we see around this system is a failure in which we all have a part, especially those of us who have the privilege to be in one of the Houses of Parliament. It makes the case that the Government are arguing that the Probation Service, as it does, needs more effectively to work with other agencies that can help to make progress in this area. The nicely named CLINKS, the umbrella body for the voluntary sector in the criminal justice system, told us: "““There are over 1,500 small voluntary organisations whose main work is to support the rehabilitation of offenders. These organisations play an important role in providing housing, drug treatment, mentoring, employment training, education, the arts and support to families. Additionally, they encourage voluntary action and community participation in the criminal justice system?." What it does not say, but is implied, is that these are essentially small local organisations providing these services to their local communities. CLINKS has expressed concerns about competition between voluntary and private bodies and the public sector. As the Minister explained in her helpful letter: "““We need to effect a change in culture from all of those delivering services, with the public sector working increasingly in partnership with the voluntary, charitable and private sectors to deliver these goals. We believe that the public sector can and will rise to this challenge, and the Bill will give us the levers we need to support them in this endeavour?." That is an important part of this Bill. Her assurance, which I especially welcome—I am sure I am not alone in this—is that the Government are committed to the Probation Service as a profession, reinforced by national standards and training; and that whether the work is done by a trust or a non-public sector provider, "““it will still be delivered by appropriately qualified professional probation staff?." That is an important undertaking, and while, as the noble Baroness opposite said, we need to know more about how this will be achieved, it is there, and it will give some reassurance to those who have doubts about this aspect of the Bill. The Bill’s focus on ways of having a range of organisations working together to offer help to offenders to lead more fulfilling and useful lives is an important aim. I would especially like the Minister to explain how any new training needs of prison staff will be identified and met and whether extra resources will be made available to help them to do that, because if the changes implied in the Bill are to succeed, then prison officers very much need to be part of that process and be given the help that they need to achieve success. I hope that the regional offender managers who will commission services will see the value of commissioning appropriate services from voluntary and charitable bodies with strong and long links into local communities. ““Regional? is too large and too remote. It is better to build from a series of local bases to lead up to providing total regional cover than to attempt to arrange that at regional level and then funnel it down to the localities. These proposals have the support of many in the voluntary sector—not all, I acknowledge, and I do not expect that to be the case. However, the proposals offer the best chance in years of devising new and different ways to reduce offending, and that, surely, is what we want to see. The Government aim to reduce reoffending by 5 per cent by the end of next year and by 10 per cent by 2010. We shall look to the provisions of the Bill to achieve that.